Let’s keep this reporting philosophy simple, for a few key reasons.
1. It should be simple so it’s easy to stick to.
2. I would love for you to know how we’re trying to do something different and see if we’re a match.
3. I have no idea if anyone is reading a page like this.
We don’t share data from leaked internal memos.
Sharing data where we have to say “according to leaked internal memos” is not us.
People should be happy we’re talking about them — not scared about what we might find.
Our focus is digital-first businesses, rather than offline services with an online element.
We cover digital-first brands that you or I have a chance to build, no matter where we are in the world.
There are countless successful businesses covering offline companies or those in fields that typically require venture capital (e.g. hardware devices).
That simply isn’t our focus. We want to cover Airbnb over Hilton hotels. Autoblog.com over Tesla.
There may be a handful of exceptions included over time, such as brands that were successful offline in retail, but now need to make the shift to eCommerce. They still may have offline stores, but see eCommerce as increasingly important and will become their primary form of generating revenue.
For the most part, we trust the revenue numbers people share.
If someone has spent years being open about their online projects and challenges faced along the way, we’ll likely trust them when it comes to posting about their revenue.
We’re very unlikely to share the numbers of anyone with a 2024 Twitter account with a course link in their bio. (We have no problem with courses – some of the most successful people in the world shares their insights in Ted talks, on Masterclass, etc. – but you’ve likely seen some questionable claims).
Even public companies have been caught for inaccurate reporting, so there’s no way to ever be perfect here, but we’ll do our best.
We’ll always make it clear when a source of revenue is from that person themselves, so you can come to your own conclusions.
Industry reports start with lower revenue numbers which increase as you scroll
When originally creating the first version of Gaps more than 10 years ago, which was called ‘VIP Niche Ideas’, I wanted to share success stories that individuals and small teams could be inspired by and relate to.
It’s cool knowing how much money Ebay or Amazon make, but it’s not likely you’re going to try and dethrone them any time soon.
That said, there are times when it makes a lot of sense for us to cover the success of a company like Ebay, especially in regards to how Google is treating them and how search traffic might impact their revenue.
For that reason, each report starts with the smallest – more relatable – revenue numbers first, and increases as you scroll through a page.
You can see this in action on our reports covering Travel, Real Estate and so on.
There’s likely some positive element for us here, where people are likely to stay on a page for longer, but it’s how we would want to a read a report like those we share and hope it’s the same for you.
Finally, the ‘Like’ count you see on every industry report is from the page itself, while monthly reports which we attempt to share around the web will include like counts from X & LinkedIn. Since we sometimes run Facebook ads, we will not include those numbers.
Admittedly, companies which have raised money are not necessarily success stories, but…
Most reports on Gaps will have the words “success stories” in their headline. Following that, we’ll also likely include companies which have raised funding. The act of raising money doesn’t necessarily mean a company is successful, of course.
However, it does imply they have an idea interesting enough (and were able to pitch it well enough) for people to believe in its potential.
Companies that have raised money are often interesting to follow to see things like:
- How quickly they can pick up search traffic
- What kind of keywords they target with blog posts
- Which platforms (e.g. LInkedIn, Instagram) they focus on the most
And so on.
The images assigned to monthly reports have meaning.
Whenever you’re trying to define a content business, one thing you have to consider is the type of images you use on posts and pages.
Will you use AI? Custom illustrations? Stock photos? Your own photos? Perhaps forgo images.
On our sister site, Detailed.com, we do something pretty different where we take actual office photos from successful startups and overlay our 3D mascot on top of them. They end up looking something like this:
This same approach – office buildings of successful startups – would have worked here as well, but we wanted to do something different.
Since one of the things we love about Gaps is documenting businesses which could technically have been founded anywhere in the world, we want to highlight the cities where startups came from.
We want to cover places like:
- Perth, Australia 🇦🇺 (home of Canva)
- Massachusetts, United States 🇺🇸 (home of HubSpot)
- San Francisco, California 🇺🇸(home of Nerdwallet)
I think we have a pretty unique way of being able to show these off, so once they’re finished, I’ll update this page.
We don’t use AI in our writing.
As things currently stand, we have not used AI in creating any of the content on this website, and nor do we have any plans to.
It is certainly possible that AI content creation will get to the level where it’s good enough to use in our reports, but I like to think there’s still enough originality in human creativity that we can do something special without it.
All revenue sources will be referenced properly.
In the vast majority of cases, revenue sources are things we’ve sourced from interviews, blog posts and social media updates from the companies in question. Many of them are also public companies and share updates each quarter.
When that is not the case, we’re more than happy to give credit where it’s due, to places like the Financial Times and Inc. And of course, it’s the right thing to do.
We’re currently putting the finishing touches on this, so you’ll see all reference links next to the changelog in each report.
We care about how we present our data and hope it shows (even if it’s not your taste)
I know I’m a little bit strange but I absolutely love the isometric city graphics we use on our monthly income reports.
They’re created uniquely for Gaps, and aim to represent how much we love that you can build a business from anywhere.
I like to think I can come up with a lot of good design ideas myself (even if I am always looking to improve them) but also had a lot of inspiration from the likes of Dribbbble, OnePageLove, Awwwards and other similar sources during the design process.
I specifically want to give a shoutout to Next.js whose website previously had a “block” letter style graphic to introduce their 2024 conference. I believe it was only temporary but I instantly fell in love with it and wanted to use a similar style for our in-depth industry reports. (Not for our monthly reports).
I made sure to reach out to them, but right now I view them as a placeholder to be improved upon. Their version is much better than my own, but with anything online I want to add my own twist to it, so I’ll either get them redone professionally and / or continue to add to it, like add some mini elements inside the blocks, and so on.
I don’t think that design will be for everyone, but when you only get a split second to give someone a chance to give you a chance, I think they might stop people in their tracks.
We’re going to share the revenues of one of our side projects
While we only report what others share in the open, it’s only right we share some of our own project revenues as well.
I have a one-hour per day side project that might inspire some people, so plan to start reporting on that in future months.
