🗞 What's New: Pinterest TV's $20M creator fund

Pinterest has officially launched Pinterest TV:

• Pinterest TV allows founders to host live shopping shows where users can purchase products directly from the platform. Pinterest is dishing out $20 million to content creators to jumpstart the program.
• Satellite imagery is now affordable enough to be used by small businesses, particularly to gather data about the origins of consumer products. Here's how founders can skyrocket up, up, and away!
• Founder Dashiell Bark-Huss hit $2,900 in monthly revenue with her creator gift platform, WishTender. She shares more about the unique challenges of building for users in the adult industry, including her ongoing battle with social media shadow bans.

Want to share something with nearly 85,000 indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing

🤑 Pinterest TV's $20M Creator Fund

from the Indie Economy newsletter by Bobby Burch

Pinterest recently launched Pinterest TV, offering founders and creators the ability to host a series of live shopping shows on the visual discovery platform.

Shop 'til you drop

The news: Pinterest is diving deeper into the creator economy with Pinterest TV, allowing its creators to showcase and tag products for users to shop and purchase on the retailer’s site. Starting on November 8, episodes will air in the US on Mondays through Fridays, available on iOS and Android devices. Click the TV icon in the upper left corner of the Pinterest app to view episodes and interact with hosts.

How it works: Pinterest TV will open creators up to the platform’s 454M global users, enabling hosts to demo and sell products via its shopping tools. Pinterest TV will allow sellers to feature their products on a “product drawer” that will display prices, product details, and brand collaborations. Similar to conventional broadcast shopping shows (QVC, anyone?), Pinterest TV shows will display the remaining quantity of any given item and feature limited time offers to provide discounts for customers.

Backstage support: Pinterest will work directly with hosts to help develop their shows before they go live, as well as provide audio/visual support. Pinterest reports that some of the creators who piloted the program have more than doubled their followings after hosting live episodes. Live episodes last 30 minutes each.

Applications: If you’re interested in pitching your idea to Pinterest, you can apply via this link.

Early collabs: Pinterest TV is focusing on its top creators to start, and has already partnered with the likes of fashion designer Christian Siriano, screenwriter Monica Suriyage, beauty founder Manny MUA, and others.

Pin it

What it means: Pinterest TV represents the next phase of an evolution that the company has been working on for years. Video capabilities are core to every major social network, and Pinterest has consistently lagged behind TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook. Pinterest’s new offering aims to capitalize on, not only shifting consumer behavior, but also the growing $100B creator economy.

Creator rewards: To incentivize video creation, Pinterest announced that it will dish out $20M to creators who generate “inspirational” content. Pinterest also recently debuted a TikTok-inspired feature called “Takes” that allows users to tag products in their Idea Pins. The San Francisco-based firm hopes that the move will make its content more shoppable.

Background: Consumers are increasingly being persuaded by influencer and celebrity endorsements. As a result, companies are expected to spend about $13.8B on influencer marketing in 2021, up from $9.7B in 2020.

Proven predictor: Pinterest has a knack for predicting trends before they’re popular. About 80% of the trends in the annual Pinterest Predicts report continued to climb throughout 2021, including athflow, skinimalism, and “vibey lights.”

PayPal punts: Rumors that PayPal planned to buy Pinterest for $45B have cooled. PayPal stakeholders balked at the prospect, prompting the company to affirm that it isn't pursuing an acquisition of Pinterest. The deal would’ve been one of the largest consumer internet acquisitions in a decade.

Do you use Pinterest? Share your experience in the comments!

Subscribe to Indie Economy for more.

📰 In the News

from the Volv newsletter by Priyanka Vazirani

🧾 Small businesses are making serious sales with this new TikTok feature.

🌌 Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt argues that the Metaverse "isn't necessarily the best thing for society."

💻 Photoshop will be launching a "prepare as NFT" option soon.

🦾 The author of Sapiens says that human beings are going to be hacked by AI.

👄 Sex breaks are now the new lunch breaks.

Check out Volv for more 9-second news digests.

🚀 The Satellite Imagery Industry

from the Hustle Newsletter by The Trends Team

The Signal: Satellite data is more available than ever before, and there are tons of ways to use it.

As we mentioned in this Sunday story, reusable rockets, miniaturized satellite technology, and the privatization of space industries have fueled a satellite boom.

In the next 10 years, the number of active satellites in orbit could rise from 4K+ to 50K.

