🗞 What's New: The first AI with emotional intelligence

Hume AI is the first AI with emotional intelligence:

• Here's the business opportunity: Build educational tools, improve LLM interfaces, or make games better with emotionally intelligent characters.
• If you're feeling overwhelmed by all your tasks, these time management tips can help. Focus on quality when setting your goals.
• 5K users, 30M+ visitors, and revenue. Bernhard Hauser and William Paul met through Indie Hackers, and went in together on an acquisition.

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from the Trends.vc newsletter

Welcome to your MetaTrends Report, a guide to help you navigate the five forces shaping our world.

In each issue, we look at the most important events and new opportunities, through the lens of the Five Forces Framework. It's built on recurring themes discovered through over 5K hours of research for 100+ Trends Reports.

The Five Forces

1. Individual leverage: The increasing power of individuals to impact the world. See our reports on AI Agents, No-Code, and Million-Dollar, One-Person Businesses.

2. Permissionless innovation: The erosion of barriers to entry, allowing anyone to build and share ideas. See our reports on Paid Podcasts, The Creator Economy, and Self-Publishing.

3. Specialization: The growing importance of niche expertise and targeted solutions. See our reports on Micro-SaaS, Micro-Marketplaces, and Audience-First Products.

4. Centralization: The consolidation of power and control by platforms and institutions. See our reports on Programmatic SEO, YouTube Channels, and Faceless Social Media Accounts.

5. Decentralization: The shift towards distributed systems and technologies that empower individuals. See our reports on Open-Source AI, DAOs, and Decentralized Finance.

Hume AI

The facts:

Hume AI is a research lab focused on building emotionally intelligent AI. It detects vocal expressions to sense emotions, including amusement, desire, and disgust.

The opportunities:

• Build educational tools: Use APIs, like Hume, to detect confusion and confidence. Use the data to personalize education. You can imagine "passive learning" by integrating with a Loom-like tool. It would share suggestions to speakers when you record an async video.

• Improve LLM interfaces: If you've used voice chat with ChatGPT, you've seen how easy it is to have long talks when you don't have to type. What if third-party apps like TypingMind detected emotions? They could pass this as metadata to improve responses.

• Make dynamic mental health apps: If AI can persuade conspiracy believers that they are wrong, it can help you break bad habits. Last week, we featured an AI therapist app that works based on transcribed words. What if underlying emotions were also detected?

• Make better games with emotionally intelligent characters: NVIDIA showed a feature with dynamic non-player characters (NPCs). This seems like a glimpse into the future, with smart characters and dynamic storylines.

• Improve customer service: AI is being deployed to provide scalable customer service. Now, we can enhance these systems to detect and respond based on the emotional states of humans.

• Build emotionally intelligent robots: We're in the robotics renaissance. The robots will be emotionally intelligent and have empathetic interactions with humans. This will lead to new opportunities in healthcare, companionship, and elderly care.

Haters

"The desire for things like lie detection can lead to privacy concerns."

The idea of our innermost feelings being monitored without consent is unsettling. We lie for a reason, and it's unsettling when an algorithm exposes us as a liar. This is a reminder that technology is a superpower. As with any superpower, individuals can use it for good or evil purposes.

"Surveillance states can use this to enhance tracking of individuals."

We've seen cases of mass surveillance revealed. Nation-states are often the first to use centralizing technology. This ship may have already sailed, so this also shows the need for privacy-preserving technology. This includes end-to-end encryption and zero-knowledge proofs.

Become a Trends Pro Member, or get the next free Trends.vc report here.

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from the Trendy Software Ideas newsletter

📰 LinkedIn is rolling out sponsored newsletters.

💰 Get MRR in days by building your SaaS with AI. #ad

🧑‍🏫 Designing a successful re-skilling program.

💻 Eight SEO strategies that actually still work in 2024.

📹 Instagram is sticking to focusing on short videos.

📀 Redbox is officially over.

Check out Trendy Software Ideas to discover more software ideas inspired by recent news.

by Martin Baun

These tips can help you manage your time!

Habit stacking

Habit stacking helps you handle multiple things at the same time. Habit stacking places symbiotic tasks together, allowing you to multitask efficiently.

One of my favorite habit stacks is having coffee as I handle deadlines and administrative duties for my remote team. I enjoy my morning coffee, then log into meetings with a big smile.

