If you’re a content curator — or a creator who curates content — you may think you’re doing a good deed by providing relevant pieces to the audience you serve. When, in reality, you’re doing something much bigger than simply facilitating people’s browsing experience. Because of you, the people who are part of your audience get closer and closer to reaching their ikigai.

(I’ll explain what that term means in a moment.)

Even though millions of them don’t make a single penny from it, curators provide us with the finest, most well-researched content available on several subjects. They plunge into the good, the bad, and the ugly, and emerge with gold — so we don’t have to do any of the scavengings. As a desirable bonus, they enrich that content with insights we’d otherwise get only through life experience.

What’s more, the more curators we have and the more we value them, the more people will find their own Ikigai.

What’s the Meaning of Ikigai, Anyway?

*Iki *means life. *Gai *comes from the suffix kai, meaning the value of something. Together, these words mean “reason for living”, or more literally, “the value of living.”

Ikigai is a Japanese concept that signifies the intersection of what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for.

Ikigai is something much bigger than yourself. It’s the reason why your alarm rings at 6 AM every morning, and it’s also the reason why you get up. Because you *know *that what you’ll be doing from that moment on is not only your life’s purpose, but it will bring the community you serve closer to *their *life’s purpose, as well.

Answer truly: do you think people can find value in life if they’re not doing what they love?

In my view, no one can find value in living if they don’t love what they do.

Besides, if what they do isn’t something the world needs and will thank them for, it’ll be hard for them to get recognition for it.

Consequently, if they don’t get recognition for it, they won’t love what they do…and so it goes. It’s a cycle. That’s why finding one’s reason for living is, most of the time, a lifelong journey.

However, with the right people to guide the way, the path toward one’s ikigai can be much, much shorter.

Where and When Did the Concept of Ikigai Originate?

The concept of ikigai dates back to the Heian period (794 to 1185), and its powerful wisdom has survived the tough test of time.

Typically, the concept is represented as follows:

Nicholas Kemp from The Ikigai Tribe’s Medium was disappointed to find that the concept is passed around wellness bloggers as a simple four-step formula, rather than a profound concept that requires deep understanding of one’s role within a community.

Still, the above map definitely has its value, somehow. Isn’t the concept a lot easier to grasp that way? That’s fine. Life-changing concepts should be passed around and represented in a more digestible manner — but their true meaning should never be lost in the process.

Here’s a brief explanation of each section and intersection, and why they should matter to you.

**What you love: **This is the intersection of your **mission **and your passion. While your passion is a cause you’re truly enthusiastic about, your mission is a duty. Not just any duty, but one you have a deep interest in.

**What you’re good at: **This one refers to the junction of both your **passion **and profession. Essentially, it means you should be passionate about your role.

**What the world needs: **Your role should positively impact the community you’re a part of. Therefore, your **mission **must also be a **vocation **— a *calling. *Deep down, you know you’re meant to be doing this. Not just for yourself, but for the community you serve.

**What can be paid for: **This is where a lot of people’s ikigai become unbalanced. A lot of times, essential pursuits aren’t properly compensated. When someone’s **profession **and **vocation **unite, those should also be a source of income. Humans can’t live on purpose alone, or at least they shouldn’t.

**What you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what can be paid for: **Your ikigai.

What Does Ikigai Have to Do With the Curator Economy?

The Curator Economy can be a great example of finding one’s ikigai. For a lot of curators, this occupation sits right in the middle of what they love, what they’re good at, and what the world needs.

Yet, a lot of curators still can’t make a living off their careers. The reason why some people are still on their way to find their ikigai is because one piece of the puzzle is missing.

That doesn’t mean it can’t be found.

Here’s how a curator’s career could result in their ikigai:

What You Love

It’s easy to understand why people love curating useful information for both themselves and other people. It makes life so much simpler for everyone involved.

Zig Ziglar once said: *“Repetition is the mother of learning, the father of action, which makes it the architect of accomplishment.” *By focusing on what matters and summarizing key concepts in their own words, content curators will constantly strengthen their knowledge on topics of interest. The more information they have to explore in their field, the smarter they’ll get.

Plus, they’ll always be discovering new authors, new insights, and maybe even sparking new ideas. Their audience, in turn, will always have access to trustworthy sources to further hone their skills.

What You’re Good At

I’ve said it multiple times and I’ll say it again: anyone can be a curator. Though a good curator needs a good skillset, anyone can pick and choose. The skillset can be developed by knowledge from a variety of books, films, quotes, and meaningful interactions throughout their lives.

The bigger the skillset, the easier it is for curators (or any professional, for that matter) to make effortless connections with other subjects. Plus, the easier it is for them to provide succinct and detailed explanations alike about their learning interests. After all, according to Einstein, “if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t know it well enough.”

What the World Needs

It’s 2022. We’re surrounded by TikToks, fake news, and unhelpful articles. Buried somewhere under all of that noise is actually valuable information, which we’re unlikely to find on our own.

Even though social engines’ democratization of access can go a long way, it can only do so much. Someone must do the manual work of filtering those millions of results emerging from a single search.

Will that be us? Not if we’re too busy looking the wrong way. It’s only possible for us to look the right way if like-minded people, preferably people who have been where we are, point us in the right direction.

Those people are content curators.

Their role within a community is to simplify people’s lives by front-loading the best sources of knowledge, based on common interest. Their goal is to assist the community with whatever they’re looking for at the moment, be it satisfying a curiosity or understanding a complicated definition.

We all need this type of assistance, and some of us wouldn’t be where we are if it wasn’t for it.

And of Course, You Should Ideally Make a Living While You’re at It

For the upcoming Curator Economy to flourish, it needs more contributors. Not just contributors, but contributors who feel valued and are well-compensated for what they do. Just imagine how much more organized the mayhem of online information would be if the number of great curators increased.

Now, it’s time to get a bit realistic. Though this may sound like your parents lecturing you on choosing the right career, bear with me. This is important.

Unfortunately, being good at the thing you love and that the community thanks you for…those things won’t always pay your bills. That’s just how life is. Yes, it’s a vocation, and yes, it’s something you’re passionate about. But, like I said, you aren’t meant to live on those things alone.

Content curation *could *be the ikigai for so many people, if only they could be financially independent through it. As content curation is much easier than creation — and as curation itself can be seen as creation — it would be awesome if people could make enough money to support themselves through it.

That’s not to say people are unable to make money from curation. It’s possible, and it’s being done every single day. People create and sell online courses, which is a type of content curation. They create and sell ebooks — another type of content curation.

See how creation and curation walk hand-in-hand in those cases? That may be an issue for some people, as not everyone is a content creator.

Now, the question becomes: are people able to monetize their content curation process while keeping creation to a minimum?

The answer is yes. The folks at The Browser are doing it well. Essentially, their job is to read thousands of articles a day, so as to provide their subscribers with five finely curated articles every single day.

By seeing the word “subscriber”, you’ve probably realized that they’re monetizing their service. They are. And they have over 75,000 curious readers checking their inboxes daily.

That is to say: yes, you can definitely monetize content curation alone. If only more people knew the massive impact this career has on everyone’s lives, a lot of curators would have found their ikigai by now.

What About You? Have You Found Your Ikigai?

I did find mine, but not before going through some of the most difficult moments in my life.

After being kicked out of my first job as a startup co-founder and nearly dying at the age of 20, I had an awakening: life is too short and unpredictable not to leave something meaningful behind. Not just for me, but something everyone around me could benefit from.

(By the way, I tell my whole story in this article, in case you’re interested.)

After reading over 100 books written by some of the greatest minds in history, I’ve decided to build Glasp, a Social Web Highlighter, based on my ikigai: “Creating a system that allows everyone to share and develop their learnings as their legacy in a natural way”.

This, I’m sure, is my purpose in life.

We have a limited time in this world. Why waste it going through the rough path when we could learn from the people who have been where we are? Why, if there’s a way to navigate this journey more easily? I wouldn’t think twice about it.

I’ll leave you with this question: have you found your value of living? Or are you still on your path to find it?

—

See you next time,

Kazuki

Photo by Alexander Shatov on Unsplash

Few of us will escape the TikTok rabbit hole. It’s 2021’s most famous app, and if you don’t have it downloaded on your phone, someone close to you certainly has.

We all know that one person who will keep sending us TikToks all throughout the day, as if their lives depend on it. They’re already in too deep, and it’s probably too late to get them back. But there’s a reason for it: TikTok is one hell of an addictive app.

