Hey! Welcome to a collection of my thoughts about everything consumer tech.

My Favourite Resources

Hooked by Nir Eyal

Hacking Growth by Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown

Status as a Service (StaaS) by Eugene Wei

Hierarchy of Engagement by Sarah Travel

This thread by Nikita Bier

Why I’m Interested In Consumer Social

Consumer is only startup sector in which I could impact on billions of people. Many other sectors have a limit at millions.

They reveal the essence of people. Maybe that is also linked to my interest in true crime thrillers but I absolutely love learning about how and why people use apps.

2 Seconds of Fame - The idea that at a party / networking event, there is a chance that they find the product ‘cool’ and perhaps a new/existing user of the product. For 2 seconds, I am famous to them.

I’ve been a sucker to the high proportionate of ‘startup porn’ and read lots of success stories of founders who were predominately consumer tech founders as they are companies I have heard of.

“Enterprise was not sexy enough, and I want to be a sexy man.” - Alex Zhu, Musical.ly founder. Lmao.

The Fundamentals of Why Consumer Social Works

You need to begin to think of humans as monkeys, or beings who are totally irrational. If you’re a monkey and you’re having an ‘easy and fun’ life, and at the core of it are reproducing, you are winning. The same principles need to be leaned into when creating consumer products that irrational humans want to use. In principle the app needs to make you:

• Socially rich (either monetary or status)

• Entertained (make it fun)

• Laid (imo, the other principles lead to this one)

AT ALL TIMES, humans are looking for the path of least resistance to all of these principles.

Overtime, humans will create patterns and responses to satisfy the cravings of easy and fun living. If you can't use your app from the toilet or while distracted—like driving—your users will have few opportunities to form a habit.

Also, the 90/9/1 rule is essential. 90% of your users are lurkers, 9% create content sometimes, and 1% of your users create MOST of the content and interactions.

Fogg’s Behaviour Model

Make it easier to solve, or increase someone’s motivation to solve it.

HOWEVER be aware of the two gaps at the top left and bottom right of the curve. There are some things that are just too hard to do, and you always need some motivation.

Things to consider when thinking of ideas

If your product offends someone, it's probably one version away from something special.

People are seeking solutions at high anxiety points of their life, so tapping into life inflection points is a great place to start

Facebook ➝ Starting at a school Linkedin ➝ Getting your 1st job Slack ➝ Starting a company

Parts To A Consumer Social App

When ideating consumer social, I find it easy to come up with ideas that already have a spinning flywheel. Nir Eyal puts this nicely in Hooked.

In this diagram, it’s obvious that once a user is invested in the network and being rewarded by it, they will continue to create content and further push the network effect. This is also sometimes referred to as a chicken and egg problem as most ideas only work once there is an established network.

So, how do you invite the first chicken?

The Core Action

Also known as the utility of your product, what is it that it actually does so much better than everything else? This is what your early adopters are looking for, or to try out.

Examples

• Instagram → Creative filters

• Snapchat → Send nudes without a trace

• Facebook → find anyone in the world

The Magic, or the ‘Aha Moment’

This is where the real spice happens for founders that gets us excited, it’s the point in the user journey where a user gets excited about your product and realises that they can’t live without it. For a VC back-able business, this is where you can differentiate and leverage a new technology like LLMs, spatial computing or neurotechnology. If you can be there in the early stages of technology, releasing an “it works” product is enough to get people excited through a demo or video.

Survey for how to test an ‘Aha Moment’, from Hacking Growth

Examples

• Facebook → Add 7 friends in 10 days

• Pinterest → Pin something and then come back a week later

• ChatGPT → “Write my essay for me” and then get full marks on it.

• Vision Pro → Watching a dinosaur and forgetting where you are.

Why Come?

Once you’ve worked out your magical experience, you then need to tell the world about it.

Viral Cycle Time

How long does a user spend using the product before telling their friends?

Growth Strategies

Paypal → pay each user $10 for referral link

Dropbox → Give each referred user free space

AirBnb → Sold cereal boxes for the presidential election

AirBnb → Cross posted on airbnb and craigslist

Tesla → Doesn’t put model years on cars, instead roles out software updates in real time and monitors performance

Facebook → allowed users who installed a new app asked to invite friends

Monzo → Sign up queue

Gas → private instagram

Why Stay?

Lastly, you need to understand what are the triggers that are bringing users back to your product because at the end of the day, revenue only arises from repeating users. A good place to start is by leaning into the fundamental ideas of consumer products to start creating a new habits the user.

Rewards

One technique that we see a lot of in consumer apps are variable rewards, that make us want to come back for that dopamine rush. The secret with these rewards is that they should be unpredictable (to make us feel like we have somewhat earned them by sticking around) but also incredibly easy (now available with 1 press to open the app, and 1 swipe to get a new reward).

You’ve got an idea, now what?

FLYWHEEL, FLYWHEEL, FLYWHEEL

Unapologetically market to the BNOCS of the niche in whatever way to stay relevant. At this point, it’s all about touch points. Make a meme page, X-post content on facebook/insta/tiktok, do whatever you can to be in the face of everyone that could talk about your product.

Ben Silbermann used to ask people in coffee shops in Palo Alto to try Pinterest and then build the features that they wanted.

Who should you target? Obsessive people. Teens, hobbyists and gamers. People who sink a lot of time into something.

Next step is analytics. My personal favourite is GA4, and adding events to granularly track app/web sessions. This should drive your quantitive arguments for what features to add next.

To support quantitive arguments, also getting qualitative data via Reddit / Discord / in person is incredibly valuable. Your users are your celebrities and you should treat them like it.

The Future

How does this company become a monopoly?

To Add:

What are the best social mechanics that work today?

What are the most addictive game mechanics out there?

Triggers