What's New: The new era of coworking

(from the latest issue of the Indie Hackers newsletter)

Coworking is on track to grow 21.3% per year through 2024:

• It's predicted that 5 million people will be coworking by 2024, a 158% increase from early 2020. Alex Hillman, founder of online coworking platform Indy Hall, shares his thoughts on how coworking will play a major role in post-pandemic economic recovery. He warns that founders should beware of opportunism and keep people and relationships at the forefront.
• Instagram for Business posts with less than 10 words in the caption receive the most engagement, according to a new report. When paired with a carousel, engagement skyrockets even more. If you've got a caption with 30 words or more, your best bet is to pair it with a video instead of a photo. Reels, anyone?
• Structured interviews are one of the best ways to build newsletters, communities, and funds. It's not as scary as it sounds. Dru Riley breaks down the benefits of asking the same questions to different people, then sharing the answers with your audience.

Want to share your ideas with over 70K indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing

💻 The Future of Coworking Starts Now

from the Indie Economy newsletter by Bobby Burch

An expected 5M people will be working from coworking spaces in 2024, a 158% increase from early 2020. While WeWork's pending IPO brought coworking front and center last week, Indie Hackers interviewed Alex Hillman, founder of online coworking platform Indy Hall, on his thoughts on the evolving landscape.

The origin story

When I started Indy Hall, it wasn't because I needed a place to work; it was because I missed having coworkers. Even as we've grown over the years, that's stayed at the core. If people want a place to work, but don't really care who else is around them, Indy Hall probably isn't for them.

On the flip side, when people choose to go out on their own and realize the isolation and loneliness that can come with entrepreneurship and remote work, we know that we're able to help with those problems very well. We design everything we do to build trust and relationships.

We were one of the first US spaces to close for COVID-19, and I spent a few weeks urging spaces nationally (and internationally) to take the virus seriously. Our stance from the start was simple, and in line with our people-first approach: Businesses and buildings can be rebuilt, human lives cannot.

Taking coworking virtual

While the [physical] space has been closed, we put all of our resources into our online community and creating first-class community experiences. We've learned a ton and designed new experiences from the ground up. While it's not a replacement for in-person coworking, I'm really proud that our online community has been able to be a critical lifeline for hundreds of people who've been staying home and isolating during the pandemic.

Keeping the long view in mind wasn't easy, but it was the only way I could see getting through it.

The future of coworking, post-pandemic

My focus is still going to be on people, trust, and relationships. We're extremely well-poised to be part of the support infrastructure for people who jumped into entrepreneurship during the pandemic, either by force or by choice. We're working towards a 10-year mission of helping 10K people become sustainably independent. Prior to the pandemic, that was an economic development plan... now the same plan is all about economic recovery, and doing it in a sustainable way.

We're entering into a period of economic rebuilding, as well as rebuilding our lives around where we go, who we interact with, and what we consider important. We're already seeing unbridled opportunism of second wave coworking re-emerge, with even more aggressive land grabs than it has in the past. This will distract lots of people like it has [before].

The road ahead

I'm more interested in how we can take the lessons from the last 15 years of coworking and apply them to whatever the recovery needs. We've got 15 years of practice at things that have proven critical over the last year (remote work, collaboration, community building, emergent business models, and innovation), and they're all clearly needed as communities, cities, and economies work to recover.

While the workspace industry is salivating over all of the new remote workers they can cram into their empty real estate, I'll keep caring about helping people help each other thrive in whatever form that needs to take. It's what [gotten] us through the last 12 months of the pandemic, and I'm confident it's what we'll still be doing in another 5-10 years, even if I don't know exactly what it will look like.

Community-driven optimism

I believe that communities where people look out for each other will thrive, especially after more than a year of widespread isolation.

COVID-19 hasn't really changed my outlook other than to reinforce that if people can think beyond desks and square footage, coworking has a long future ahead. That said, remote work isn't a panacea, nor is coworking. They're just tools. Coworking is a verb, it's a thing people will do with or without special spaces for it.

Find, and support, a local coworking operator whenever you can. Not all local coworking spaces are great, but that's kind of like restaurants. You've got to try them to know if they're any good, and you'll find that the thing that sets the best ones apart is the people.

Are you a fan of coworking, either virtually or in-person? Share your thoughts below.

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📰 In the News

📹 Instagram has launched Remix on Reels to compete with TikTok Duets.

🍎 Apple has added two new Siri voices, and will no longer automatically default to a female voice.

🖥 Remote workplaces are more hostile for already marginalized groups.

🚲 Peleton just posted its first $1B+ quarter, following its three-company acquisition spree.

🌳 The state of New York has legalized recreational marijuana and will expunge prior convictions.

📈 Shorter Instagram Captions = Higher Engagement

from the User Acquisition Channels newsletter by Darko G.

It's the age old question: How many words should an Instagram caption have for the best engagement? This new report found that captions that are 10 words or less received the most engagement for businesses. While this is the general consensus, there is a caveat.

The Instagram caption mystery

This new study analyzed over 100M Instagram posts to identify findings about the current Instagram engagement rate, the type of posts that perform the best, and much more.

