Trends Community Highlights Issue #12: đ Founders at every age đ° How to buy an Instagram handle đ Tesla dating app
Hey Trends Squad,
Trung here. Gonna kick off this entry of the community wrap with a Facebook post many of us can relate to.
Patrick Stark appreciates the stories of young startup founders hitting it big, but wants to hear more of the âI worked in corporate America until I was 45 (or 65!) and then started company X and I crushed itâ stories.
Trends responses include people that have done it:
Greg Williams worked at Ford until 36. He left to start an ecomm firm and -- after 3 years -- sold it for 7 figures. (âI always intended to leave the job but it was a pretty solid job and I needed some security from my side hustle to give me the guts to take the leap -- [very] glad I did!â)
Peter M. Humleker Jr. launched his first startup at 51, an herbal supplement company. (âAfter the first two years I had saved up $100k in the bank, bought a house in Tampa and as soon as the house closed I fired my boss and went full time in my biz. Iâm now 56 and still going!â)
Gail Con writes, âI worked in the corporate world until I was a bit over 40 and started 2 companies after that. One I still run. Can be done, just have to get used to living with uncertainty.â
Rachel ten Brink has also done it: âHappy to chat. Spent 20 yrs in corporate working for top beauty brands, and then started a successful perfume subscription called Scentbird -- itâs an amazing ride but not for the faint of heart.â
As Mike Wu notes from a Harvard Business Review article, the average age of a successful startup founder is 45. (Perfect, Iâm 35. đ)
If youâve got a story, definitely reply to the post.
Other great threads from the Trends community:
How to buy an Instagram handle
A Trendster went viral with a Tesla dating app
Buying up land (to rent out) near national parks
A service that can get you $50k+ in government grants (in 20 minutes)
How does one get into real estate investing?
What tools do people use to quickly spin up job boards?
P.S. If youâre new to Trends, this is our biweekly wrap of community highlights. See our most recent weekly research newsletter here.
P.P.S. Justin Moore -- who (along with his wife) has 1.5m+ social followers and has done ~400 brand deals -- is working on a software tool (Creator Wizard) to give creators access to better data when doing outreach to brands. Itâs in the early phase, and Justin is looking for advice on the product launch.
Headlines
Where we chat with community members and share their stories
1. How to buy an Instagram handle (as told by the owner of IGâs largest hip-hop account)
Go follow @Rap, you scoundrels!
Recently, there was big news on the Instagram front when a network of IG accounts (including the meme-tastic @Daquan) was acquired by Warner Music Group for $85m.
As fate would have it, Trends member Daniel Snow -- an ecommerce and digital marketing entrepreneur -- owns the largest hip-hop account on Instagram (@Rap, 6m+ followers). After buying and selling more than a dozen IG accounts, he pulled back the curtain on how the business works.
As a number of Trendsters have expressed interest in acquiring IG handles, I got on the phone with Snow to get his best-practice tips:
First and foremost: âKnow that youâre taking a big risk. You can lose a large account completely, either by hack or a top-down decision from Instagram itself.â
Get a contract: âThis is a minimum layer of protection. Make sure that you are acquiring a corporation that owns the underlying IG account (Instagramâs terms of service doesnât allow the sale of handles).â
Get the Instagram welcome email: âThe true owner of a handle should have the âwelcome to Instagramâ email. If they donât, thatâs pretty sketchy and should be a red flag.â
Purchase the handle using PayPal: âIf you use PayPalâs good and services purchase option, youâll have a chargeback option (itâs 3-5% extra, but worth it for insurance) in case the other side tries to screw you. Iâll close deals using Amex -- which is insured -- for double protection.â
Put 2FA on the acquired handle: âItâs not foolproof, but two-factor authentication helps prevent people from trying to hack you.â
Vetting the engagement: âMain things I look for are likes and comments. This is more important than followers. A quick thing Iâll do to verify comments is scroll through them. Bots will sometimes post the exact same message and youâll know it's a scam.â
ICYMI: Hereâs Michael Bisping telling me and Sam his IG meme account strategy.
