Software Engineering :: Entrepreneurship :: Inspiration :: Nikita Bier :: How to consistently go viral: Nikita Bier’s playbook for winning at consumer apps
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It took us a few years to really internalize that, a lot of failures to realize no one needs another app after that age. The thing that you found there, which is really interesting because most people are building for people older than 22, that's a profound insight you had there. Every consumer app I see is trying to build for adults, and your lesson there is basically if you're trying to do that, you're probably going to need to raise money and spend a lot of money on paid ads.
If you really want to actually innovate at the edges of communication products, you really have to target that cohort that has the highest urgency to communicate, and that's teens. I love that you found these things out, not through just research and not through just thinking, it was through actual trying things over and over and over and trying different audiences, trying different experiences.
We also did other things, and I recommend all companies do this, is put live chat customer support in your app 24 hours a day. It sounds insane. It's like the whole point of tech is you don't need to do that. That's the whole point of a software.
But then users get this white glove experience, and that eliminates another confounding variable, like did they think their problems were solved or they were treated well? But most of all, one of the reasons I actually recommend people put live chat in their app is it's the best vehicle for getting feedback and doing user research because users will literally tell you the problem they're having.
" So you really want your finger on the pulse as you roll these things out so you can get a sense for what's working, what isn't, and also make users feel great and make sure at the end they promote your app positively to their peers. I love that piece of advice. Okay, so to close out the TBH chapter, is there anything else that you think is important for people to know or any other lasting lessons from that part of your journey that you bring with you to new apps that you're building today? I think the thing that is hard to really understand for first-time founders that
A lot of people ask me like, "What's the benchmark for product-market fit?" And this founder that I'm friends with, his name's Roger Dickey, he told me this one time, "If your product's working, you'll know. And if there's any uncertainty, it's not working.