No wonder it’s been downloaded over 2 billion times worldwide, and this number just keeps growing. Only in January 2021 (feel old, yet?) there were 68 million downloads. This begs the question: What’s so different about TikTok, and how come it’s better at controlling us than other traditional media apps?

TikTok’s Strategy is Not What You Think

When you first install TikTok on your phone and open the app, you’ll need to keep watching videos in order to get improved recommendations. That’s when you’ll star liking, saving, and maybe even commenting on videos.

Seems traditional enough, right? That’s until you’ve spent at least 52 minutes of your day scrolling through 60-second videos, one better than the other.

Here’s where TikTok hit the nail on the head: Interest Graphs. In basic terms, Interest Graphs are an online representation of the various interests of different individuals. Social media apps like TikTok and Twitter rely on Interest Graphs in order to laser-focus their recommendations of brand new content to an audience. That’s why a user’s first contact with TikTok starts with a basic analysis of their interests and, upon continued use, the app’s machine learning algorithm will “grasp” their preferences.

TikTok started doing well the moment it started learning from users’ individual behaviors. And no two individuals behave alike. As an example, a person doesn’t buy a $2,000 Prada bag because they’re 25 and have two children (which is the case with “buyer personas”). Depending on who they are, they may want a Prada bag for a variety of reasons, which include status. Feeling like they “earned it”. Belonging among their wealthy friends. Simply flexing. In whatever case, there are way deeper reasons behind people’s decisions, way beyond something as shallow as their demographics.

Your customers know everything you don’t know, as well as everything you want to dig deeper into. So why not rely on them, instead of outdated targeting methods that will get you nowhere?

That’s where TikTok started differentiating itself from other apps. Instead of targeting the version of customers *they’ve *created (without the actual customers’ input) they’ve decided to use the actual customers as a guide. Enter the Interest Graph.

But how do Interest Graphs differ from traditional tracking analyses, such as navigational analyses based on the pages you visit or the links you click?

Glad you asked. Here’s why new startups or any businesses need to care about Interest Graphs to expand their businesses.

Interest Surpasses Cultural Barriers

TikTok was developed in Shanghai as Douyin back in 2014, and certainly, no one must have thought it would be the huge worldwide success that it is today.

I’m saying that because the creators of Douyin didn’t really understand American culture, let alone a bunch of teenage girls with a knack for dancing and lip-syncing. So, how was it that former Douyin became the most popular app in America, as well as across different cultures? I mean, TikTok penetrated the cultural firewall when they didn’t even know about US culture. That’s insane.

The quick answer is: the success behind TikTok is the fact that people care about things that they’re interested in, not people themselves much.

Let me explain.

TikTok brings your favorite type of content to you on a silver platter. All it needs is a glimpse at your high-level interests, and it’ll take it from there. In no time, users start enjoying a personalized feed brimming with the videos they love most — and they barely had to move a finger to make it happen. Isn’t that what we all value the most?

With approximately 80 million active users, we very likely wouldn’t have the time to go searching for things we like, particularly if we had no idea how to use the app. If TikTok’s recommendation engine wasn’t so spot-on, a lot less people would feel like using it. Especially older people.

Although we *do *know what we like and want to see, finding it is too much work. So the personalized feed does it for us, nails it every time, and we love it.

But *how *does it do that? How does TikTok match our interests so well?

TikTok employs a type of machine learning algorithm, called a recommendation engine, to analyze every users’ interests and preferences based on their interactions with TikTok videos. After collecting patterns in consumer behavior, it builds a personalized feed for different users, containing only relevant content for that particular user.

Towards Data Science explains it clearly and succinctly:

“If you click a dancing video, your feed would be customized to the entertainment category initially, then the following mechanism will trace your behaviors for further analysis, which would eventually provide precise recommendations for you only.”

What that means is: the more you use TikTok, the easier it will be for the algorithm to understand what specific *types *of dances or memes you’re interested in, based on your activity. However embarrassing your taste for memes may be, TikTok’s algorithm *knows *what type of user-generated content you’ll love — and it’ll bring more of that content to you in droves. Never worry about TikTok running out of videos you like, as more than 1 billion videos are viewed on the app every day.

TikTok can guarantee that every single feed is unique to its user. In the words of Peggy Olson, no one wants to be one of a hundred colors in a box. They want unique experiences, custom-tailored to them. And once they get it, they stick around.

Of course, we couldn’t help but mention the infinite scrolling. This alone is enough to give us endless TikTok-watching sessions.

Why Do We Follow the People We Follow?

Hint: it’s not necessarily because we like them. But you probably already knew that. You don’t like everyone you follow on social media, or do you?

What we enjoy is finding people who are like ourselves in some aspects, so we’ll feel like we belong on Twitter (or anywhere else, for that matter). Again, there’s the Interest Graph working its magic.

You’ll most likely follow someone because you’ve resonated with something they posted. Robert B. Cialdini, P.h.D, states very clearly that one of the most influential factors when it comes to resonating with someone is *similarity. *In his words:

“We like people who are similar to us. This fact seems to hold true whether the similarity is in the area of opinions, personality traits, background, or lifestyle.”

With that in mind, our connection with someone increases the moment we see ourselves in them. We feel an inclination towards them because we just might see them post something we’re interested in, again and again. We may not know the person — we don’t even care about *them *that much. But because of our similar interests, we just might want to get to know them better.

That, in turn, makes us feel like we just made a new acquaintance. And making new acquaintances is the starting point of belonging in a group. In the end, that’s what it all boils down to.

But it’s also true that people have many different interests, and not all of them will align with yours. When we follow someone on Twitter, we don’t necessarily want or need to follow *everything *that they tweet about.

For instance, you may have followed a certain person because both of you enjoy listening to a similar band. However, when that same person starts tweeting about how pissed they are that their favorite football team lost, you suddenly become uninterested.

How does Twitter fix that? By giving users the ability to mute certain words and topics, as well as the ability to ignore certain topics recommended on their timeline. Little by little, users’ feeds are adapted specifically to their interests.

For businesses that use Twitter for marketing, the approach is much the same: user targeting is based on interest and follower look-alikes. According to Twitter for Business, “People come to Twitter to connect with the passions and pursuits that they find meaningful”. Targeted messages, then, are delivered to users based on the topics they most frequently engage with on Twitter.

As for the neighbor app, Facebook, it worked because students were interested in what classes their friends were taking and what they were learning. They didn’t want to know what their friends had for dinner. Based on users’ main interest, which was to know what their peers, friends, and family were up to, Facebook grew into one of the most popular apps in the world.

Business Owner: The Interest Graph is Your Brand’s Biggest Opportunity

Unfortunately, not all organizations are in sync with their customers, thanks to the employment of outdated targeting strategies.

Brand owners are getting smarter, though. They’re increasingly relying on social media strategies that focus on people’s interests rather than their navigation patterns or the posts they’ve liked. And of course, those relying on Interest Graphs are coming out on top.

“But why is that? Aren’t Interest Graphs just like social graphs?”

Not quite. A Social Graph can only offer a superficial view of a person’s interests.

As previously mentioned, there’s a lot more to people’s choices and inclinations than their demographics and, in the case of social graphs, their social relations. Interest Graphs are deeper and more reliable since they track the patterns of human behavior through machine learning.

Remember: people aren’t necessarily interested in other people, but rather what those people have to offer.

The fact that Interest Graphs are “fueled by genuine interest” makes them powerful. After all, interests play a large role in the motivators that lead customers to either consider or ignore a product.

Matched interests generate connections. Connections generate affinity. Affinity increases preference, which, in turn, increases trust. That’s what makes an Interest Graph a mutually beneficial tool.

And There You Have It: The Reason Why TikTok is Taking Over Our Lives

People don’t browse TikTok because they want to increase their weekly screen time. In fact, they’re trying *so *hard to reverse that. But they’re unable to. Unless, of course, they have enough self-control to put TikTok on the back burner.

Recommendation engines are the closest we’ve got to catering to the ever-shifting, unstable, and vulnerable human behavior. Of course, the tiniest things can derail the decision-making process, but at least you’re making the most educated and data-driven decisions you possibly can. There’s no guessing, no making things up, and most importantly, you’re valuing the users’ input.

People keep using TikTok — and Twitter, and Facebook, and Instagram — because of their accurate recommendation algorithms that spell out the sweetest words known to humankind: based on your recent activity…

—

See you next time,

Kazuki

If you’re a startup founder, product/market fit may be the thing that you always care about. As I'm constantly reading and highlighting articles about product/market fit, I'd like to share some of my favorite reading materials that helped me figure out the big picture of product/market fit.

