How to consistently go viral: Nikita Bier’s playbook for winning at consumer apps (co-founder of TBH, Gas, advisor, investor)

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Nikita Bier is one of the most in-demand consumer, social, and growth experts in the world. He’s the co-founder of TBH (sold to Meta for more than $30 million) and Gas (sold to Discord for millions more) and has helped more consumer apps that have hit #1 in the app stores than any other person I’ve come across. He currently spends his time advising founders on growth, product, and design and is an investor and advisor to some of the best consumer tech companies, including Flo, Locket, Eight Sleep, Citizen, BeReal, Captions, and more. In our conversation, we discuss:

• The inside story of how TBH and Gas achieved explosive growth

• Strategies for building viral consumer apps

• Why teens are such a great audience

• Fighting the human trafficking hoax at Gas

• The challenge of creating durable social products

• His experience working as a PM at Facebook

• Advice for founders on building consumer apps

• Much more

Book Nikita for 1:1 consultation/mentoring: https://intro.co/NikitaBier

Some takeaways:

1. There are only a few core reasons why people download apps, and they each link back to basic human motivations:

   1. Finding a mate (e.g. Tinder)

   2. Making or saving money (e.g. Robinhood)

   3. Unplugging from reality (e.g. Netflix)

2. Optimize for the aha moment in seconds. With attention spans shrinking, it’s critical to demonstrate your core value to users within the first three seconds of using an app. This often requires ruthlessly cutting features and being creative with available APIs and mechanisms.

3. The number of invitations sent per user drops 20% for every additional year of age from 13 to 18. To maximize growth, focus on demographics with high urgency and frequent interactions. With their high social communication rate, teens are particularly valuable for network-effect products. In contrast, targeting adults often requires heavy investment in advertising to acquire users.

4. If you’re looking for a startup idea, look for latent demand: Look for existing user behaviors that are being done in a very inefficient way. If people are using a clunky method to achieve a goal, it signals an opportunity to create a more effective and user-friendly product.

5. It’s extremely difficult for large tech companies to launch hit social apps. The best apps are launched based on hunches about basic human motivations, not the kind of clear market signals and evidence that big companies require before taking new bets. Big companies also require too much process for them to keep up with the pace of iteration required to succeed. Nikita says that big companies take about 12 to 24 months to respond to competitive threats.

6. Creating durable consumer social products is extremely difficult. Nikita views it as a “black swan event” that happens maybe once a decade. While you can become skilled at making apps go viral, creating lasting engagement is much more challenging and involves a lot of luck.

Where to find Nikita Bier:

• X: https://x.com/nikitabier 

• Threads: https://www.threads.net/@nikitabier

• Website: https://intro.co/NikitaBier

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Nikita’s background 

(06:08) Nikita’s early ventures: Politify and Outline

(08:42) Transition to consumer apps

(13:45) The birth of TBH

(16:43) Building for teens vs. adults

(20:00) TBH’s viral success

(32:18) Leveraging live chat

(34:08) Lasting lessons from TBH

(37:00) Selling TBH to Facebook

(42:19) Big-tech product management

(48:46) Nikita on why “product management is not real” 

(51:49) The Tim Cook painting story 

(53:53) Leaving Facebook and starting a new venture

(58:02) Rebuilding TBH and overcoming challenges

(59:46) Addressing criticism

(01:04:24) The human trafficking hoax

(01:09:51) Selling to Discord and lessons learned

(01:11:36) Lasting lessons from Gas

(01:13:14) Building durable consumer apps

(01:22:35) The VC route

(01:23:27) Contact permissions in iOS 18

(01:26:53) The success of Dupe

(01:31:53) Advice for startup founders 

(01:34:14) Work with Nikita

Referenced:

• Politify: https://news.berkeley.edu/2012/09/10/election-2012-new-app-springing-from-berkeley-lets-you-check-financial-impact-on-you-your-town-the-countrys-financial-effects/

• An app that could change your vote: Nikita Bier at TEDxBoston: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9QTVII_lkg

• Outline.com Announces $850k Seed Round and Successful Bid with Massachusetts:  https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/outlinecom-announces-850k-seed-round-and-successful-bid-with-massachusetts-222963991.html

• Techstars: https://www.techstars.com/accelerators

• Your Personality Type, Defined by the Internet: https://archive.nytimes.com/bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/11/your-personality-type-defined-by-the-internet/

• Nikita’s X post on why shares decrease with age: https://x.com/nikitabier/status/1573365055802036224?lang=en

• Facebook acquires anonymous teen compliment app TBH, will let it run: https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/16/facebook-acquires-anonymous-teen-compliment-app-tbh-will-let-it-run/

• Erik Hazzard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erik-hazzard-4013038/

• Sarahah: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarahah

• Michael Gutierrez on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelfgutierrez/

• Roger Dickey on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogerdickey/

• Nikita’s post on X about why people download apps: https://x.com/nikitabier/status/1481118417973243907

• Tim Cook: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Cook

• Zay Turner on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/isaiahjturner/

• Twilio: https://pages.twilio.com/

• Gaia hypothesis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis

• Human Trafficking Rumors: https://polarisproject.org/human-trafficking-rumors/

• Mixpanel: https://mixpanel.com/

• Discord: https://discord.com/

• Lessons on building product sense, navigating AI, optimizing the first mile, and making it through the messy middle | Scott Belsky (Adobe, Behance): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/lessons-on-building-product-sense

• iOS 18 cracks down on apps asking for full address book access: https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/12/ios-18-cracks-down-on-apps-asking-for-full-address-book-access/

• Nikita’s post on X about inverting the time to value: https://x.com/nikitabier/status/1813735668276928682

• Dupe: https://dupe.com/

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.

Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.