This is an in-depth review of Trends by The Hustle.
You may know it as Trends.co, Sam Parr’s premium newsletter, or the private community often mentioned on the My First Million podcast.
I’m a paying member of Trends myself, and in this review you’ll learn:
- What exactly you get with your membership
- If Trends is worth the price of admission
- How to get a $100 discount
- What real members say about Trends
Let’s dive in.
Table Of Contents
Intro
Pros
This review is a joint effort between Niall Doherty of eBiz Facts and the Freedom Business Builder community.
Our process:
- Niall twice signed up for a $1 trial of Trends.
- He spent 10+ hours going through the premium material and exploring the private community.
- After his second trial, Niall saw enough value in Trends that he paid $299 for a year of access.
- Niall then wrote up the first draft of this review.
- We sent the draft to our Freedom Business Builder community and asked for feedback.
- We made our final edits and published the review.
- We sent the review to Trends and asked if they had any comments or corrections.
Note: We earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase through referral links in this review. Read our full disclosure here.
What is Trends.co?
Trends.co is a premium subscription service that aims to help you build a successful business. Members get access to a private community of entrepreneurs, plus a wealth of research data and reports.
Here’s a description from the Trends.co about page:
“Weβre a team of entrepreneurs, analysts, data scientists, and journalists who obsessively track up-and-coming startups, new industries, and interesting ideas.”
As a member of Trends myself, I’d say it’s good for four things:
- Business idea generation
Use the Trends research and community to identify endless business ideas you can pursue. - Business idea validation
When you find an idea you like, tap the community for feedback and testing to make sure you’re onto a winner. - Rapid learning, expert insights
Learn new skills and insights fast with Trends reports and lectures from experts, and via the many high-level entrepreneurs in the community. - Networking
I’m continually impressed by the caliber of people in the Trends community, and how easy it is to connect with them.
We’ll go deeper into all those points and more later in this review.
But first, a little background.
Trends was launched in 2019 as the “premium research arm and private community” of a popular email newsletter called The Hustle…
About Sam Parr and The Hustle
The Hustle was started by Sam Parr in 2014. It’s a daily email newsletter that is reported to have more than 1 million subscribers and is mainly monetized with advertising.
I profiled Sam here:
Sam Parr
- Founder and CEO of The Hustle
- $1+ million The Hustle monthly revenue
You can get a quick sense of Sam from this April 2020 interview with Gary Vaynerchuk:
Highlights from Sam’s origin story:
- While studying at Belmont University in Tennessee, he started a chain of hot dog stands and an online liquor store. Both businesses helped pay the bills.
- In 2012 he moved to San Francisco and co-founded a roommate-matching startup called Bunk. The startup was acquired soon after and Sam worked for the acquirer (Do-er) for a year.
- He started Hustle Con in 2014, βa TED-like conference for entrepreneurs.β
- Sam started a newsletter to promote Hustle Con and that grew into The Hustle.
You may also have heard Sam on My First Million, which I rate as one of the best business podcasts.
I should also note that neither The Hustle or Trends are a one-man show. Sam has a team of people helping him out with both.
For example, several contributors were listed at the bottom of a recent Trends email…
Trends Price, Discount & Coupon Info
You can get full access to Trends for 7 days with their $1 trial. After that it costs $299 per year. Get a $100 discount on the first year when you sign up for the trial with this link.
So with the $1 trial and the $100 discount you’ll end up paying $200 total for 1 week + 1 year of full access to Trends. Then it renews at $299 a year later if you stay subscribed.
No matter how you sign up for the $1 trial, you can easily cancel during the trial period and not pay anything extra.
Is there a coupon code for Trends?
You might see a space for a coupon code at checkout when signing up for Trends.
I asked their support team about this: they said discount codes are announced infrequently, and the most consistent way to get a discount is through a referral link (like this one).
Is there a student discount?
Yes, there is.
From the Trends FAQ page:
Can I pay monthly for Trends?
No, sorry.
After the $1 trial for the first week, the only option is to pay for an annual subscription if you’d like to continue with Trends.
Pros of Trends.co 👍
All-Star Community
Trends has many high-level entrepreneurs in its private community, many of whom contribute regularly to discussions.
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration when they say that Trends members generate billions of dollars in revenue…
For example, several members reported their companies making the Inc. 5000 list…
Familiar names I’ve seen dropping posts and comments in the community…
- Glen Allsopp (Detailed)
- Gagan Biyani (co-founder of Udemy, valued at $2 billion)
- Carolina KΓΌng (Head of Platform at Frontline Ventures, $200 million under mgmt)
- Neville Medhora (Copywriting Course)
- Laura Roeder (founder of Edgar, $0 to $150k MRR in 13 months)
- Allen Walton (founder of SpyGuy, $10 million in sales)
Meanwhile, you’ll see plenty of successful founders and execs praising Trends…
In terms of business success and expertise, I don’t believe it’s possible to find another online community that compares to Trends, especially considering the low price of entry.
