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

1. Identify Latent Demand

Seek out areas where people are trying to achieve a specific value but are using a cumbersome or ‘distortive’ process; building a product that simplifies this process can lead to intense adoption.

2. Achieve Instant Aha Moment

Drastically reduce the ’time to value’ so users experience the ‘aha moment’ within seconds, leveraging creative and non-traditional uses of available APIs and system mechanisms to expose value immediately.

3. Target Teen Users

Focus on building apps for teens because their habits are malleable, they invite more people to new apps (invitations drop 20% per year from 13-18), and they see each other daily, which is critical for network effects and organic growth.

4. Master Reproducible Testing

Focus on developing a reproducible testing process for new app ideas, as taking many ‘shots at bat’ with a reliable method is the best way to reduce risk and increase the probability of success in unpredictable consumer markets.

5. Eliminate Confounding Variables in Tests

When testing a product or feature, eliminate confounding variables by creating the ‘best possible version’ of the experience, even if it requires manual, unscalable effort, to get clear signal on whether the core idea resonates with users.

6. Sequential Product Validation

For zero-to-one product development, validate core assumptions sequentially (e.g., core flow, peer-to-peer spread, group-to-group spread), executing at 100% on the current validation step while ‘half-assing’ other areas to get clear signal and avoid scope creep.

7. Limit Core Assumptions

Identify the critical ‘conditional statements’ that must be true for your product to succeed; aim to condense these to about four fundamental assumptions to reduce overall product risk.

8. Optimize Every Mobile Tap

Treat every tap on a mobile app as a ‘miracle’ and optimize everything, as users have low tolerance for friction and will quickly switch apps if value isn’t immediately apparent.

9. PMs: Own the Pixels

For product managers building zero-to-one consumer products, it’s crucial to be deeply involved in designing the hierarchy, pixels, and flows, as products ’live and die in the pixels’.

10. Align Marketing & In-App Experience

Treat marketing and in-app product growth as a unified system, ensuring everything from ads to the in-app experience and invitation flows are perfectly aligned with the target community and value proposition to create a cohesive user acquisition flywheel.

11. Innovate Contact Sync Alternatives

With iOS 18 changes making traditional contact sync challenging, founders must rethink how users find and invite friends, as relying on old methods will severely hinder app growth.

12. Design for Positive Interactions

When building social apps, design mechanics (e.g., positive-only polls) to ensure all interactions are positive and affirming, even implementing systems to guarantee everyone receives positive feedback, to foster a healthy user experience.

13. Ethical Growth Systems

Always operate ‘above board’ and do right by users when designing growth systems, as unethical practices or misuse of user data will ultimately backfire and harm your product in the long run.

14. Prioritize Ruthlessly During Scale

When an app experiences breakout success and scales rapidly, be ruthless with prioritization and focus on extinguishing the largest fires first, as everything will break and need constant replacement.

15. Offer 24/7 Live Chat

Implement 24/7 live chat customer support in your app to provide a ‘white glove experience,’ eliminate a confounding variable in testing, and gather direct, invaluable user feedback on problems and feature ideas.

16. Combat Hoaxes Aggressively

If your app is targeted by a viral hoax, fight it relentlessly on every vector (media, authorities, in-app messaging, social media, platform partners) to ensure the hoax’s virality is less than your app’s, or it could kill your company.

17. Pivot from Disliked Work

If you find yourself working on something you don’t enjoy, even if it’s successful (e.g., government contracts), don’t be afraid to pivot and pursue what truly excites you and aligns with your core competencies.

18. Name Apps for Gender Balance

Consider how an app’s name and visual identity (e.g., icon color) might influence invitation rates and user demographics; adjust branding to achieve desired gender balance and optimize viral spread.

19. Negotiate Vendor Credits

As your product scales, proactively negotiate with every vendor (e.g., cloud providers, analytics tools) to secure credits and reduce costs, especially if you have strong growth data.