Here are the top 3 results:

1. Aside from a notable increase during the first half of 2020, the Instagram engagement rate has been at basically the same level since 2019.
2. Captions up to 10 words are the ones that bring the most engagement, especially when combined with a carousel.
3. If you have a caption longer than 30 words, you're likely to see better engagement by pairing it with videos instead of photos.

You can read the full study here, along with the additional conclusions.

Amazon ads

The assumption: When it comes to Amazon's profits, you've probably heard all about AWS, and also how Amazon is losing money from its main marketplace business.

The (likely) truth: Amazon makes a ton from Amazon Ads. This independent analyst recently combed through Amazon's public financial data reports:

At the top end, if we assume that $20B of Amazon’s $21.5B "ads and other" was actually ads, that would be $13.6B of operating income.

By comparison, YouTube reported $19.7B in 2020 advertising revenue. That's very close to what Amazon is likely making.

What this means for you: This analysis made front page of Hacker News, and the comments were mostly positive. This top one summarizes the opportunity of using Amazon Ads:

The secret sauce was instantly pairing "commercial intent" (or the intention buy, sell, hire, etc.) with vendors and firms who can satisfy that intent or "aspects" of that intent. You might get an Uber ad on a query for "restaurants near me," for example.

Amazon has that in spades. If you are on the Amazon site, that is a huge signal that you are intending to make a commercial transaction whether on Amazon directly, or through a local retailer.

Google's traffic to the open web

In 2020, 2/3s of Google searches ended without a click.

Here's Google's response to this finding:

We send billions of visits to websites every day, and the traffic we’ve sent to the open web has increased every year since Google Search was first created.

What this means for you: Google is sending out more traffic to websites than ever before. Search traffic is a lot more nuanced than you might think, as you can see from this report. Still, it may be a good idea to diversify your approach if you're relying on a single acquisition channel, especially if that channel is SEO.

Have you noticed any unique findings with Instagram for Business? Feel free to share in the comments!

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🤥 Marketing Lie: Your Startup Needs a Great Referral Program

from the Demand Curve newsletter by Julian Shapiro

The lie: Your startup needs a great referral program.

The truth: Every company is different. The referral programs that grew Airbnb & Dropbox don't work for most companies.

Instead, find your social loop.

Example: An e-commerce pet store should get dog owners to post photos of their dogs on IG with you tagged.

Discuss this story, or subscribe to Demand Curve for more.

🎙 Use Structured Interviews to Build Communities

from the Trends.vc newsletter by Dru Riley

Structured interviews consist of asking the same questions to different people, then collecting and sharing answers with your audience.

This method is used to build newsletters, communities, funds, DaaS companies, and more.

Why it matters

• Structured interviews power scalable media companies.
• Standardization makes it easier to find patterns of success and failure.
• Borrowing trust, credibility and affinity are fast ways to build leverage.

Readers want insights from interesting people. Guests want sales, backlinks and followers. Brands want scalable content.

Enter structured interviews.

Players

• Indie Hackers --- Bootstrapped Founders
• Failory --- Failed Startups
• No Code MBA --- No-Code Businesses
• Podium Worthy --- "People worth listening to"
• The Top --- Entrepreneur Income Reports
• Compound --- Writers
• No CS Degree --- Self-Taught and Bootcamp Developers

Predictions

• Tools like Shortly will give small teams more leverage without the need to hire.
• No-Code apps will use structured-interview-like interfaces to help you build by answering questions. See Headlime's AI-powered landing page builder.

Opportunities

• Make it a no-brainer for guests. Minimize the time required and answer "What's in it for me?" Collect and share success stories.
• Build systems to scale. Document and delegate your outreach, collection and distribution process.
• Add a personal touch. Tell guests why you want to interview them. Weave details into standardized questions. i.e. "What motivated you to get started with Thankbox?"
• Build a Data as a Service company. Nathan Latka pulls revenue metrics from podcast episodes, adds them to a database and sells access.

Key lessons

• Borrow trust, credibility and attention to build leverage. Structured interviews tether your brand to others. Unstructured interviews do the same but slower.
• Think laterally. This hiring method is being used by funds to evaluate deals, SaaS for top-of-funnel and communities to attract members.

Haters

"Structured interviews are impersonal."

Semi-structured is an option. Work backward based on your goals. Less structure equals less scale.

"I'll miss the opportunity to ask interesting questions."

There's no free lunch. The world is full of trade-offs. You can have several rounds of questions. But scalability is lost.

"I'm convinced. But what if everyone starts doing this?"

Links

1. Who's doing standardized interviews? - The tweet behind this report.
2. How 150 Personal Emails Sparked a Community of 60,000 Entrepreneurs - Courtland Allen used structured interviews to build a community of tens of thousands of founders.
3. Crowdsourcing - The powerful force behind structured interviews.

Do you use structured interviews in your business? Share your insight in the comments.

More Reports

Go here to get the Trends Pro report. It contains 200% more insights. You also get access to the entire back catalog and the next 52 Pro Reports.

Discuss this story, or subscribe to Trends.vc for more.

🐦 The Tweetmaster's Pick

by Tweetmaster Flex

I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:

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Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Nathalie Zwimpfer for the illustrations, and to Bobby Burch, Darko G., Julian Shapiro, and Dru Riley for contributing posts. —Channing