Many members find the Facebook group to be the best part of Trends:
And I’ve seen many people using it to find work and partnership opportunities.
Examples:
Rapid Learning
With Trends’ research and reporting, plus the interviews and lectures from industry experts, you can quickly gain useful skills and insights and apply them to your own business.
Examples of research and reporting:
Examples of interviews and lectures:
Trends has also done Q&As with people like…
- Eliza Blank (The Sill)
- Brian Scudamore (1-800-GOT-JUNK)
- Shane Parrish (Farnam Street)
- Gagan Biyani (Udemy)
- Michael Acton Smith (Calm)
- Matthew Kepnes (Nomadic Matt)
Then there’s everything you can learn from the private community.
For example, here’s a Trends member sharing their due-diligence process for buying SaaS apps:
And here’s someone asking for advice and getting plentyβ¦
Tons of Business Ideas
If your goal is to come up with a business idea, Trends is your best friend.
Jack Smith is the co-founder of Vungle, a tech company which sold for $770 million.
Trends is his go-to spot for new business ideas…
You’ll find business ideas everywhere in Trends.
Probably the best source is the regular Signals reports (about 12 published each month)…
Here’s a Trends member pointing to one such report as the genesis of their online business…
You’ll also find plenty of ideas in Trends articlesβ¦
And via the private Trends Databasesβ¦
And of course members regularly share business ideas and opportunities in the Facebook group.
For example:
As they say, a lot of business is timing.
Trends helps you find the right ideas at the right time 👌
Idea Validation
Not sure if your business idea has legs? Run it by the Trends community for feedback and validation.
A few examples from the Facebook group:
The best thing about using the Trends community for idea validation is that there are so many high-level entrepreneurs in there who can quickly spot flaws in an idea or highlight assumptions you should test before going too deep.
$1 Trial
You can give Trends a try for 7 full days for only $1.
This is a pretty sweet deal. You get access to everything Trends has to offer during your trial, so you can test it out fully to see if it’s worth paying for a full year.
Sign up for your $1 trial with this link and you’ll also get a $100 discount on the yearly membership.
⚠️ Be aware that you’ll be charged for the yearly membership automatically after your one-week trial.
If you think you might want to cancel during the free trial, set a snooze on your $1 email receipt so you’ll be reminded before you get charged again.
Or you can turn off auto-renew immediately after signing up for the free trial and you won’t have to worry about an additional charge.
Cons of Trends.co 👎
I consider the following criticisms to be nitpicks more than anything.
But my goal with every review is to be fair and balanced, so I figure they’re worth mentioning…
No Free Trial
I’ve seen a handful of complaints that Trends doesn’t have a free trial, so you can’t “try before you buy.”
I don’t see this as a big deal since there is the one-week trial for only $1.
Sign up for that and you’ll get to test drive the full Trends experience for almost no cost.
If you want to see what kind of premium content Trends sends you via email each week, here are two samples:
- Lessons From the Next Unicorns β Presales as a Service β Noise-Pollution Solutions
- Trends Report: Inc. 5000 Insights β Anti-Aging Solutions β A Bankruptcy Tsunami
No Refunds
Trends has a “no refund” policy. You can cancel your subscription at any time, but you can’t get back any money you’ve already paid.
I also consider this fair game since you can see exactly what Trends is like during your one-week $1 trial.
If you’re not liking Trends during those 7 days, cancel your subscription and you won’t be charged anything extra.
Fake Countdown Timer
You’ll see a countdown timer on the Trends checkout saying the $1 trial offer expires in 8 minutes. You can safely ignore that.
The timer looks like this:
Wait longer than 8 minutes, refresh the page, and the timer starts anew.
I’m guessing the fake countdown increases the conversion rate at checkout, but I find it to be a cheap trick that erodes my trust in Trends a little bit.
$100 Discount Confusion
Another issue at checkout: even if you sign up with the $100 discount offer, it says that you will be charged full price.
As you can see in the screenshot below, you’re told (1) that you will get the $100 discount, which would mean a charge of $199 after the trial.
But then you’re also told on the same screen (2) that you will be charged $299 after your trial…
I alerted Trends about this issue, and they replied that they intentionally display the $299 price even when the discount is applied, “because people will be charged $299 annually, just their first year has a discount code applied. We don’t want people thinking that they will be paying $200 every year.”
UPDATE: I’ve heard reports that the $100 discount messaging sometimes isn’t shown at the checkout, but the folks at Trends have assured me, “weβll be keeping the $100 discount on a 1-year membership for new subscribers coming through your referral link.”
WRAP UP
What exactly do you get with your Trends.co subscription?