There are countless must-read articles and it’s hard to put all, so I picked up some to map out the whole picture for you.

Don’t just read this article or the attached articles. Instead, highlight where you resonate with and leave your thoughts and learnings with Glasp so that you can look back at them anytime and we all can get smarter at the same time ;)

If you're ready, let’s move on.

Before Product/Market Fit - What Matters Most?

According to Benchmark Capital co-founder Andy Rachleff [1], the concept of product/market fit (PMF) was initially created by Sequoia Capital founder Don Valentine and popularized by Marc Andreessen.

There are 3 elements of each startup: team (people), product, and market. Andy Rachleff, Marc Andreessen, and other business leaders say that market matters the most. The #1 company-killer is lack of market.

Pmarchive - The only thing that matters

pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part4.html

By: Marc Andreessen (@pmarca)

Product/market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.

In a great market—a market with lots of real potential customers—the market pulls product out of the startup. [...] Conversely, in a terrible market, you can have the best product in the world and an absolutely killer team, and it doesn’t matter—you’re going to fail.

Andy Rachleff’s Law of Startup Success:

• When a great team meets a lousy market, market wins.

• When a lousy team meets a great market, market wins.

• When a great team meets a great market, something special happens.

If you are before product/market fit (BPMF), the only thing that matters is getting to product/market fit. Focus obsessively on getting to product/market fit. Do whatever is required to get to product/market fit. (e.g. changing out people, rewriting your product, moving into a different market, telling customers no, etc.)

The Real Product Market Fit: Product Market Fit | Y Combinator

www.ycombinator.com/library/5z-the-real-product-market-fit

By: Michael Seibel (@mwseibel)

Finding product market fit = focusing on the market first. [...] The problem, i.e. the market, is the real opportunity.

To find product market fit, choose a market where users have a real, meaningful problem, launch quickly, and listen to your users.

You need to find problems so dire that users are willing try half-baked, v1, imperfect solutions.

When has a consumer startup hit product/market fit?

andrewchen.com/when-has-a-consumer-startup-hit-productmarket-fit/

By: Andrew Chen (@andrewchen)

A market consists of all the consumers who can search for and compare products for a use case they already have in mind.

Market matters the most, but what is a market anyway? How can we validate it’s real or fake? Andrew Chen shares a smart way to see if pre-existing demand exists or not:

1. What keyword do people search to get to your site?

2. Put those keywords into Google Keyword Tool

3. How many people are searching for this keyword?

If the answer to #3 is more than millions, then you have a big market. For consumer internet, a great market is composed of the following three things:

1. A large number of potential users

2. High growth in # of potential users

3. Ease of user acquisition

Leading with a great market helps you execute your product design in a simpler and cleaner way. The reason is that once you’ve picked a big market, you can take the time to figure out some user-centric attributes upon which to compete. This leads to a strong intention for your product design, which drives a clean and cohesive UX.

Product/Market Fit - What It Feels Like? Any Myths?

People have different opinions on what it feels like when you’ve found product/market fit.

“The customers are buying the product just as fast as you can make it—or usage is growing just as fast as you can add more servers. Money from customers is piling up in your company checking account. You’re hiring sales and customer support staff as fast as you can.”

- Marc Andreessen

“You have very strong customer feedback, even from a small group of people. For example, at Color early on, we were getting literal love letters from customers.”

- Elad Gil

“You have reached product/market fit when you are overwhelmed with usage—usually to the point where you can’t even make major changes to your product because you are swamped just keeping it up and running.”

- Michael Seibel

“The real metric for both consumer apps and enterprise is — do someone’s pupils dilate when they use your stuff? Whether you’re handing them a demo or if you drew something on the whiteboard. Do they say, ‘You’re not leaving’ or ‘Where have you been all of my life?’”

- Steve Blank

“You know you have fit if your product grows exponentially with no marketing. That is only possible if you have huge word of mouth. Word of mouth is only possible if you have delighted your customer.”

- Andy Rachleff

“Product/market fit requires you to figure out the earliest tells.”

- Reid Hoffman

• Myth #1: Product market fit is always a discrete, big bang event.

• Myth #2: It’s patently obvious when you have product/market fit.

• Myth #3: Once you achieve product/market fit, you can’t lose it.

• Myth #4: Once you have product/market fit, you don’t have to sweat the competition.

- Ben Horowitz

“In general, hiring before you get product/market fit slows you down, and hiring after you get product/market fit speeds you up. [...] Until you get product/market fit, you want to a) live as long as possible and b) iterate as quickly as possible. small teams FTW for both.“

- Sam Altman

“Startups need 2-3 times longer to validate their market than most founders expect. This underestimation creates the pressure to scale prematurely […] In our dataset we found that 70% of startups scaled prematurely along some dimension. While this number seemed high, this may go a long way towards explaining the 90% failure rate of startups.”

- Startup Genome Report

What it feels like when you've found product-market fit – Issue 45 - Lenny's Newsletter

www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/what-it-feels-like-when-youve-found

By: Lenny Rachitsky (@lennysan)

There are some signs of product/market fit. They are (1) sudden and significant pull, (2) gradual but compounding pull, and/or (3) hitting a milestone that proves it’s working.

Market “pull” comes in many forms:

• An inflection in organic growth including word of mouth. (e.g. Uber, Tinder, Stripe, PagerDuty, etc)

• Customers complain when your site goes down. (e.g. Nextdoor, Carta, etc)

• People use the product even when it’s broken.

• Customers ask to pay for the product before you ask. (e.g. GitHub)

The intensity of the pull depends on:

• How good your product is at solving the problem

• Initial market size (niche or broad)

  • Broad: Dropbox, Netflix, Tinder, etc

  • Niche: Instacart, Superhuman, Substack, etc

Some startups found PMF immediately after launch but some took a long time as shown below:

• Netflix: 1.5 years

• Segment: 1.5 years

• Airbnb: 2 years

• PagerDuty: 2 years

• Superhuman: 3 years

• Amplitude: 4 years

How to Measure Product/Market Fit?

There are many approaches to measure product/market fit such as survey (NPS, 40% “very disappointed” responses, etc), gut feeling, metrics (cohort retention analysis), and so on, and there’s no wrong answer. Reforge founder Brian Balfour, however, gives us a clear path on product/market fit. In the end, as Casey Winters, Jeff Chang, and other thoughts leaders say, the cohort retention rate is a fair product/market fit metric.

The Never Ending Road To Product Market Fit

brianbalfour.com/essays/product-market-fit

By: Brian Balfour (@bbalfour)

Knowing where you are along a product/market fit path helps you understand when to go from traction, to transition, to growth.

There are 4 checkpoints to get to product/market fit:

1. Leading Indicator Survey (= what they say)

   1. Sean Ellis’s survey (aka 40% “very disappointed” responses)

   2. NPS (Net Promoter Score)

2. Leading Indicator Engagement Data (= what they do)

   1. Events or actions, not views

   2. The core purpose of the product

3. Flattened Retention Curve (= PMF for some market or audience)

   1. Segment by key demographics (age, location, industry, etc), time, and user source to identify the characteristics of retained users

   2. Qualitative survey to identify the characteristics of retained users

4. Trifecta (= 100% PMF among a meaningful market)

   1. Top-Line Growth

   2. Higher Retention

   3. Meaningful Usage

Rahul Vohra Shares Superhuman's Product Market Fit Framework | First Round Review

firstround.com/review/how-superhuman-built-an-engine-to-find-product-market-fit/

By: Rahul Vohra (@rahulvohra)

Rahul explains the measurable indicator of product/market fit for companies pre-launch. If you can measure, you can optimize it.

In short, product/market fit is when 40% of your users answered that they would be “very disappointed” without your product (aka Sean Ellis’s leading indicator).

In essence, it's better to make something that a small number of people want a large amount, rather than a product that a large number of people want a small amount. In my view, the product/market fit engine process of narrowing the market massively optimizes for a product that a small number of people want a large amount.

Ask the following questions to users who used the product at least twice in the last two weeks:

1. How would you feel if you could no longer use Superhuman? A) Very disappointed B) Somewhat disappointed C) Not disappointed

2. What type of people do you think would most benefit from Superhuman?

3. What is the main benefit you receive from Superhuman?

4. How can we improve Superhuman for you?

If more than 40% of people answered that they would be “very disappointed” without your product, then your product has reached product/market fit.

