Peptides are the new protein powder 💉

Trend of the Week

💉 Peptides are the new protein powder

The research is happening in a lot of bathrooms

Our algorithm picked this one up recently, and once we pulled the numbers it was hard to look away.

The scoreboard: searches for "peptides weight loss" went from 60,500 a month a year ago to 165,000 now. That's 2.7x in twelve months. Two years ago it was 22,200.

And it's not just the headline keyword. Searches for "peptide supply" are up 6x in a year. "Peptide storage" is up 2.7x.

That last one is the tell. Nobody googles "how do I store this" unless it's already sitting in their fridge. People aren't curious about peptides anymore. They own them.

Wait, what's a peptide?

In plain English: a short chain of amino acids that tells your body to do something. Burn fat, heal a tendon, make more collagen. Ozempic is technically one.

The catch: most of what's selling online isn't approved for anything. It ships in a vial with a tiny label that says "for research use only."

Why now?

1. GLP-1s made injecting normal. A few years ago, injecting yourself every week was a diabetic thing. Now it's a "my coworker lost 30 pounds" thing. The next big weight-loss drug, retatrutide, is still in trials, and people are buying it anyway: reported side effects went from 10 in all of 2025 to 26 in the first five months of 2026 (Public Citizen).

2. Washington blinked. In July, an FDA advisory panel narrowly voted to let pharmacies compound BPC-157, TB-500 and a few others, which STAT called a win for RFK Jr. The vote isn't binding and the FDA hasn't ruled yet. But "the government might be cool with this" is rocket fuel for a trend.

3. Influencers are the sales team. Sellers write "research use only" on the vial, then pay affiliates to explain how to inject it. The FDA has sent 14 warning letters to retatrutide sellers since 2024 (Public Citizen). Fourteen. The vibes remain undeterred.

Who's making money

• The new shops: americanpeptides.us had basically zero visitors in March. Now it's at roughly 319,000 a month, according to traffic estimates. rpeptide.com grew 11x in the same stretch.

• Apps: there's a pile of tiny peptide dose-tracker apps and none of them has more than about 1,300 ratings. Nobody owns this yet.

So what happens next?

• The FDA picks the winners. If compounding opens up, buyers move from sketchy shops to pharmacies and telehealth. EllieMD already ranks #1 on Google for "intranasal peptides."

• Picks and shovels win either way. Storage, testing, dosing tools. Right now buyers have no easy way to check what's actually in the vial, and that's a business.

• The safe play is skin and supplements. Proven on Amazon, legal today, nobody gets a warning letter.

• Expect the backlash. A lot of people are injecting unapproved stuff with no doctor involved. That's going to be its own trend.

The Pro Move

⚡ Spot the next one first

Peptides were one trend. There are 50,000 more.

Pro has every one of them, each with its search history, plus 10,000+ websites and apps on the rise and the Amazon categories people are actually buying from.

Get Rising Trends Pro →

Trending in the Group Chat

👀 Software is dead, long live agents

What the internet argued about, starred and installed this week

🐦 The tweet: Pieter Levels called it: “Software is dead.” His take: “It’s now the era of personal software and everyone just builds what they need.” 1.5M views and 5.5K likes later, somewhere a SaaS founder is quietly renewing their annual plan anyway.

🛠 The repo: text-to-cad gives your coding agent CAD skills. It spits out 3D files and G-code for your printer. 20.2k stars, +2,100 this week. Your agent can now design the thing it was going to talk you out of building.

🧠 The skill: grill-me by Matt Pocock makes your agent grill you about your plan before it writes any code. 1.3M installs, and the repo gained almost 12,000 stars this week. Basically a cofounder who won't let you skip the hard questions.

🎬 The tool: HyperFrames from HeyGen lets agents write HTML and render it as video. 63.3k stars, +4,700 this week.

Site on the Rise

🌐 startupintros.com

The founder tool with a page for every company

• What it is: an "operating system for early-stage founders": incorporate, build your cap table and get matched with investors in one place

• Traffic: about 200,000 visits a month, up from basically zero in February 2026. It started picking up in March and hasn't stopped.

• Top keywords bringing the traffic:

  • "therapynotes llc" (40,500 searches a month), ranking #3

  • "form energy" (18,100), ranking #3

  • "oma care" (33,100), ranking #6

  • "friedman fleischer & lowe" (22,200), ranking #5

  • "beliv" (165,000), ranking #12

• Insight: it ranks for about 66,000 keywords, and its top ones are all company names. Each company gets its own profile page, so people googling a company land on a founder tool. That's the Crunchbase playbook: build a page for every entity in your space and let search do the distribution.

• Link: startupintros.com

Breakout App

Vintage Camera (Film Cam)

The camera that makes your photos worse on purpose

• What it is: a film camera app. Pick a vintage camera, shoot, and every photo comes out with grain, light leaks and that "found it in a shoebox" look.

• Launched: July 2025 on Android

• Traction: about 4.9 million installs on Google Play, rated 4.8 from 113,566 reviews

• Search interest: "retro camera app" went from about 170 searches a month a year ago to 1,000 now

• Insight: your phone camera got too good. Imperfection, surprise and a little nostalgia make photos feel special again, and people will install an app to get them back.

• Get it: Google Play

Down Bad

📉 Probiotics for gut health

Your gut is fine. Your search history moved on.

• What it is: probiotic supplements sold for digestion and immunity, the original gut-health product

• The fall: searches went from 301,000 a month at the May 2025 peak to 74,000 now. A year ago it was 246,000.

• The twist: Amazon still moves volume. Top "gut health probiotic" listings averaged about $585k a month each in our April numbers. Searches fall faster than habits.

• Insight: a category whose searches drop 70% in a year while sales hold up has become a commodity.

That's a Wrap

👋 Same time next Tuesday?

You made it to the end. Respect.

Hope you walked away with at least one idea worth stealing. Hit reply and tell me what you're building, what you loved, or what you'd cut. I read every reply, usually with too much coffee.

Catch you next week,

Rachid · Founder, Rising Trends · @rachidseo