54% of satellites are now launched for commercial use, and ~25% are dedicated to observing Earth.

The quality and frequency of satellite images of Earth have increased rapidly in recent years. Industry leader Planet captures 1.2M images a day, covering the whole world. Its highest-resolution images can capture details as small as a shoebox.

Satellite imagery is now affordable enough to be used by small businesses, and apps for that data are popping up in all sorts of industries.

Opportunities: You don't need to be SpaceX or Boeing to get into satellites. Launch services are dominated by a few heavy-hitters, but there are plenty of smaller businesses further down the supply chain.

Source: PwC

Some specialize in turning pictures into numbers. RS Metrics counts vehicles in retail parking lots to generate data about economic trends. Earth-i tracks activity at copper smelters to predict commodity prices.

Others use satellite images for their own purposes. A livestock company in New Zealand uses images of its pastures to decide where to graze its cattle. Lawn Love, a California-based platform, uses satellite mapping to provide remote quotations for lawn maintenance.

Satellite images are also used to:

• Monitor pipelines.
• Predict forest fires.
• Track endangered elephants.

Building and launching a satellite is the most inaccessible part of the industry, but other opportunities make this space worth watching.

Until recently, it cost millions to build a satellite and tens of millions to launch it. Now, you can build a satellite for <$600K. Startups like Rocket Labs are building small rockets that can launch nano-satellites for $1.5-2.5M.

Source: Everyday Astronaut

Open Cosmos provides a get-into-space service that covers design, launch, and operation of a satellite from $700K, with a turnaround of less than a year. The firm has raised $7M in funding, and has partnered with the European Space Agency.

Its success exposes demand for services that support the launch industry. Founders could explore:

• Satellite insurance brokerage.
• Mission planning services.
• Operation software.
• Custom component design.

Accessing data: The experts we spoke to say that the process of buying satellite images is not straightforward. Not every provider covers the required area at the required frequency and resolution.

Image brokers exist, but there is an opportunity to build a platform that connects providers to buyers and makes data acquisition painless.

If a satellite isn't covering the desired locations, it can be maneuvered into a new position. One possible model is a satellite rental service that would allow companies to capture custom images without owning a satellite.

Direct to consumer: Consumers are concerned about the origins of their products. Over the past year, 53% of Americans used their buying power to make a positive difference on an issue they care about, and 64% would pay more for sustainable products.

But 74% don't know how to identify sustainable products, and 53% don't trust companies who say their products are sustainable.

Satellites are already used to gather data about the origins of consumer products:

• The EU monitors unsustainable farmland use.
• Global Fishing Watch monitors illegal fishing.
• NASA monitors water pollution.

Startup Trade in Space uses satellites and AI to quantify the coffee in a farmer's field. Blockchain technology is used to add crops to a digital ledger so that every bean can be traced back to the field. This data is used by traders, but it could be of use to consumers.

A platform combining satellite and blockchain technology could show consumers the field of cows where the milk in their coffee originates, what the farmer was paid, and whether child laborers harvested the beans.

Home or commercial property buyers might be interested in data like traffic volumes, availability of street parking, nearby construction projects, and flood risks.

Would you consider going into the satellite space? Share below!

Discuss this story, or subscribe to the Hustle Newsletter for more.

🛠 Building in Public: Go Against the Trend

by Ivan Romanovich

People get tired of trends sometimes. If you have an anti-trend opinion based on your experience, use it to develop credibility.

Discuss this story.

🎁 Dashiell Bark-Huss Hit $2.9K MRR With WishTender

from the Growth & Acquisition Channels newsletter by Darko

Founder Dashiell Bark-Huss launched WishTender, a wishlist platform for content creators. WishTender allows users to receive gifts from their followers safely, without exposing their address. The product caters heavily to the adult industry, where privacy is paramount.

Last week, we covered SaaS for OnlyFans creators as an untapped niche. Dashiell recently hit $2.9K MRR with WishTender by building for a very specific issue.

She sat down with Indie Hackers to discuss her journey, including the unique challenges that come along with building for users in the adult industry.

A quick overview

I taught myself to code while living in a van, with the goal of one day becoming a tech founder. Specifically, I was interested in lucid dream technology.

My current startup, WishTender, has nothing to do with lucid dreaming. But on the side, I work on The Dream Phone, a device created to send messages from within a lucid dream to my computer. In the long term, I hope to focus more on how to bring lucid dreaming to the public.