2. This Trendster went viral with a Tesla dating app. Whatâs next?
Tesla Dating hahahaha
A few weeks back, AJ Grewal created a dating app for Tesla owners. Called Tesla Dating (âbecause you canât spell love without EVâ LOL), the project was âpartly an experiment in virality.â
Grewal âemailed a bunch of reporters, got some shares on Twitter, then things picked up to the point where reporters started emailing me.â
It ended up on WSJ, The Verge, Business Insider, and Mashable -- among others.
âNice idea. From my own experience, I think getting press is the easier part and sustaining users is the harder part. Best bet imo is to email people from Tesla and see if someone can show it to Elon âcause that could take it to Mars!
If I was you Iâd build it and try and ride the wave, âcause youâll learn a lot from it.
The press will write about anything.â
I spoke with Grewal and heâs still undecided on whether to build it but -- if anyone else has crazy âmake things go viralâ ideas -- Grewal would like to chat.
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Business brainstorms and product/service announcements
3. Interesting opportunity: buying up land near national parks to rent out
Codie Sanchez -- an investor at Entourage Effect Capital (EEC) -- let the group know sheâs been âbuying cheap land by national parks and listing it on Airbnb or Hipcamp for campers.â
She was catalyzed to make the investment after seeing a friend net â$1.5k a month off one $10k investment for a couple acres near Joshua Tree.â
At present, sheâs bought 11 acres of pure dirt near Joshua Tree (âNo infrastructure. Some areas require âhazard wasteâ disposal but not all.â)
For a deep dive on Sanchezâs strategy, check out her Substack.
4. This company can get you $50k in government grants in minutes
Different government credits that MainStreet can get you
Doug Ludlow -- who sold his first company (Hipster) to AOL, then his second (Happy Home) to Google in 2016 -- recently joined Trends.
His new company (MainStreet) helps companies secure thousands in government grants and tax incentives. According to Ludlow, if you âconduct some level of economic activity in the United States,â then MainStreet should be able to find you credits.
Here are some top line numbers about MainStreet:
It launched in February, and theyâre already at $3m ARR, growing 50% month-on-month
It wins startups $50k+ in government grants in < 20 minutes
90% of startups qualify
5. How does one get into real estate investing?
Mikey Caplin writes, âHow do I get started [in real estate investing], and more importantly, how do I find a partner to help lower my risk?â
James Rainwater has a great top-level tip. Research and find out which real estate sub-niche resonates the most: 1) wholesale; 2) hard money; 3) fix and flip; 4) buy and hold; 5) single family; 6) duplex and multifamily; 7) self-storage; 8) industrial; and 9) commercial.
Two no-code hacks: 1) Webflow + Airtable + Zapier; and 2) Sheet2Site
Our Steph Smith notes the challenges of building a business in the space:
âThe barrier to success for job boards is getting a lot of traffic, not creating the board or collecting jobs. Creating/curating in this case is super accessible, but then people donât know how to drive significant traffic.â
8. What are some good interview questions?
Brad Roberts says that his favorite interview question is âTell me about your curiosityâ and asked the group for their faves:
Celina Celina: âWhat are you obsessed with right now?â
Natalie Goering: âWhat are you looking for in your next job that you didnât get from your last job?â
Jon Khaykin: âTell me something you believe about the world that most people would disagree with.â
Tom Carew: âWhat are you best at? How would you turn this skill into a business with $5k investment?â
Tatsu Oiye: âTell me about a belief you hold strongly. Now tell me what it would take for you to change your mind.â
Patrick Stark: âAssuming we start to work together and in 6 months weâre no longer working together, whatâs the most likely reason for that?â
Hope you enjoyed this email. It was written by Trung T. Phan (follow him on Twitter or add him on LinkedIn). You can stroke his ego (or shatter it) by hitting the Smileys above.