Casey’s Guide to Finding Product/Market Fit

caseyaccidental.com/caseys-guide-to-finding-product-market-fit/

By: Casey Winters (@onecaseman)

Product/market fit is not when customers stop complaining and are fully satisfied. They’ll never stop complaining. They’ll never be fully satisfied. Product/market fit is when they stop leaving. - Casey Winters

Casey defines product/market fit as the satisfaction that allows for sustained growth. In other words,

PMF = (flattened retention curve) + (MoM growth in new users)

The best metric for determining quantitative product market fit

https://www.growthengblog.com/blog/the-best-metric-for-determining-quantitative-product-market-fit

By: Jeff Chang (@JeffChang30)

There are many definitions of product/market fit such as NPS score, 40% “very disappointed” response, gut feeling, good distribution channel, and so on, but cohort retention rate is the most important product/market fit metric.

Why other metrics are not good?

• NPS: the biggest tech companies have terrible NPS scores but they are still able to grow over a billion users.

• 40% “very disappointed” responses: there might be response bias. It’s hard to get everyone to answer a survey. Also, responses don’t match behavior.

Why cohort retention rate?

• No response bias

• Full user lifecycle data

• Measuring actual user behavior

You should find the retention rate of some comparable products that have been able to significantly grow to find the right benchmark for you.

A good rule of thumb is for consumer products, 25% is a good floor and for B2B SaaS products, 70% is a good floor.

Once you have a few cohorts that level off at a vertical-specific number, then you’ve achieved product market fit!

How to Get to Product/Market Fit?

Startups need to get to product/market fit or die trying. There are some approaches to get to product/market fit.

• Understand the type of business and personality

• Shorten the time to PMF by copying predecessors

• Focus on core users / high-expectation customers

Casey’s Guide to Finding Product/Market Fit

caseyaccidental.com/caseys-guide-to-finding-product-market-fit/

By: Casey Winters (@onecaseman)

I think this is an area where despite all the news we hear about successful pivots that leaning more towards the Rabois model is a dominant strategy. Blindly trying out a bunch of startup ideas is like being in a dark room and feeling around for a door. A successful vision can turn on a light to that room so everyone can see the door and run toward it. Even many of those major pivots were guided by a strong, albeit new, vision from their founders. - Casey Winters

The Paths to Product/Market Fit:

There are two main schools of thought for how to reach product/market fit (Eric Ries Model vs. Keith Rabois Model), and success can be achieved by both modes.

Founders should build a strong opinion over which parts of which model they need to apply to maximize the chance of finding a product/market fit for their business. Casey’s personal belief is a strong vision combined with market feedback is a pretty dominant combination.

Eric Ries Model:

• Market (demand) first, then find product idea (supply)

• Driven by customer feedback/needs

• Focus on a specific customer segment

• Lots of iteration

• Launch narrowly to get feedback from target customers

• Applicable to Enterprise Companies (unsolved day-to-day problems), Marketplaces (quick to launch)

Keith Rabois Model:

• Product idea (supply) first, then find a market (demand)

• Driven by the vision of the founders

• Focus on a strong vision of both a problem and a solution

• Little iteration

• Launch broadly to achieve the vision and find a potential market

• Applicable to Consumer (creates new habit or interactions), Hardware (iteration has long timelines)

Minimize your Time to Product/Market Fit

andrewchen.com/ttpmf-time-to-product-market-fit/

By: Andrew Chen (@andrewchen)

To get to product/market fit, you need to keep the time to product/market fit (TTPMF) in mind. Lower TTPMF is good and it’s very easy to get: Just completely copy something that’s already at PMF.

Sure, cloning products have a lot of business (and ethical, and personal) weaknesses:

• It’s uninspired.

• You’ll never get to #1.

• You let a competitor define the market, and you play catch up.

• It’s hard to clone a community if it’s a networks-effects business.

So, keep the fundamentals the same (80%) while substantially reinventing 20% of the product. And pick the right 20%.

Ideally the differentiation is baked deeply into the core of the product, not out on the edges. Something the end user can see and feel within the first 30 seconds of using the product.

Rahul Vohra Shares Superhuman's Product Market Fit Framework | First Round Review

firstround.com/review/how-superhuman-built-an-engine-to-find-product-market-fit/

By: Rahul Vohra (@rahulvohra)

Remember the questions that Superhuman used?

1. How would you feel if you could no longer use Superhuman? A) Very disappointed B) Somewhat disappointed C) Not disappointed

2. What type of people do you think would most benefit from Superhuman?

3. What is the main benefit you receive from Superhuman?

4. How can we improve Superhuman for you?

The 4-step manual to get to product/market fit:

1. Segment to find your supporters and paint a picture of your high-expectation customers (HXC).

   1. Break down the Q1 responses by roles, etc. Find potential happy users who you may have overlooked.

   2. Happy users almost always describe themselves in Q2.

2. Analyze feedback to convert on-the-fence users into fanatics.

   1. Know (1) why people love the product, and (2) what holds people back from loving the product.

   2. Throw the Q3 responses into a word cloud and find patterns. (Disregard those who would not be disappointed without your product.)

   3. Segment the somewhat disappointed group again based on the main benefit that happy users are enjoying. (Disregard users who don’t resonate with your main benefit.)

   4. See the Q4 responses and find what’s missing to reach product/market fit. (e.g. Superhuman had lacked a mobile app at the time.)

3. Build your roadmap by doubling down on what users love and addressing what holds others back.

4. Repeat the process and make the product/market fit score the most important metric.

   1. Continue to track the product/market fit score. Early adopters are more forgiving, but as you push beyond this group, users become much more demanding, so the score may drop.

Beyond Product/Market Fit

Don’t settle down. The product/market fit process never ends as your market moves and changes over time. You need to keep moving and growing.

“This process never ends primarily for one reason - your market doesn’t sit still. It is always moving. These days markets are moving/changing at an accelerating pace. As your market moves, your product needs to move with it making product/market fit a pulse that you need to constantly keep your thumb on.”

- Brian Balfour

Product market fit isn’t a one-time, discrete point in time that announces itself with trumpet fanfares. Competitors arrive, markets segment and evolve, and stuff happens—all of which often make it hard to know you’re headed in the right direction before jamming down on the accelerator.

- Ben Horowitz

Also, to build a $100M+ company, product/market fit isn’t enough. Though I don’t cover the details in this post, there are four essential fits and each of these fits influence each other, so you can’t think about them in isolation.

• Market <> Product Fit

• Product <> Channel Fit

• Channel <> Model Fit

• Model <> Market Fit.

🔗 Related Links & Read More:

• Why Product Market Fit Isn't Enough — Brian Balfour

• (Market <> Product Fit) The Road to a $100M Company Doesn’t Start with Product — Brian Balfour

• (Product <> Channel Fit) Product Channel Fit Will Make or Break Your Growth Strategy — Brian Balfour

• (Channel <> Model Fit) Get Out of the ARPU-CAC Danger Zone with Channel Model Fit — Brian Balfour

• (Model <> Market Fit) The Model Market Fit Threshold & What it Means for Your Growth Strategy — Brian Balfour

—

Hope this article helps you understand the whole picture of product/market fit. If you have any questions, please DM me on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Remember what you should do next?

Don’t just read this article or the attached product management articles. Instead, highlight where you resonate with and leave your thoughts and learnings with Glasp so that you can look back at them anytime and we all can get smarter at the same time ;)

See you next time,

Kazuki

—

Growth is an engine for your business. As both a product manager and startup founder, I've been always thinking about how to grow the product/business. As I'm constantly consuming and highlighting articles on product growth, virality, psychology, and so on, I'd like to share some of my favorite reading materials that helped me figure out the big picture of product growth. (When someone says that they are an avid reader, look at their Glasp page! Here's my Glasp.)

There are countless must-read articles about product growth but I picked up some to map out the whole picture of product growth for you - product managers and founders. I've covered the growth mindset & psychology, growth framework, growth channels, growth strategy, virality, and retention & engagement.

Don’t just read this article or the attached articles. Instead, highlight where you resonate with and leave your thoughts and learnings with Glasp so that you can look back at them anytime and we all can get smarter at the same time ;)

If you're ready, let’s move on.

