The Launch: The Hustle Takes on “Trends”
Part 2: The Product
Founded in 2015 as an events company, The Hustle has since evolved to become largely known for its carefully curated content and distinct voice. Now they’re launching a new premium subscription-based product with a Netflix-style approach that allows them to provide high-quality content at an affordable price, alongside events and membership perks. Trends — powered by Piano — was introduced to The Hustle's one million plus readers on June 4 and made its content debut on June 11.
To discuss what went into the launch of Trends, Piano spoke to John Dunkel, lead product manager at The Hustle. While Part 1 looked at their plan, Part 2 takes a deeper view into the product itself and the audience around it.
Piano: With over a million regular readers, you already have a very loyal audience. Do you anticipate the audience for Trends to be a natural extension of that?
John Dunkel: We do. We're lucky that we have a pretty wide-ranging audience. They include business owners and entrepreneurs, but what they have in common is they all want to stay up to date on technology and business news. They find that what we cover is very different than some of our competitors, that the story selection process is much more rigorous and we bring a very unique voice.
Trends has that same theme, we’re just going a level deeper and bringing in deeper analysis. It's a slightly different target audience and, given that it is a subscription service, it's going to be a smaller total base than our daily newsletter reaches. But we're going to give people ideas — either inspiration to start a business or information to expand a business. It’s targeting people that want to do something with the information, where the daily newsletter reaches a lot of people that just want to stay informed and up to date.
Piano: Once you launch, what can users expect in terms of the content flow, and how will you approach that in terms of staffing?
Dunkel: Given that the content goes a bit deeper, the stories will take longer to put together. But we'll still produce several pieces of content a week — including interviews, case studies and well-researched articles.
Trends will have an entirely new team within the company. Over the years, The Hustle has built up a strong editorial process, voice and writing style, and while Trends will have a different voice, it'll still be fun to read. Our Trends team and our editorial team work closely together and collaborate on ideas.
Piano: How are you going to promote Trends? Will you be offering a free or reduced price trial?
Dunkel: We've been exploring different options, and especially working with the Piano platform to see the different capabilities it offers. We have a Facebook group, in The Hustle, called The Ambassadors — if you refer a few of your friends you'll become an Ambassador automatically, and they have their own customized newsletter that's sent every month. So we opened the doors early just for that group, to show them the value of what we're offering — because they tend to not only be our business influencers, but also the really engaged part of our community. We’re excited to include them — and get their feedback — because they're such a core part of what The Hustle is.