WishTender is a wishlist for content creators to get gifts from fans. Content creators list items they want, share that wishlist with fans, and fans fund the gifts. The content creators can then use the funds to buy the gifts.

What motivated you to get started?

My friend brought this idea to me. She was a sugar baby at the time. In her case, that meant having email conversations with rich men who would buy her gifts.

She came to me saying that these men were throwing hundreds to thousands of dollars per week at her, but they preferred to give her actual gifts over sending money.

She couldn’t find a safe wishlist that would protect her identity. There was one option, but it was notoriously unreliable. I figured that, instead of mailing the gift, we could just send the wisher the funds to buy the gift. This provides the same experience, but without the logistical issues.

I interviewed other adult industry workers and found that they were also interested in that solution.

What went into building the initial product?

I built it myself, having only taught myself how to code the year prior. I didn’t know how to build a full stack app. I had never worked professionally as a developer, so it took me a year just to make a usable web app. I had to learn a lot of difficult software development ideas that aren’t well documented because they are above most newbie level tutorials.

I could have taken shortcuts to finish a minimum viable product (MVP) sooner. But I was using the opportunity to learn about software development too, not just business.

How have you attracted users?

DMing on Twitter and word-of-mouth.

After launch, my spouse started helping by DMing 60-100 financial dominatrixes every day on Twitter. We discovered that this niche target market likes our product. Most of our DMs get ignored. It’s about a 2-4% response rate. I think it might be higher in other industries.

Because people are always sharing their WishTender wishlists on Twitter, we get users who heard about us that way too. We tried to grow through social media content, but TikTok and Instagram shadow banned our accounts.

On TikTok, our views were growing until our most engaged video got over 8K views and over 840 likes fast. TikTok suddenly removed it for illegal activity, with no clarification on what they were referring to. Ever since that video was removed, all of our videos get zero views and don't show up in hashtag searches.

The shadow bans are mysterious. The platforms don't inform you why you're banned or when it will end. In our case, it might have to do with the hashtags we used or who's following us, since we're interacting with the adult industry.

I'm hoping to get out of the shadow bans and get back to making content. We were just starting to learn how to make content as a brand. I really like these two videos we made: One and two. Unfortunately, we were already shadow banned when we posted them.

On Twitter, we're starting to understand how to tweet from a brand account. Some of my favorite inspirations for brand accounts are Gymshark, Wendy's, and Fast. Additionally, I look at the accounts of businesses that are similar to WishTender. You can find a brand's most engaging tweets by using Twitter's advanced search. Use those tweets to inspire a similar tweet that makes sense for your product.

My users like when WishTender tweets funny thoughts from their perspective. They'll engage with those to show they're part of the group and get the joke. Gymshark does this well. They don't tweet about their products, they tweet their customers' thoughts. Here's a funny tweet from Gymshark that I drew direct inspiration from.

What's your business model?

We charge the gifter 10% on top of the price of the gift. But we make about 4% of that because of Stripe fees. Right now, we're focused on getting more users and building trust to get more transactions.

What challenges do you face by building for adult industry users?

When I launched, I thought that I should have left features out and launched sooner. But then, after users joined specifically for the extra features, I was glad to have included them. Learning to code them after launch would have been hard.

Sometimes, I regret being adjacent to the sex work industry. It has barriers. Businesses don’t want to work with you.

WishTender hosts no adult content, but simply associating with users who are in the adult industry puts a target on our back. There are complications with payment processors, social media, and banks. We got banned on Facebook because we said our wishlist was sex worker friendly. We’re frequently shadow banned on social media, which makes organic growth hard.

The sex workers themselves are a barrier. They need to protect their identities, so it's hard to interview them for customer research, and their clients even more so.

The adult industry is also draining to me because I’m not interested in sex work or porn. I think when you are really interested in your target market or industry, the hard days are easier.

Another area that I question is my choice of revenue model. My business has thin profit margins, meaning that I need to have a lot of users and a lot of transactions to make a profit. This model is rare for an indie hacker project.

Likewise, while we aren't exactly a marketplace, we have both gifters and receivers. We have two different types of users to think about, which is difficult.

Discuss this story, or subscribe to Growth & Acquisition Channels 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, Priyanka Vazirani, Steph Smith, Ivan Romanovich, and Darko for contributing posts. —Channing