Table of Contents

• Growth - Mindset & Psychology

  • Do Things that Don't Scale

  • The Psychology of Startup Growth

• Growth - Framework

  • AARRR Framework - Metrics That Let Your StartUp Sound Like A Pirate Ship

  • Growth Loops are the New Funnels — Reforge

  • The Hook Model: How to Manufacture Desire in 4 Steps

• Growth - Acquisition & Activation (Channels & Conversion)

  • How to Set Up, Hire and Scale a Growth Strategy and Team: Growth, Hiring, KPI

  • The Growth Marketing Handbook

  • Content-driven Growth

  • Investor field notes: distribution and conversion models for consumer startups

• Growth - Referral (Virality)

  • Why People Share: The Psychology Behind "Going Viral"

  • Lessons Learned – Viral Marketing

  • The Five Types of Virality

  • 60 Ideas to Boost Your Growth

• Growth - Retention & Engagement

  • Hierarchy of Engagement, Expanded

  • Engagement Drives Stickiness Drives Retention Drives Growth

  • Octalysis: Complete Gamification Framework - Yu-kai Chou

--

Growth - Mindset & Psychology

Before diving into the growth framework, you need to have a growth mindset and understand the right psychology behind growth. Otherwise, you will end up being always seeking attractive headlines such as "20 best growth hacking ideas", "20 ideas to go viral", etc. Embrace the pain of failure, do things that don't scale, and be relentlessly resourceful.

Do Things that Don't Scale

http://paulgraham.com/ds.html

By: Paul Graham (@paulg)

Actually, startups take off because the founders make them take off. The most common unscalable thing founders have to do at the start is to recruit users manually. Nearly all startups have to. You can't wait for users to come to you. You have to go out and get them. Don't be shy and lazy. Don't ignore this path because the absolute numbers seem so small.

It's not the product that should be insanely great, but the experience of being your user. The product is just one component of that. For a big company it's necessarily the dominant one. But you can and should give users an insanely great experience with an early, incomplete, buggy product, if you make up the difference with attentiveness.

I have never once seen a startup lured down a blind alley by trying too hard to make their initial users happy.

As long as you can find just one user who really needs something and can act on that need, you've got a toehold in making something people want, and that's as much as any startup needs initially.

I should mention one sort of initial tactic that usually doesn't work: the Big Launch. [...] Why do founders think launches matter? A combination of solipsism and laziness. They think what they're building is so great that everyone who hears about it will immediately sign up.

The Psychology of Startup Growth

https://www.nfx.com/post/psychology-startup-growth/

By: James Currier (@JamesCurrier)

Growth is not a one-time gimmick. To get 1000% growth, there is no silver bullet. Growth comes from adopting the right psychology. The right mindset.

• Language first: Your language defines you. It tells users how you are relevant to their life. The common mistake is that companies build features first and then "put language on it". Language should come first.

• Empathy for users: The great Founder spends more time thinking about how the user thinks and feels. About their psychology. The question you have to ask every day is “What is your product to them so that it deserves a place in their complex lives?”

• Always be moving: Move constantly. Make more moves than anyone else. To grow, you have to run quicker experiments. Iterate faster. Never stop.

• Data love: Meaure everything. Test, measure, and iterate.

• Sustain pain of failure: Success is going from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. Move on from the losses.

Growth - Framework

To grow your product or business, you need to have a big picture of what you are doing and how growth works. Simply put, growth is all about compound effects. What a user does should increase the other user's value, so that the more users take actions, the more it creates value for all. The following frameworks will give you a clue to the most important question: How does your product grow?

AARRR Framework - Metrics That Let Your StartUp Sound Like A Pirate Ship

https://ms-mbalke.medium.com/aarrr-framework-metrics-that-let-your-startup-sound-like-a-pirate-ship-e91d4082994b

By: Melanie Balke (@mbalke4)

The AARRR metrics were coined by Dave McClure (we highly recommend you to take a look at his slideshare in 2007). These are the five most important metrics for a startup to measure your company’s growth while at the same time being simple and actionable.

The AARRR Framework:

Source: AARRR Framework - Metrics That Let Your StartUp Sound Like A Pirate Ship

• Acquisition: Where are your users coming from? Understand customer's journey, optimize it, and then find the marketing channel of largest-volume (#), lowest-cost ($), and best-performing (%). A single channel is enough as Peter Thiel said:

  It is very likely that one channel is optimal. Most businesses actually get zero distribution channels to work. Poor distribution — not product — is the number one cause of failure. If you can get even a single distribution channel to work, you have great business. If you try for several but don’t nail one, you’re finished. So it’s worth thinking really hard about finding the single best distribution channel.

• Activation: How good is the user’s first experience? Do LOTS of landing page tests & A/B tests - guess & iterate quickly to figure out the "Aha Moment". Get your user to the aha moment and let the user realize the real value in your product so that the user keeps coming back.

  • Facebook: 7 friends in 10 days

  • Twitter: following 30 people

  • Dropbox: upload at least 1 file

• Retention: Do people regularly come back to use your product? Why are others leaving? Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning. Automated emails are a simple and easy retention feature.

  • Acquisition Rate > Churn Rate = Growth

  • Acquisition Rate < Churn Rate = Leaky Bucket (Burning Cash 🔥💰)

• Referral: How can you turn your customers into your advocates? Only encourage users to refer after they have a "happy" user experience (8/10 score) or have a systematic process with incentives (e.g. Dropbox's referral program, hotemail's free signup, etc). Pay attention to Viral Coefficient, the number of users a customer refers to you. (e.g. Viral Coefficient 2 means 1 user refers 2 new users).

• Revenue: How can you monetize and increase revenue? You need to figure out the monetization plan. Increase Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) and decrease Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). A good ratio is CLV:CAC = 3:1.

Growth Loops are the New Funnels — Reforge

www.reforge.com/blog/growth-loops

By: Andrew Chen (@andrewchen), Kevin Kwok (@kevinakwok), Casey Winters (@onecaseman), and Brian Balfour (@bbalfour)

The AARRR metrics framework is a good starting point but misses the larger picture of the loop itself (no compound effect). “How does your product grow?” is simply the most important question to be able to answer. Focus on how the output of one cycle of the loop leverages the next cycle of the loop to get more output (compound effect), not short-term bumps and sugar rushes.

Growth Loops:

Source: Growth Loops are the New Funnels — Reforge

• (Input) New User: A new or returning user is created by reinvesting the output of the loop. (e.g. in case of Pinterest, sign up or returns)

• Action/Step: A series of actions/steps that generate the output. (e.g. save content, repin, etc ⇒ quality signals ⇒ search engines)

• Output: The steps produce some output that can be directly reinvested in the input. (e.g. find content via search engines ⇒ sign up or returns)

Why Growth Loops?

• Sustainable Compounding Growth: The fastest-growing products are typically powered by 1- 2 major loops that transition over time. Measuring and understanding the power/health of your loops is critical to understanding where to focus.

• More Defensible: Loops combine how your product, channel, and monetization model work together in a single system, meaning it's hard for others to replicate.

The Hook Model: How to Manufacture Desire in 4 Steps

https://www.nirandfar.com/how-to-manufacture-desire/

By: Nir Eyal (@nireyal)

The Hook Model is similar to Growth Loops in terms of the compound effect but from a different perspective.

The first-to-mind solution wins. The Hook Model is a 4 step process to build habit-forming products: Trigger, Action, Reward, and Investment. As the user goes through these phases, he or she builds habits in the process. (We highly recommend taking a look at his slideshare in 2013). Frequency and attitude change matter.

The Hook Model:

Source: The Hook Model: How to Manufacture Desire in 4 Steps

• Trigger: Starts with external triggers then shifts to internal triggers.

  • External - What gets the user to the product? The information for what to do next is within the trigger (e.g. email, ads, notification, etc).

  • Internal - The information for what to do next is informed through an association in the user's memory (e.g. emotions, routines, situations, places, etc). Negative emotions are powerful triggers (e.g. lonely, bored, inferior, etc).

• Action: What is the simplest action in anticipation of reward (e.g. scroll, search, play, etc)? Leverage motivation and ability: Behavior = Motivation + Ability + Trigger.

  • 6 Factors in Motivation: seeking pleasure, avoiding pain, seeking hope, avoiding fear, seeking acceptance, avoiding rejection.

  • 6 Factors in Ability: time, money, physical effort, brain cycles, social deviance, non-routine.

• Variable Reward: Is the reward fulfilling, yet leaves the user wanting more? The unknown is fascinating and increases behavior.

  • Social Rewards: empathetic joy, partnership, competition, recognition, and cooperation. (cf. John Maxwell's 6 Principles: we want to be valued, appreciated, trusted, respected, and understood.)

  • Resources: materials, information, inspirations, etc.

  • Self-achievement: mastery, competency, completion, etc.

• Investment: What is the bit of work done to increase the likelihood of next returning?

  • Load the Next Trigger of The Hook: message, comment, follow, save, etc.

  • Store Value to Improve The Experience: content, data, followers, reputations, etc. We value things more when put work in them. We seek to be consistent with the past behaviors.

