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by framschwartz 2510 days ago
Hey everyone, founder here. A few friends and I built Glimpse to surface trending topics - companies, products, industries, everything - and we send out curated trend reports via email.

The way it works is we first capture nearly every topic online, then we look at frequency of discussion, searches, shares, etc. around each topic. Beyond just the growth in frequency, our software looks for indicators that a trend is organic and has more room to grow, as it’s important that we surface trends not fads.

There are plenty of tools that help you dive deep on a new trend you’ve heard of, but the problem is you need to have already heard about the trend. This is what we’re solving for - exposure to the unknown unknowns.

As an example, SheIn is growing on Google Trends, but when you compare that to popularity on other sites like Reddit and Twitter, you realize that the large majority of search traffic is driven by people googling after they see an ad.

Surprisingly, nearly all our engineering energy goes into filtering out the noise. Even after this, there’s a good deal of manual work. We’ve found that most of our users don’t want to do this themselves through a tool - they want the insights packaged and delivered, and we think it’s important to provide high quality trends that aren’t biased by data.

While Glimpse started as a way for us to figure out which products we could build and sell online, we realized how helpful it is for founders, investors, product people and marketers to constantly see how consumer behavior, marketing, and products are evolving so they can better do their jobs.

Would love feedback!

12 comments

Hi there! As the former head of product for a tool in a related space, I'm curious how you're handling the high data costs involved in building these businesses?
GREAT JOB!

Launching something new is always hard and I'm happy for you.

I would look at: https://scottscheapflights.com/

They have a similar business model to your product, and I think they do a great job balancing free and paid.

Another great model for what you're doing is: https://www.instagram.com/chartrdaily/?hl=en

Personally, I think you guys are trying to upsell too early. I would hide the upsell more and focus more on converting subscribers and delivering more value up front.

Congratulations!

We built a similar product:

https://projectpiglet.com/

Except it appears we do filtering very differently. Our system also suggests points to enter and leave a given asset based on the information.

It’s a pretty hard and crowded space. Feel free to look at some of my repos and blog posts, might shed some light on how to improve your system. Although your UI/UX is far superior

Maybe I do not understand something about your system (or how all of this is supposed to work). When I view companies/dashboards/the buy/sell and stock price screen, lots of data is from June? Some of the charts for a company show current information, but the top chart always stops at June? Is this right?
Just signed up for your product, it's very relevant to my current problem-space.
Where is your track record?
Sorry, but this is not a track record...
Would be helpful to see a sample report (even a non-current one) before signing up.
The paid plans all come with past reports - If you'd like me to send you one, put your email below and I'll send one over!
Why not put it in your marketing material as a sample? Seems strange to make me jump through hoops just to see what I'd be signing up for.
Hi, do you track HN frontpage too? Glimpse sounds good, at the moment I use https://trennd.co, glad to see you are both building interesting solutions.
I absolutely love what you're doing.

I'd love the subscribe. But most buttons don't work on your homepage!

Also, I'd love the check the pricing - but can't for the same reason.

> I'd love the check the pricing

$0/mo | Every month | 2 Exponential Trends

$29/mo | Every month | 7 Exponential Trends | 3 Exponential+ Trends | Before-It-Happens alerts | Get last 2 reports on signup | Insights for each trend

$479/mo | Every month | 10 Exponential Trends | 5 Exponential+ Trends | Before-It-Happens alerts | Get last 3 reports on signup | Insights for each trend | Add your team members

I guess they decided to follow their datasets and offer exponential pricing as well!
Oh no! Try turning off your ad blockers? If that doesn't work, shoot me an email at noah@meetglimpse.com and I'll make sure you get set up!
Works for me with Firefox Nightly, Ublock Origin + Privacy Badger on Ubuntu.
Looks fantastic, and very good to hear (related to my neuroscience courses in college) that you found filtering to be a primary issue -- you're on to something.

At first glance, the subscriptions seem to offer certain numbers of new trends. Is there a way to say that we're looking for new trends in some type of topic, vs whatever trends come up in your general scan? (feel free to tell me to read further if I've missed something)

Looks very cool - thanks!

Congratulations for the product launch!

I'd suggest a trial period before commitment - free plan doesn't seem to have enough included to make opinion about your product and decide which option to go with later.

2 weeks trial on each plan would be enough I believe.

Anyways, good luck to you!

Hi! Thanks for sharing. I would love to know what an 'Exponential+ Trend' is. It's no clear from the landing page and I can't find any links to more information about this. Congrats!
Hi Aaron! We define an Exponential+ Trend just as one that is growing much faster than normal. We used to call these "Hyper Growth Trends" but we tested and found that Exponential+ was more clear.
Isn't that mathematically exponential, just with a larger base?
I really like the idea. It is like an aggregator of internet trends on different topics. I can imagine many use cases where it is helpful. (Not just marketing and PR.)

I checked your site but didn't get if you can search those trends by keywords. My area is quite niche so going throught the list of topics can take quite a long time.

Hi, I subscribed then invited friends and colleagues to get more trends, they subscribed, but nothing happened.
>and we send out curated trend reports via email.

I'm out.

You're replying directly to the founder. Maybe try to be a little more constructive?
I'm in the same boat -- stop sending me emails. If your tool is based on email, I'm not going to use it.

Why does it matter that the comment is directed at the founder? No sense in screaming at a customer service rep to change company vision/direction/policy.

So, assuming you're interested receiving these reports, how do you propose they send them to you then?

SMS? Fax? PDF printed and sent via snail mail? Facebook Message? Randomly logging in to their website to check if a new report is out?

I always hear people complain about how many emails they get but I never understand it. I guess most people just passively give out their email address to everybody and are surprised when it gets out of hand. If you use apple mail the unsubscribe button is at the very top of every email.

I viciously unsubscribe to anything I don't want, and because of this, email is my preferred method of accessing content on the internet. No crazy JS, no pop up ads, no loading 50 different trackers, no social media viral outrage, just a self-curated stream of content I want.

RSS feed?
API?
Sorry I thought it was obvious. I don't want to receive any more emails. I just want to go to a website to view information.