Time blocking

Time blocking is a simple, efficient way to manage time, prioritize tasks, and prevent procrastination. It forces you to be accountable for how you spend your time, and can also reveal bad habits that you have.

With time blocking, you focus on one task at a time. Create to-do lists for each day and week, and plan them out in specific time blocks. Time blocks force you to use time efficiently, since you only have a specific amount of time for each task.

The Pareto Principle

The Pareto Principle challenges you to decipher which tasks produce the best results. Completing these tasks first tends to produce the best outcome.

With the Pareto Principle, you determine which 20% of tasks produce 80% of your results. You can divide these tasks based on their importance, then break them into smaller sections.

Eliminate distractions

Plan your day with a manageable amount of tasks. We often overestimate our capabilities, then become frustrated when things don't work.

Set realistic, achievable goals, including enough time for rest.

The Starting Principle

The Starting Principle deciphers whether a task is achievable in your current mental state. It is excellent for tasks that you aren't looking forward to. Give yourself a short amount of time to work on that task, then, at the end of that time, determine whether you want to continue or not. Personally, I stop doing it if my view on it hasn't changed.

The Starting Principle prevents you from spending time forcing yourself to complete a task. If you prioritize quality in everything you do, forcing yourself to complete a task you don't want to do is counterproductive; it may reduce the quality of your work.

Wrapping up

Mastering time management is a gradual process. It takes discipline and commitment! Use these tips to make it easier to build sustainable time management processes.

For more thoughts, guides, and insights, visit my blog or my YouTube channel!

Discuss this story.

🛩️ Why I moved to The Netherlands: A startup founder's journey. Posted by Berkay Yavuz.

🛠️ I tried to code an app in Claude 3.5 Sonnet. Posted by Manny.

💵 $3K in revenue in three days: Product Hunt is not dead. Posted by Vatsal.

😔 Being a solo founder is hard. Posted by Avery Hooks.

📚 What you need to know before learning SEO. Posted by Tuiddy.

🎉 $50 MRR milestone! Posted by Nick Kimel.

Want a shout-out in next week's Best of Indie Hackers? Submit an article or link post on Indie Hackers whenever you come across something you think other indie hackers will enjoy.

by Bernhard Hauser

This the story of how two Indie Hackers joined forces through an acquisition to build something greater together!

The acquisition

Back in April, on my birthday, William Paul and I finalized the acquisition of Pxl, a short link, QR code, and link-in-bio page builder for marketers.

I initially found the "for sale" listing for Pxl on Acquire, one of the most relevant marketplaces for buying and selling software businesses. The acquisition was straightforward, with a purchase price just under $50K, including a seller financing model.

I can say that the process was really smooth and transparent, with the founder providing all necessary documents promptly.

At this point, Pxl already had over 5K users, 30M+ visits, and revenue, through a mix of both one-time and recurring payments.

The major goal for this year is to grow recurring revenue and be less dependent on lifetime deals (LTDs), which were used to fund the development of Pxl for over a year.

After the acquisition

After acquiring Pxl, we prioritized three tasks right away:

1. Collecting feedback from existing customers: Since I was new to this market segment, I heavily relied on customer feedback to understand which features we needed to work on next. Existing users really love Pxl! It's rated 4.8 stars on Capterra and Product Hunt, so I was sure that the feedback would be honest.

2. Creating an admin dashboard: Understanding user interactions is crucial. We implemented a simple, effective admin dashboard to track key metrics, helping us identify opportunities to improve the signup-to-paid conversion rate. One time, I broke the signup process, and only discovered the issue thanks to the admin dashboard!

3. Adding social proof: Leveraging Pxl's satisfied user base, I introduced social proof across various touchpoints. This builds trust by showcasing the product's value through real user feedback.

What's next

We're focusing on enhancing our product strategy (based on customer feedback), investing in SEO and partnerships, and refining the pricing model. We're also prioritizing automation to streamline operations.

We identified a small growth hack during due diligence that could increase signups significantly, with minimal effort. I will share more about this, and other developments, soon!

Collaboration and growth

From the start, it was clear that William and I shared a similar work ethic and vision.

This collaboration really shows the power of the Indie Hackers community. As we move forward, I'm confident that our combined efforts will enhance Pxl, and serve as a blueprint for future collaborations in the Indie Hackers community!

I share behind-the-scenes insights every two weeks over on my site. Check it out if you're interested!

Discuss this story.

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 Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Dru Riley, Darko, Martin Baun, and Bernhard Hauser for contributing posts. —Channing