Growth - Acquisition & Activation (Channels & Conversion)

Now you have the whole picture of what you should do. Next is to optimize each step. After you set a certain goal as a team or business, you should identify which channels you should go for and leverage based on the existing users. But acquiring users to your platform will be meaningless if users don't see value in your product. Both distribution and conversion matter.

How to Set Up, Hire and Scale a Growth Strategy and Team: Growth, Hiring, KPI

www.ycombinator.com/library/59-how-to-set-up-hire-and-scale-a-growth-strategy-and-team

By: Anu Hariharan (@anuhariharan)

Most products found 1-2 relevant channels early on that really work for them. 70% of experts say that referrals were the top channel within the first year. Identify the growth channel that works for a startup the best based on existing user behavior. Ask the two key questions:

• How do customers find solutions / solve this issue today?

• How do your best users use your product today? Can you do something to get more such users to discover the product quickly?

Identify Growth Channel

Source: How to Set Up, Hire and Scale a Growth Strategy and Team: Growth, Hiring, KPI

The Growth Marketing Handbook

https://www.julian.com/guide/growth/intro

By: Julian Shapiro (@Julian)

The growth funnel explained in the article is similar to the AARRR metrics but this article digs into the growth channel and what channel mixture you should use.

Succeeding at Unpaid Channels:

• Product-led growth: Does your product grow virally from users inviting other users who use the app together? This is one of the healthiest and fastest ways to grow. (e.g. Dropbox, Slack, Zoom, PayPal, etc)

• Content and SEO: Are people already googling? Then SEO is potentially viable. Build distribution pipelines around your content to share it beyond Google (e.g. webinars, newsletters).

• Word-of-mouth and referrals: Build an amazing product (low-friction and good referral programs) that people can't stop talking about.

• Sales: Will you have significant profit margins (typically $1,000+)? Then, attract sales leads through ads, content, warm intros, conferences, cold emailing, and out-of-home marketing.

Channel Mixture You Should Use:

• B2C ecommerce: Instagram/FB Ads, organic social, influencers, sponsorships, and marketplaces.

• B2C mobile app: Instagram/FB Ads and Apple Search.

• B2C SaaS app: FB Ads, Content, product-led growth, and Google Ads.

• Brick and mortar: Instagram/FB Ads, Yelp Ads, and PR.

Content-driven Growth

https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/content-driven-growth-strategy

By: Lenny Rachitsky (@lennysan)

The landscape of content-driven growth can be divided by 2x2 maps: SEO vs. virality & user-generated content (UGC) vs. editorially-generated content.

Source: Content-driven Growth

5 Content-driven Growth Strategies:

1. UGC x SEO: Leverage the user-generated content to be surfaced in organic search (e.g. Quora, Glassdoor, Reddit, etc).

2. Editorial x SEO: Focus on certain keywords and create content (employees or contractors) to try to rank higher (e.g. HubSpot, Ahrefs, Slidebean, etc).

3. UGC & Editorial x SEO: Use the combination of UGC and Editorial (e.g. Thumbtack, Zapier, Yelp, TripAdvisor, etc).

4. UGC x Virality: Motivate users to share what they created with their friends so that it pulls those friends into the product (e.g. TikTok, Airbnb listings, Zillow’s Zestimate, etc).

5. Editorial x Virality: Create one-off viral content (by founder or company) that spread through word-of-mouth (e.g. Mr. Beast, Stir, Superhuman, etc)

High-level Takeaways:

• Start Small: Play around with platform, topic, and style until you find something that works.

• Align on a Clear Goal: Clarify your goal. Is it to SEO, drive virality or build your brand?

• Hunt for Opportunity: Figure out topics that are underserved and create content to satisfy it.

• Give The Reigns to Passionate Ones: Let a passionate person (founders or employees) produce content.

• Think Long-term & Be Patient: Will it pay off in long-term? It takes years to see significant payoff.

Investor field notes: distribution and conversion models for consumer startups

www.bvp.com/atlas/investor-field-notes-distribution-and-conversion-models-for-consumer-startups

By: Talia Goldberg (@TaliaGold) and Alexandra Sukin (@AlexandraSukin)

Success or failure for internet businesses is dependent on Distribution and Conversion.

Distribution alone is not enough. Distribution without conversion is like being eight feet-tall on the basketball court but missing every layup. [...] Startup founders often fetishize monetization, when really, the focus should be conversion.

9 Distribution Tactics:

• Virality via social proof: We trust in groups of people and friends, and want to emulate behavior that we feel is validated by others. (e.g. friends or UGC recommendations, endorsements from influencers, other people's reviews, etc). Linktree leveraged the public pages of celebrities as social proof.

• The Etsy Effect: When a seller promotes their own content or product from a marketplace, it brings new consumers from the entire marketplace. This drives discovery and loyalty to the platform and creates brand equity.

• Influencers enable disintermediation of the social media superpowers: Many companies compete for attention on Instagram and Facebook, and this makes ads expensive and platform-dependent. Tap into the audiences of influencers. Experiment with newer less crowded platforms.

• New platforms: New platforms = new opportunities. Leverage (1) mega platform shifts (e.g. IoT, voice devices, blockchain, etc), and (2) breakout individual / social platforms (e.g. Zynga piggybacked on Facebook).

• Group purchasing: Users are incentivized to share deals with their networks to get discounts, while merchants benefit from streamlined supply chains and aggregated deliveries. (e.g. Pinduoduo, etc)

• Niche markets unlock massive markets: By building for niche, underserved communities, startups can create “wow” in a specific vertical and spur liquidity and organic growth like word of mouth. (e.g. Amazon started with books). Subreddits can be turned into a discrete products.

• Standing on the shoulder of giants: The same vein as leveraging breakout consumer companies. Benefit from a “codependent relationship”.

• First-order irrational, second-order rational (h/t Chris Paik): Disrupt a market by doing something that seems completely irrational but has some second-order result that is extremely beneficial to the company and creates an exceptional business model. (e.g. Robinhood free trading & monetization via payment through order flow)

• FOMO and the Velvet Rope: Leverage scarcity and hype (FOMO) around product launches. The invite system is a powerful use of FOMO as it implicitly leverages social proof. (e.g. Clubhouse, Pinterest, etc)

7 Conversion Tactics:

• A/B testing: One way can be to split a target audience into two groups, where one has the current version of the product and the other an updated version.

• Auctions: Leverage the human desire to compete for scarce goods and resources, and create a highly engaging experience by combining competition with the incentive for users to constantly observe the behavior of others in order to make buy/not buy decisions.

• Entertainment as conversion: Capture consumer attention by providing entertaining content. (e.g. live streaming with gamification or surprize)

• Community-driven conversion: Creating an engaged community can drive high conversion. (e.g. Peloton and Monthly; synchronous and asynchronous experiences with people who share similar interests.)

• Gamification: Leverage points, badges, leaderboards, meaningful stories/narratives, avatars, and teammates. (e.g. Pinduoduo - daily check in to reward points. Duolingo - experience points and streaks of lesson completion.)

• Gambling psychology: The unknown is always fascinating. (e.g. Twitter's feed refresh, Tinder's swipe, etc)

• Scarcity: A subset of FOMO. Many companies artificially engineer scarcity to create demand for products. (e.g. NBA Topshot - limited amount of unique digital assets, StockX - limited product drops, etc)

Growth - Referral (Virality)

Once you figure out the growth channel and user activation process, you should let users advocate your product and invite their friends to the platform. Referral or virality can't happen if you don't understand the psychology behind why people share. Humans are status-seeking monkeys, and we want to be valued, appreciated, trusted, respected, and understood. You need to somehow show the benefits of sharing your product and reduce the friction to sharing.

Why People Share: The Psychology Behind "Going Viral"

https://www.nfx.com/post/why-people-share/

By: James Currier (@JamesCurrier)

The foundation of viral growth is rooted in motivational psychology and language. Virality ≠ Network Effect, but thinking through how to make your product viral helps to give it network effects.

Baseline Viral Thinking:

• Pack Animal Psychology: as a pack animal, we’re constantly thinking about our status, how we’re perceived, where we fit in, etc.

• Reduce the Friction to Sharing: minimize the effort and thinking required to share.

• Make a Product Broken unless People Share: if a user can't get the utility that they want, they will look for ways to share.

• Make Language about The User, Not You: Transcend your own self-interest in favor of your users' own self-interest.

What People Consider Before Sharing = Benefit & Costs:

• How might sharing this benefit me (the sharer) or you (the audience/recipient) either via utility or via status/reputation?

