While the best approach to be ahead of the curve is to invent a trend, many people dont have the luxury of time from their day job to invent or keep on top of trends within their industry or overall.

While many people are good at observing and keeping their eyes wide open, most people would like “another pair of eyes”.

I interviewed 5 people who spot trends within B2B, Marketing, eCommerce and consumer internet to understand their process. 4 of them now pay for a trend spotting SaaS product.

My initial thesis was that Venture Capitalists and seed investors are more likely to spot trends because they get so much inbound interest.

Turns out, most VC friends were asking me for trends in Platform Engineering, SaaS Control plane and headless eCommerce engines.

If you have the time, the process for following trends is simple:

a) Follow influencers & analysts in the space you are interested in,

b) track Google Trends, Trendsmap (Twitter Trends), Join many Facebook groups, etc. and

c)Subscribe to newsletters, blogs and YouTube content creators.

Unfortunately that takes time as well.

In the last 3-4 years several Trend spotting SaaS websites have started as well.

I wanted to share the 5 most useful trend websites, since each of them focus on specific niches and have their own pros and cons.

1. Exploding Topics: The site has over 15K topics and trends. They do have a few newsletter for 1-3 trends and charge $39 to $299 per month for their Pro Version.

2. Trends.vc: Is a curated newsletter with top topics within a specific niche but is also a community of people (1000+) interested in trends. You can join the community ($299 annual or $99/month).

3. Treendly is similar to Exploding topics, and bills itself as Google trends “on steroids. Pricing starts at $99 per year, but the free version is a good place to start.

4. Trend Hunter is focused on ideas, trends and captures early kickstarter campaigns as well. Pricing starts at $24K per year, so this is focused on the enterprise segment.

5. Trend Watching has a self service tool, called Trend platform, that costs $900+ per month, so it is aimed at the corporate market as well.

Of the 5, I personally like Exploding topics the most. For personal use to track specific topics and areas for our business, the tool does a good job and has sufficient coverage in technology and developer trends.