How to consistently go viral (and make money)
Big ideas from a founder who sold his startup to FB and Discord
Nikita Bier, a serial entrepreneur known for creating viral social apps, shares his journey from building TBH (sold to Facebook for $30M) to Gas (acquired by Discord). He offers invaluable insights into product development, growth strategies, and the challenges of building consumer apps in today's competitive landscape.
Products Live and Die in the pixels. As a product manager, you should be designing the hierarchy, the pixels, the flows - everything that's on you.
6 Key Takeaways and 3 actionable TODOs from Nikita’s interview (by Lenny) - with a specific focus on how to find great ideas, improve onboarding and identifying the right metrics - overall, a recommended read for builders (be it consumer or B2B)
Identifying Latent Demand
Look for situations where people are going through distortive processes to obtain value. If you can crystallize their motivation and build a product around it, you can achieve intense adoption. For TBH, Bier noticed teens were using Snapchat stories in convoluted ways to give each other compliments. This insight led to creating an app focused solely on positive affirmations.
The way you should be searching for product ideas is this concept of latent demand, where people are trying to obtain a particular value and going through a very distortive process to obtain that value
The rise of TBH was one of the strongest signals you could ever have that people want something is when you see a distorted behavior to obtain value. The number one app in the United States at the time was an Arabic app for sending anonymous messages, showing a clear unmet need in the market that TBH could address.
Rapid Testing and Iteration
Develop a reproducible testing process to increase your chances of success. Focus on taking many shots on goal rather than perfecting a single idea. Bier's team got so efficient that they could build and launch an app in just two weeks. This approach allows you to quickly identify what works and iterate accordingly.
When rebuilding TBH as Gas, Bier's team had to reinvent all the growth systems due to changes in the regulatory environment. This required multiple launches and iterations, including renaming the app and adding new features.
The key was to validate one aspect at a time: Will people use the core flow? Will it spread within a peer group? Will it hop between peer groups?
Targeting the Right Audience
Focus on building apps for teens, as they have more malleable habits and see each other daily. Bier found that the number of invitations sent per user drops 20% for every additional year of age from 13 to 18. Building for adults means you'll likely have to acquire every user through ads, which is expensive and challenging for seed-stage startups.
Teens are an ideal target audience for social apps because their habits are malleable, they see each other daily, and they're more likely to invite friends to new apps. Adults, on the other hand, are less likely to adopt new communication tools and invite others, making it much harder to achieve the necessary network effects.
Optimizing for Quick Value
Invert the time to value so users experience the "aha moment" within seconds. In 2024, people's attention spans are around 3 seconds. If you can't demonstrate value that quickly, you'll lose them. This principle led to the success of Dupe, where users could instantly find cheaper versions of products by simply adding "dp.com/" to any URL.
Design your onboarding process to ensure users reach the activation moment as quickly as possible. Be extraordinarily creative with how you use available tools and APIs to activate users. For example, the URL trick used by Dupe was a non-traditional approach that users adopted very quickly.
Balancing Growth and Ethics
Always prioritize ethical growth strategies and user well-being. Bier emphasizes doing right by users, as unethical practices will eventually backfire. For Gas, they focused on positive affirmations and even built systems to ensure all users received votes, spreading positivity equally.
Bier believes in an "internet karma" where unethical practices will eventually harm your product. By focusing on positive user experiences and ethical growth strategies, you can build a more sustainable and beneficial product. This approach not only helps retain users but can also lead to powerful word-of-mouth growth.
The Challenge of Building Durable Consumer Apps
Building a durable consumer app is extremely difficult and rare. Bier sees it as a "Black Swan event" that happens maybe once a decade. While you can scientifically approach growth, retention for consumer social apps involves tremendous randomness. However, the thrill of watching something you've built take over the internet keeps Bier motivated.
The incumbents in social and communication apps have built strong network effects, making it challenging for new entrants. While it's not impossible to create a durable consumer app, the odds are low. Bier finds satisfaction in the process of creating viral hits rather than aiming for long-term durability, though he doesn't rule out building a venture-scale business in the future.
3 Key Action Items:
Optimize your app's onboarding process to deliver value within the first 3 seconds. Ruthlessly cut features that don't contribute to this immediate "aha moment" and focus on creative ways to activate users quickly.
Develop a systematic approach to testing and iterating on your product. Create a process that allows you to rapidly validate different aspects of your app, from core functionality to viral growth mechanisms.
If targeting a teen audience, design your app's growth mechanisms around their behavior patterns. Focus on features that encourage daily engagement and make it easy for users to invite their friends, keeping in mind that invitation rates drop significantly with age.