• How much time and effort (friction) will I have to spend to share this?

8 Clusters of Motivation That Trigger Sharing

• Status: Status is scarce because it indicates the hierarchy of us in the pack. Access to something scarce or exclusive motivates people to share because they can get high status from the people they share it with.

• Identity Projection: “Tribalism” is a powerful human motivation. People want to show who they are and seek validation in that point of view. We share to (A) signal that we belong or (B) help us find our tribe.

• Being Helpful: We share useful things to be perceived as helpful and nurturing to our tribes. Language matters. If your language is clear, pithy, and compelling, it will 10x the word of mouth.

• Safety: Any perceived threat to safety can be a powerful reason why people share (e.g. Nextdoor, Citizen, Trulia's crime map, etc). Fear is embedded in the most primal part of our psychology.

• Order: People share it to help them bring other people into the same protocol of organization. People who organize their world by their personality are motivated to share tools to optimize and organize.

• Novelty: People seek novelty and curiosity. We are attracted by things that are new enough to not be stale, but not too new to be strange.

• Validation: People share things to be validated and boost their self-esteem. They want to know what people think of them, and they will share products that help them do that.

• Voyeurism: Two related motivations: vicarious enjoyment and schadenfreude. People share things to allow others to vicariously live through them or to unite with others in common judgment or disdain.

Lessons Learned – Viral Marketing

https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/lessons-learnt-viral-marketing/

By: David Skok (@BostonVC)

There are two key parameters that drive viral growth: (1) the Viral Coefficient (K), and (2) the Viral Cycle Time (ct). With these two parameters, you'll see how the population of customers changes over time. The most viral products are those that only work if they are shared (e.g. does your product work better by sharing?).

The Viral Coefficient (K) is the number of new customers that each existing customer is able to successfully convert. The Viral Coefficient K = (# of invitations) * (conversion rate %). The Viral Coefficient must be greater than 1 to have viral growth. Otherwise, you will not have true viral growth.

The Viral Cycle Time (ct) is the time that it takes for the invitation-to-invitation cycle to complete (e.g. a user sees your product, tests it out, invites friends, then a friend sees your product... ). Shorter is better! Customer growth is dramatically affected by a shorter cycle time. Understand the user flow and reduce the friction to share.

The Five Types of Virality

https://news.greylock.com/the-five-types-of-virality-8ba42051928d

By: Josh Elman (@joshelman)

The goal of all viral efforts is to insert (or “incept”) an idea of what a product can do into someone else’s head, and to get them so excited about it they want to try it and use it.

5 Types of Virality:

• Word-of-mouth virality: A product being so good that people can’t help telling their friends about it. Make sure your product is easy to find later. Is a name easy to remember and spell? Is it easy to describe? If you don’t have a pithy way to describe your product, your users won’t be able to either.

• Incentivized word-of-mouth virality: Similar to word-of-mouth, but with a little added incentive for people to refer their friends. (e.g. Dropbox storage, Uber refer bonus, etc)

• Demonstration virality: The nature of a product is simple and cool so that people are showing it off. (e.g. Instagram, Pinterest, Musica.ly, etc)

• Infectious virality: People get other people because it will make your product better for both of them. (e.g. Snapchat, Twitter, Nextdoor, etc). Invitations are the key to spreading. Don't be spammy. Being invited into a product that isn’t naturally social doesn’t really work.

• Outbreak virality: People are spreading because it's fun, popular, or cool by sharing them. (Pokémon Go, etc)

If your product is about creating content or having experiences that are easy to show off, focus on demonstration virality. If your product costs money and has value, focus on the incentivized word of mouth.

60 Ideas to Boost Your Growth

www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/turbo-boosts

By: Lenny Rachitsky (@lennysan) & Ali Abouelatta (@abouelatta_ali)

To get people’s attention, you need to do something special. Something remarkable.

7 types of strategies to boost your business/product:

• Viral Video: A video that tells your story, demos your product, or delights people so much that they can’t help but share it with their friends. (e.g. Dropbox, Twitter, mmhmm, etc)

• Mini-product (aka "drop"): Launch a non-core product offering that gets attention, which reflects attention toward your brand and/or core product. (e.g. Calm - do nothing for 2 min, Toucan - own the word, etc)

• Limited-time Offer: Running a promotion on your existing product, giving people a reason to pay attention and act. (e.g. Coinbase - Dodgecoin sweepstakes, Cash App - 99% off, etc)

• Influencers: Partner with an influencer to promote your product. (e.g. Reddit - Paul Graham, Spanx - Oprah, Atoms - Alexis Ohanian, etc)

• Co-marketing: Collaborate with another company to promote your products. (e.g. Red Bull x GoPro, Hulu x Uber Eats, etc)

• Offline Experience: Organize an in-person experience that gets people fired up about your product. (e.g. Snackpass - events with local college groups, Snapchat - spectacles vending machines, etc)

• Picking a Fight: Take a stand against a big company or competitor, which creates controversy and attention. (e.g. Hey - fight with Apple, Salesforce - fight with Siebel Systems, etc)

Growth - Retention & Engagement

In the end, everything is all about retention. Even if people are coming to your platform and inviting their friends, without a real value it is a leaky bucket. To increase user retention, your product needs to be sticky. To be sticky, users should be engaging with your product. Focus on the user's core action and virtuous loops of how a user's core action moves the flywheel forward. Remember? Growth is all about compound effects. What a user does should increase not only the user's value but also the other user's value.

Hierarchy of Engagement, Expanded

https://sarahtavel.medium.com/the-hierarchy-of-engagement-expanded-648329d60804

By: Sarah Tavel (@sarahtavel)

How do you maximize your chances of building an enduring $1B+ company? It comes down to maximizing engagement.

Tavel's Hierarchy of Engagement:

Source: Hierarchy of Engagement, Expanded

Level 1 - Growing Engaged Users: Focus on growing users completing the core action, the action that forms the foundation of your product and correlates with retention (e.g. Facebook - friending, Pinterest - pinning, Snapchat - snapping, YouTube - subscribing, etc). Other features support the core action (ladder of engagement).

Level 2 - Retaining Users: The product should get better the more it's used. Users have more to lose by leaving the product. Create accruing benefits and mounting losses as a user engages. Anonymity apps look good for Level 1 but fail for Level 2.

• Accruing Benefits: The more I use the product, the better it gets. (e.g. Pinterest - personalized feed and recommendation)

• Mounting Loss: The more I use the product, the more I'd have to lose if I left the product. (e.g. Pinterest - bookmarks, followers, expression, and extension of your identity)

Level 3 - Self-perpetuating (Virtuous Loops): Create virtuous loops as users engage. Virtuous loops are the flywheels that convert users' engagement into fuel to power your company forward (compound effect). The strongest one is a network effect. (e.g. more users pin ⇒ richer interest graph ⇒ better discovery)

Source: Hierarchy of Engagement, Expanded

The Ultimate Metrics:

• Cohorts show:

  • Growth: Size of each cohort

  • Engagement: Ratio of users performing the core action

  • Retention: Cohort performance over time

• Cohort Performance is the clearest way to see a company's engagement.

  • Number of weekly users completing the core action.

  • Percentage of weekly active users completing the action.

Engagement Drives Stickiness Drives Retention Drives Growth

https://medium.com/sequoia-capital/engagement-drives-stickiness-drives-retention-drives-growth-3a6ac53a7a00

By: Sequoia Capital (@sequoia)

If a product truly adds value for you, you will engage with it more deeply. If it makes you happy, you visit it more frequently and become an active user.

Retention is simply about users returning to your product; stickiness is about them returning of their own volition. Stickiness helps reduce your dependency on tactics such as push notifications.

Fundamentally, if a user finds value in your product, they will return. The greatest growth lever is creating magical moments in which users recognize that value (e.g. Aha moment, etc). A great company focuses on sustainable growth through engagement, stickiness, and retention.

• Engagement Drives Stickiness: Not all daily active users (DAU) are equal. Some engage a lot, and some engage less. Measure “Lness”, the number of days visited per week. The number of sessions, a measure of engagement, can serve as an early predictor of stickiness.

• Engagement Drives Stickiness Drives Retention: The differences in stickiness manifest in retention. The more a user engages with a product, the more sticky it becomes, and the more likely they are to retain. Measure D1, D7, etc (retain on the Nth day after installing the app).

• Engagement Drives Stickiness Drives Retention Drives Growth: A decrease in DAU is an early indicator of a decrease in WAU and MAU. The fate of the user and platform differs drastically based on engagement, stickiness, and retention.

