Curation as a Service: No-Code Directories, Personal Brands, Digital Products

Why it matters

You need help finding signal in noise.

Problem

It's hard to sift through content and make good decisions without developing information overload.

Solution

Curation-as-a-Service saves you time, money, and energy.

Players

Curators:

• Rob Hope: Curates design and dev resources.
• Janel Loi: Shares tools and learning resources.
• David Senra: Picks biographies to study and share lessons from.
• Danielle L. Vermeer: Focuses on circular fashion and Web3.
• Sari Azout: Building a community-curated search engine.

Directories:

• Cold Email Templates: A collection of 250+ cold email templates from Hunter.
• Startup Stash: Directory of tools and resources for startups and founders.
• Love Curated: A network of inspiration websites.
• Community OS: Resources on building communities.
• Landing Page Checklist: Landing page builders, tools, and resources.
• Founder Resources: Content and templates for your startup.

Newsletters:

• Trends.vc: New markets and ideas.
• Farnam Street: Timeless lessons to help you think better.
• The 3-2-1 Newsletter: Three short ideas, two quotes, and one question.
• TLDR: "Byte-sized" news in startups, tech, and programming.
• Flow State: Recommends two hours of non-verbal music every weekday.

Predictions

• Community-curation platforms will help crowdsource research. Startupy highlights topics such as Web3, DAOs, and the creator economy. Column highlights topics such as history, mental models, and economics. Yup is a social network for curators.
• Curated commerce will help brands stand out in commoditized markets. Butcher Box is a meat delivery service with curated boxes. Craft Beer Club membership offers 12 beers each month. Thingtesting helps you find new DTC brands.
• Indie hacking will increase, with more launches of curated digital products. SaaSFrame generated ~$14K with SaaS marketing inspiration resources. Xavier Coiffard made $25K with Spread the World and UserBooster. Patricia Mou reached $5K ARR in one week with Rabbit Holes.

Opportunities

• Use no-code tools to build directories. Startup Cemetery is built on Webflow. LetterHunt and Toolmeup are built on Airtable. Side Hustle Stack and MindVault are built on Notion.
• Build curated products for high-value B2B use cases. Crunchbase is a private company data platform. Nexis is a collection of business news and resources. Newsletter Spy is a database of 100K+ newsletters.
• Use programmatic curation to build products. Qrator uses Craftar to find and share the best of Hacker News. GummySearch scrapes Reddit to help you find ideas and leads. Exploding Topics uses keyword research to find fast-growing topics.
• Curate resources to use as growth tools. Startuply lists 2K+ Slack communities. Snov.io has an email finder.

Risks

• Uniformity: As curation becomes more popular, the value of differentiation (even for its own sake) goes up.
• Bias: By definition, curation is biased. Beware of blindspots. Reference multiple curators if you rely on curation.

Key lessons

• Time is your most valuable asset. Unlike money, it's nonrenewable.
• The more creators we have, the more curators we need. The value of curation increases with options.

Hot takes

• Automated curation will not replace human curators. Despite Skyscanner's powerful algorithms, Jack's Flight Club has 1.5M+ members and ~$800K in revenue.
• Curation is most effective when done by personal brands. See Oprah's Favorite Things.

Haters

"Curation is biased."

This is a feature, not a bug. Curators exercise judgment in what to include and exclude. Those who follow curators should take this into account. Consult multiple sources to reduce blindspots.

"Everyone has free access to quality information."

The value of curation lies in accuracy, ease of access, and trust. Most information can be found for free, but time is our most valuable resource.

"I'm not an expert."

That's even better. Curation helps you document and accelerate your learning process. You can help newcomers without having the curse of knowledge.

Links

• Who should we talk to about Curation-as-a-Service? The tweet behind this report.
• The Case for Curation-as-a-Service: Jeremy Brown coined CaaS in 2014.
• The GAP by Ira Glass: A timeless piece on taste and patience.

Related reports

• Digital Products: Curated resources are packaged and sold as digital products.
• No-Code: No-Code tools help you build directories fast.
• Personal Brands: Curated content is backed by personal brands.