Here it is

Battle of the Business Ideas | Trends by The Hustle

Here at Trends, our analysts have access to all kinds of cool tools to help us vet businesses. This week, we thought we’d use them to assess your business ideas.

So we’ve come up with a little game in which we draw 3 business ideas from the Trends Facebook group and use data to see how they measure up.

The rules are simple: We use 3 metrics to evaluate the 3 business ideas, showing which idea fares best according to each metric.

The Influencer Strategy that Cut My Acquisition Costs by 40% | Trends by The Hustle

This week’s Strategy Corner is a guest post from Nik Sharma, who’s led D2C growth for major brands like Hint (flavored water) and VaynerMedia. Today he runs Sharma Brands, where he’s worked with everyone from Hydrant to Vox Media to Cher on branding and D2C strategy. 

For more from him, check out his Trends lecture on how to launch a D2C product — or check out his D2C marketing newsletter.

Enter Nik…

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The Smartest Acquisition Strategies of All Time | Trends by The Hustle

“What is the most clever customer acquisition strategy you’ve ever seen?,” investor Patrick OShaughnessy asked the Twitter-verse recently. 

The tweet racked up hundreds of responses, and was featured in last week’s Tips and Tools. In this week’s Strategy Corner, we dive into lessons learned from 3 of our favorites.

1) Tinder: Go after the toughest users first

In an interview with TechCrunch, Justin Mateen, founder and former CMO of Tinder, said, “Go after the hardest users to get first… These can either be your worst critics or your greatest evangelists.”

Curiosity May Have Killed the Cat, But It’ll Grow Your Business Like Crazy | Trends by The Hustle

When it comes to growing a business, our guy Sam Parr is a bit of a coyote trickster. He’s a benevolent troublemaker whose tactics are reminiscent of showmen like P.T. Barnum, Ben Franklin, and others. For example:

• The marketing for Southern Sam’s, his chain of hot-dog carts that sold “weiners as big as a baby’s arm.”

• Early Hustle stories published under pen names like Steve Garcia, Sid Finch, and Steph Whitfield to make the team seem bigger.
• A Black Friday sale made to look like a leaked internal email sold hundreds of thousands of dollars in Trends subscriptions in a few days.

Sam doesn’t take himself too seriously. Most of the time, his stunts are driven by his sense of humor and a desire to entertain.

Keys to High-Growth Twitter Threads | Trends by The Hustle

If you go viral once on Twitter, you’re lucky. Twice? You’re good. Over the last month, The Hustle’s Alex Garcia has written tweet threads that have gone viral again, and again, and again.

In a recent experiment, he shared 1 thread per day for 50 days, each with marketing lessons from famous brands like Airbnb or PayPal.

The threads have been wildly popular, racking up hundreds of retweets, thousands of likes, and growing his following from ~5k to 27k+ in 28 days.

Bringing Difficult Products to Market: Lessons from Cannabis Brands | Trends by The Hustle

Building any company is hard, but it’s especially challenging for those in the so-called vice industries like cannabis, which face extra obstacles in:

1. Early adoption of products consumers aren’t familiar with.
2. Winning shelf space in competitive or highly regulated markets.
3. Scaling distribution without access to traditional channels.

There’s a lot to learn from how they overcome these challenges. 

Let’s Talk About Sex(tech) (Part 2) | Trends by The Hustle

Two weeks ago, in part 1 of our series, we showed that sexual wellness is an underfunded industry with tons of potential.

Sextech — which has evolved from a male-centric vice industry to a female-centric wellness business — is here to enhance everything from pleasure to medicine.

In 2020 alone, there were 36m+ connected sextech devices — up 87% YoY. The sexual wellness market is expected to double over the next 5 years, from $62B today to $125B by 2026.

The Hidden Innovators of the Exponential Age | Trends by The Hustle

When we talk about innovation, it’s common to talk about the same few subjects. Trillion-dollar tech companies or large-scale projects like Bitcoin get tons of media attention.

But the Trends community is all about finding hidden change — seeing the things that others overlook. 

So we sat down with Azeem Azhar — founder of the Exponential View newsletter and podcast — and asked: Who are the innovators that no one is talking about today but everyone will know in 10 years? 

The Power of Emotional Contrast in Marketing | Trends by The Hustle

The average supermarket carries ~47k products, many of which compete against each other for your attention. To survive, great CPG brands must master the art of standing out.

Trendster Jordan Michael Schuster is the founder of Snacktually, a business development agency specializing in the CPG space that’s helped launch $100m+ worth of products in the last 5 years.

His secret to marketing? One word: Contrast.

Let’s Talk About Sex(tech) (Part 1) | Trends by The Hustle

Sexual wellness is an underfunded industry that is set to explode as sexual taboos continue to lift.

Sextech — which has evolved from a male-centric vice industry to a female-centric wellness business — is here to enhance everything from pleasure to medicine. 

Key Takeaways

• Consumer demand is surging: There were 36m+ connected sextech devices in use globally last year, representing 87% YoY growth.
• The market for connected devices alone is expected to more than double over the next 5 years to reach $9B.
• Sextech goes far beyond toys. It’s set to disrupt all areas of the sexual wellness space, from health to education.
• The wider industry of sexual wellness, which is now worth $62B, is forecast to exceed $125B by 2026.
• The stigma surrounding sex means that investors are still jittery about the space — but sex is a universal human experience, and one of the biggest markets there is.
• The sex-positive movement is driving change and lifting taboos; industry veterans believe we are on the cusp of a surge in funding.
• No clear market leader is producing flawless connected devices, leaving the high-tech industry wide open — both for sextech innovators and entrepreneurs with tech expertise.
• We spoke with a Trendster who is leveraging opportunities in the sexual hygiene and personal care space.
• The US sextech market is still largely offline, leading to attractive ecommerce opportunities.
• Prioritizing security and the digital privacy of users will be key to fulfilling sextech’s potential.

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Introduction

When you first hear the term “sextech,” you probably think of Tinder, VR pornography, or even sex robots. And while you’re not wrong (meet Harmony), that’s also not the full picture.