You get two main things with your Trends subscription:
- Access to the private community
- Access to premium content
Access to the private community
Actually, it’s more than one community.
There’s the primary Facebook group…
Plus a couple of official sub-groupsβ¦
I’ve also seen members setting up unofficial sub-groups via Trends, such as one for newsletter creators and another for people in the UK.
Trends sends out an email every couple of weeks with highlights from the main group so you can easily keep up with the most popular posts.
Access to premium content
I’ve shown examples of most of the premium content above.
In summary, you get access to:
- 1 fresh newsletter each week + archives
- ~12 new Signals reports each month + archives
- ~6 new Articles each month + archives
- ~5 live events (ie. online lectures or workshops) each month + archives
- Several private databases
- Several exclusive ebooks (ie. long PDF reports)
Is Trends worth it?
That depends on your goals.
But if you want toβ¦
- Be part of a community of high-level entrepreneurs
…and…
- Feed yourself regular business ideas and inspiration
…then a Trends subscription would likely be a solid investment for you.
Some posts and comments from the Facebook group that speak to the value of Trendsβ¦
That said, Trends probably isn’t a good investment for everyone.
I’d recommend avoiding it if:
- You’re already part of a strong entrepreneurial community (or you see no need to be part of one).
- You’re easily distracted by new information/opportunities and need to stay focused on your current projects.
How to join Trends
Enter your email there and then you can sign up for the $1 trial.
You’ll get the $100 discount if you stay subscribed beyond the one-week trial period.
(As mentioned earlier, so long as you see the $100 discount notice on the left side of the checkout screen, you will only pay $199 after your trial. The $299 price listed on the right side of the checkout refers to the renewal price 12 months later.)
Alternatives to Trends.co
Alternatives to the community aspect of Trends
- Freedom Business Builder
Our private community here at eBiz Facts. We don’t have as many superstar members as Trends, but we charge much less for admission 😉 - Dynamite Circle
A popular private community for location independent entrepreneurs, created by Dan Andrews and Ian Schoen of TropicalMBA. More expensive than Trends and to apply you must own a business that does at least $60k annual revenue. - Fastlane Forum
A message board for entrepreneurs, created by MJ DeMarco (author of The Millionaire Fastlane). Their premium subscription costs $10/month and lets you play with the big boys.
Alternatives for generating business ideas
- How To Come Up With A Business Idea
A comprehensive guide to idea generation, listing a bunch of methods and resources to help you think up genius business ideas.
Your Review of Trends by The Hustle
Have you ever signed up for Trends.co?
Please consider leaving a review below β good or bad β doesnβt matter so long as itβs helpful to our readers.
Thanks for your support!
Hi,
Thank you for the detailed review, I just tried your link but, I have no confirmation box in the screenshot that I have a 100$ discount, a hint to solve that?
Thanks!
I tested it myself just now and it still works, though the layout is a bit different from when I took the screenshot. But you should still see a message above the sign up for that says: “You have successfully used a Trends referral code. We will take $100 off your first-year payment once your trial is complete.”
Hey Niall,
I want to try out Trends for one week. So, when I clicked on the link to try it for $1, it asked me to pay $299 (or $199 if I use your code). Still, I cannot try it for $1.
I have tried reaching out to Trends directly ([email protected]), but have not received any response. I’m not sure whether I will receive a reply on this platform, either. But, it is worth a shot.
Let me know if there is a different link to try Trends for $1. Or, if Trends has removed the option for one week trial since you posted this blog last year.
Thanks!
Hey Akshansh, looks like they’re running a big summer discount promotion on the yearly membership right now, so I believe there is no $1 trial while that’s running. I expect it will be available again once the summer promo is finished.
Aah. I see. Thanks for the prompt response!
They’re still not replying to their email ([email protected]).
Same here. I’m trying to cancel and no response from anyone. I sent an email 2 days before the trial ended and they still took the money from my account. Who can we talk to?
I have received a link on linkedIn regarding SBE stories during the recession 2018 and currently and felt like Trends is a great way to help my business at this stage with networking, but I was not sure how much was the monthly / yearly cost, so I looked it up and pump into your story. As a SBE I can’t afford $300 a year and especially when they are no refund. Thank you for sharing.
Shame that there’s no refunds.
Now out of pocket $300 which is difficult to justify when running a small business.
Trends should offer a bit more understanding here.
Hey Josh, thanks for the comment. What happened with the 2-week trial for $1? Did you go through that, then get charged for the annual subscription, then decide you didn’t want it?
I’m usually not a fan of no-refund policies but with the super-cheap trial that Trends has I think it’s fair.
Hey Niall – I read this site regularly (I’m on your list – check it!).
Pretty cool to see us here. Thanks for the review!
Thanks for the comment, Sam! Appreciate you checking out the review. Keep up the great work. I’m getting a lot out of The Hustle and Trends every week.