Saturday Trendspotting Special: AI hiring, podcasts, and more

Welcome back, Superhuman

It’s Saturday, which can only mean one thing: It’s time to find your next big idea. Today we’re uncovering new trends in talent recruitment, podcasts, and tipping culture, to show you how you can ride the next big wave.

P.S. This is my final experimental Trendspotting email. If you like this email and want me to continue it, let me know in the poll at the bottom of this email.

MEDIA

There’s still time to start and grow a podcast

The Trend: This trend comes freshly baked from the Superhuman oven. We launched a podcast a couple of months ago and within the first week, we hit the top 25 on the Tech charts in the US with just over a thousand downloads. Charts are usually based on week-over-week growth rather than absolute downloads, but it goes to show there’s still plenty of room to grow a new podcast.

The Opportunity: As traditional media continues its decline and audiences shift to individual creators like Alex Cooper, Kylie Kelce, and Joe Rogan to get their content, the podcast market is set to hit $130.6 billion by 2030, according to Grand View Research. It’s probably why everyone from US presidents to Tech CEOs is hitting the podcast circuit as part of their overall media strategy. The doors that this trend opens up for entrepreneurs are three-fold:

• Identify a specific niche and start an independent podcast geared at that audience

• Enter the podcast production space by creating tools or an agency for podcast recording and editing

• Start a podcast marketing and advertising service to help podcasts monetize their content

But it’s not as easy as it sounds. Podcasts are harder to grow compared to other formats. On a platform like Instagram, you can get friends to share your content or pay to boost it. But there’s no equivalent for podcasts. This means you have to get creative. The best growth hack we’ve seen is to convert your podcast video into short-form video and post it to social media channels with a link to the episode.

Where To Start: Our tech stack for recording our podcast:

• Riverside for recording an episode

• Shure mv7 mic to record audio

• iPhone camera to record the video

• A simple $50 key light from Amazon for lighting

• Transistor FM to post podcast episodes to different podcast platforms and track analytics

WHAT’S NEXT

The big events prediction markets are forecasting

In case you’re not familiar with prediction markets, think of them like a stock market for guessing future events. People buy and sell shares (basically bets) based on what they think will happen. While not 100% accurate (no one can tell the future for certain), they offer a glimpse into what the market thinks will unfold in the coming weeks and months.

Here are the top predictions we found this week:

• The markets think there’s a 1 in 4 chance that Musk will launch a manned mission to Mars before 2030.

• 63% of predictors are betting on EVs to make up more than 50% of the total automobile market share by 2030.

• Despite much noise, the market thinks there’s only a 13% chance that Alphabet will be forced to sell its Chrome browser next year.

• Spirit Airlines may get a new CEO in 2025, according to 63% of predictors.

• With Elon Musk and Microsoft turning up the heat, the market is giving OpenAI a 30% chance that they’ll be able to turn for-profit before April 2025.

AI

AI tools are changing how people find jobs (and how companies hire them)

The Trend: Building a winning business starts with hiring the right people. Companies like Unilever and L'Oréal are pouring millions of dollars into AI-driven tools — ranging from apps that can go through mountains of resumes in minutes to full-fledged interviewing platforms that track verbal and non-verbal cues to find out whether a candidate is cut out for the job. With AI handling most of the grunt work, companies are able to land top-tier talent while slashing costs and time.

But it’s not just businesses taking advantage of AI. Applicants are also using a host of AI tools — from ChatGPT to more specific ones like Rezi AI and Teal — to help them craft better resumes and help them prepare for the interview process. A little while back, a Redditor went viral after he claimed that he landed 50 job interviews using an AI tool.

The Opportunity: The demand for AI hiring and job-seeking tools is exploding, and the market is set to soar — expected to hit $1.12 billion by 2030. With 68% of companies reporting a growing role for AI in recruitment, the stage is set nicely for entrepreneurs to tap into the pent-up demand and build niche AI tools targeted at specific hiring headaches—think diversity hiring or high-volume recruitment cycles.

But watch out. AI is prone to algorithmic biases and ethical faults. Amazon famously had to abandon its experimental AI recruitment tool which was found to discriminate against women. But AI training has come a long way since then, and though such errors are still possible, there is no time like the present to start experimenting.

Where To Start: With new AI model features being rolled out by companies every few months, there’s a technological wave that builders can tap into to build new products. For example, OpenAI recently announced access to speech functionality through their API, which can understand speech and reply in a natural voice.

With most AI job products focused on text-based tasks like resume improvement, there’s a gap for voice-based AI products that can help applicants prepare for interviews. While the speech API is currently quite expensive, prices are expected to drop in the coming months and now is a great time to start experimenting.

CULTURE

Americans are tipping more today than ever before

The Trend: When your tipping habits are taught in college classrooms as an economic phenomenon, it’s a good sign that there’s a trend afoot. American tipping culture, or "tipflation” as it’s known across the US, has got more than 72% of Americans saying they’re being asked to tip more frequently today than five years ago (see the chart above).

Here's the problem. A quick web search pulls up plenty of articles - from the Guardian to the Telegraph - griping about the “tipflation” tide sweeping the US, and how consumers and businesses are struggling to keep up. Only 34% of Americans say they feel confident knowing when to tip, and just 33% feel sure about how much. Businesses don’t have it easy either, trying to keep track of the tips coming in and redistributing them among the employees fairly.

The Opportunity: The potential for streamlined, transparent tipping is huge—and it’s still up for grabs. There’s a massive gap in the market for digital tipping platforms that offer cashless options like QR codes and mobile payments to help consumers and businesses keep track of their money. The platforms can offer real-time insights on when and how much to tip, plus the ability to compare tipping practices across different spots.

For businesses, the opportunity is just as big. The field is open for building tipping management solutions that not only help businesses manage tips in accordance with labor laws, but to create transparency for employees as well on how much is collected in tips and how it’s distributed.

Considerations: Tax rules around tipping are a nightmare, and they aren’t expected to go away anytime soon if prediction markets are to be believed. Navigating the complex legal landscape surrounding taxes goes a long way in maintaining business integrity and keeping legal fees on the down low.

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Until next time,

Zain and the Superhuman AI team