Here are some resources I follow personally and find extremely useful. They help me researching digital product trends.
📦 Product Trends
trends.vc 🥇
A curated list of product trends. It's basically what my whole site is about, but more mature and useful. Imagine you've hired an expensive product manager/researcher to work for you full-time and report you about what matters, with examples, success stories, and predictions. And you get it for free (there is a paid version, but even a free one is super powerful).
Here's some random issues to get you started
My First Million Podcast by The Hustle
Get insights from entrepreneurs and investors. Hosted by Sam Parr.
Besides the hosts (who are entrepreneurs and investors themselves) The Hustle maintains one of the largest and highly engaged entrepreneur communities out there — Trends (don't confuse with trends.vc). That's makes this podcast special and an easy way to get big insights.
Note: The Hustle was recently acquired by HubSpot. Hope it won't add a mess to the communities. The deal is pretty remarkable — a hugely profitable business buys a media company focused on building high-quality entrepreneur communities.
MicroAquire
Startup acquisition marketplace.
MicroAquire is pretty new to the market, but it's a gold mine. You can learn what metrics do matter for investors, see data and metrics of other products and their asking price.
Founded by Andrew Gazdecki who went through acquisition himself multiple times. BTW he builds in public on LinkedIn and you can follow him for good insights.
MakerPad
For those who obsessed with no-code (it looks like everyone today).
You'll find applied use-cases of no-code tools, the directory of tools, articles, and more. I believe the "no-code" term will just disappear one day — once all the tools apply it there's no need for a separate term. So treat it just as a community-curated directory of products to follow. BTW the community there is pretty engaged and qualified.
Note: Just a few days after I launch this website MakerPad was acquired by Zapier. See correlation with TheHustle story here?
G2 and Capterra
You likely saw these services multiple times yourself.
They're great resources to compare competitors of any tool prior to you bought it or even tried a trial. But often I see that product managers choose some tool just because they liked the marketing website, without getting too much into details first.
If you're building a product with well-known established market leaders, I'd recommend going through the user's written reviews — it can give you a lot of clues of what people actually like and dislike in products (though naturally, people tend to describe what they don't like more).
G2 Crowd offers G2 Grid feature, an amazing tool for market research. ex. Here's a grid for Digital Marketing.
ProductHunt
It's probably a bit stupid to place such a big name on the list like this, but yet — I still found it very useful for product trends researching. Just open it once a day for 15 minutes and check recent releases. You'll get the feeling of trending verticals, UI/UX ideas; explore new domains you haven't heard of, research their competitors and expand your toolset.
💡 Many products there are very immature. If you're open enough — connect with their makers directly to appreciate their work and expand your network with talented people.
People and blogs to follow
- Greg Isenberg. Blog, Twitter.
- Peep Laja. LinkedIn, Twitter
- Aleksandr Volodarsky. Blog, Twitter
- David Spinks. Twitter
- Fibery Blog
🤓 Engineering trends
ThoughtWorks Technology Radar
A list of technologies, architectural approaches divided into categories by 'ready-for-production' level. You'll find well-established and proven technologies, you'll find what's trending, you'll see what you should test or use with caution.
The list updated twice a year, so you can see how tools and approaches evolve, mature or die.
It's a must-have bookmark for CTOs and engineers.
P.S. It's so pleasant to see how the tools we use in production for some time in Paralect reach the Adopt level.
StackShare
Surprisingly I don't see StackShare referred often, but it's a pretty mature and useful resource. On the very top — it's a list of technologies and tools.
But here how you use it:
- Discover what tech is used by known companies, ex. Spotify, Airbnb, Uber (and Paralect).
- Understanding how popular some tool is, browse its competitors, compare them (ex. check MongoDB or Hotjar). Yes, you can find comparisons on G2, but StackShare has a smaller and more qualified community so comparisons and reviews are often more valuable.
- See the opinion on technologies from companies. Ask for help to choose some tech (it's like stackoverflow for product managers).
- Subscribe to emails to see what technology is trending now
- Get leads from technologies added to your company stack. We've got some from the Webflow and Airtable pages (open to see Paralect listed first in companies).
Now check how my Product Stack recommendation is look like, based on experience and constant research I'm doing.