Source: Engagement Drives Stickiness Drives Retention Drives Growth

Octalysis: Complete Gamification Framework - Yu-kai Chou

https://yukaichou.com/gamification-examples/octalysis-complete-gamification-framework/

By: Yu-kai Chou (@yukaichou)

Gamification is a good way to attract new potential users and retain existing users by keeping them actively engaged with a product. But don't rely too much on gamification. You should always focus on the user's core action and value.

In essence, gamification is a human-focused design that optimizes people's feelings, motivations, and engagement. Some extremely successful products do very well with Social Influence, while others just utilize Scarcity. Think through the Octalysis for each step in the user journey for each user role.

Octalysis - 8 Core Drives of Gamification:

Source: Octalysis: Complete Gamification Framework - Yu-kai Chou

• Epic Meaning & Calling: a user believes that he/she is doing something greater than themselves or they were “chosen” to do something. (e.g. Wikipedia, open-source projects, etc)

• Development & Accomplishment: the internal drive of making progress, developing skills, and eventually overcoming challenges. A badge or trophy without a challenge is not meaningful. (e.g. points, badkges, leaderboards, etc)

• Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback: People want to be able to see the results of their creativity, receive feedback, and respond in turn. This can be Evergreen Mechanics, where no longer needs to add more content to keep attracting them. (e.g. Lego, painting, etc)

• Ownership & Possession: When people feel ownership, they innately want to make what they own better and own even more. The more effort we put, the more sense of ownership we feel. (e.g. collecting stamps, etc)

• Social Influence & Relatedness: social aspects that drive people (e.g. mentorship, acceptance, social responses, competition, and envy). When your friend has amazing skills or owns something extraordinary, you will be driven to reach the same level. Also, we want to be closer to people, places, or events that we can relate to.

• Scarcity & Impatience: the fact that people can’t get something right now motivates them to think about it all day long. (e.g. early days of Facebook, Clubhouse, etc)

• Unpredictability & Curiosity: The unknown is fascinating and this is the primary factor behind gambling addiction. Many have misunderstood this as the driver behind points, badges, and leaderboard mechanics.

• Loss & Avoidance: People want to avoid something negative happening. (e.g. losing previous work, losing the opportunity, etc)

Left Brain vs Right Brain Core Drives

• Right Brain Core Drives: more related to creativity, self-expression, and social aspects. Intrinsic Motivators = the activity itself is rewarding on its own. You don't need a goal or reward.

• Left Brain Core Drives: more associated with logic, calculations, and ownership. Extrinsic Motivators = the goal is to obtain something, whether it's a goal, good, or anything.

White Hat vs Black Hat Gamification

• White Hat Gamification: utilize the top Core Drives. Does it let you express your creativity, make you feel successful through skill mastery, or give you a higher sense of meaning?

• Black Hat Gamification: utilize the bottom Core Drives. Are you doing something because of the unknown or the fear of losing something?

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Hope this article helps you understand the whole picture of product growth. If you have any questions, please DM me on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Remember what you should do next?

Don’t just read this article or the attached product management articles. Instead, highlight where you resonate with and leave your thoughts and learnings with Glasp so that you can look back at them anytime and we all can get smarter at the same time ;)

See you next time,

Kazuki

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That’s the Nyan cat. Believe it or not, the above GIF was sold for over half a million dollars. Yes, the cat GIF you can easily google and watch it loop for as many hours as you’d like, was sold for the price of a 3,000 square-foot house.

Why would anyone sell that? Better yet, why would anyone buy it for that much money?

It’s simple: that moving pixelated cat was sold as an NFT, also known as the new darling of digital art collectors worldwide.

NFTs are non-fungible tokens, meaning they’re not interchangeable with other assets of the same type. If a token is non-fungible, that means it can’t be copied or replaced. It can’t be exchanged among people — like dollar bills — and it can’t be forged like a Van Gogh, for instance.

Dollars are fungible, while NFTs aren’t. Bitcoins are fungible, while NFTs aren’t. Hopefully, that makes it easier to understand.

NFTs are turning the digital art world around. They give creators a way to make money from their artwork, while also giving online art curators a sense of ownership and connection with creators. By sense of ownership, I mean rigorous ownership, as NFTs come with a certificate of the digital ownership of the asset you’ve bought.

That’s right: NFTs are registered and authenticated on the blockchain. The origin and authenticity of a piece of digital art can be proven after acquiring professional Certificates of Authenticity in certification services like Verisart. This way, an NFT’s source can be traced even after a collector has purchased it from the creator, as the NFT states who owns the asset.

Here’s why that matters, and why NFTs are so valuable today.

How Do NFTs Work, and why are they important?

NFTs are created with a type of cryptocurrency (or crypto, a digital currency) called blockchain, which makes them a brand new opportunity for collectors, investors, and artists.

Why are people trying to get their hands on them? In short, because they’re unique. And because they’re unique, they’re highly desirable. When a highly desirable thing is sought after by salivating buyers, you better grab it as soon as you can.

Now, on to the figures.

The NFT market size has boomed. The market cap was around $250–350M in 2020, but it’s already $2 billion in the first quarter of 2021. $2 BILLION. It’s a little short of insane.

According to NonFungible.com, there were more than twice as many buyers as sellers in the first quarter of this year, with 73,000 buyers for 33,000 sellers [1]. Both buyers and sellers can collect and sell NFTs in online marketplaces like OpenSea and SuperRare.

Let’s see some examples of NFTs.

• GIFs, like the groovy kitty you saw above.

• Digital art, like images and video clips, is sold on platforms like Cultured Crypto and Foundation.

• Tweets. Yes, tweets. Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey sold his very first tweet as an NFT on March 2021 for, uh, $2.9 million.

  https://twitter.com/jack/status/20

• Collectible cards. Even your beloved one-of-a-kind Pokemon cards can now be safely traded in NFT marketplaces. According to Connor Sephton from CoinTelegraph, “If you were to buy a coveted Pokémon card, you’d be able to receive it in the form of a nonfungible token — with this platform storing it safely on your behalf.” As you’ve noticed, the key term is “safety”.

How Will NFT Impact the Curator Economy in the Near Future?

With NFT, art curators (or collectors) have the power to collect something that they really resonate with. But how so?

Curators can co-create or co-own a creator’s asset, and the more the value of NFT increases, the more the creator will receive in financial return. It’s a win-win structure, and a profitable one for all involved. NFT trading platforms are where passionate supporters of digital assets develop meaningful connections with their respective creators.

What’s more, it’s a huge investment opportunity for appreciators of good assets, and even for hobbyists. As an example, Cultured Crypto is a digital space that arguably curates the best collection of NFT art on the planet. True digital art aficionados wouldn’t want to miss the latest and greatest NFTs from the world’s best artists around the globe.

Are There Any Downsides to an NFT?

Everything comes with a price. And since the price is essentially what we’re talking about, let’s hear some of the downsides of NFTs.

For appreciators of unique physical art, such as paintings, NFTs might not be as interesting. Unfortunately, such physical assets can’t be digitalized. For some people, that’s great. On the other hand, for others who would like to buy the digital version of a painting they love, that’s sad.

Another thing that may frustrate NFT buyers is the lack of control over their tokens. Remember the Nyan Cat? Someone bought it for $580,000, but if you go ahead and Google “Nyan cat gif”, you’ll find the original GIF, as well as all of its fun variations. To some people, it may not make sense to pay a large value for something people have access to for free.

Will NFTs Replace Valuable Physical Assets?

Not really. Collectors of physical assets will always be around, and physical assets won’t just vanish into thin air.

As we all knew, the digital shift of pretty much everything was inevitable. Classes and meetings have gone digital, particularly when we needed it most. But will we sacrifice in-person meetings if they’re attainable? Not at all.

Art has also gone digital, and art curation followed suit. So have a lot of the physical assets you owned, such as collectible cards. That’s not to say that traditional art and collectibles have become replaceable — they never will. They’ll become antiques, at most.

We’ve all had this conversation at least once: for years now, we’ve been talking about the potential obsolescence of books when compared to Kindles and PDFs. And as we’ve seen, they still haven’t been able to mimic the original reading experience. The same goes for digital art versus physical art.

Surely, digital assets like NFTs can’t be ruined, stolen, or forged, as the transaction and provenance from creator to the buyer is ironclad. Plus, the collaboration between owner and collector is highly profitable. Still, that won’t necessarily make every single artist become part of the NFT empire. Not in the foreseeable future, at least.

Despite that, NFTs are an interesting consideration for those looking to profit from their unique creations, as well as their rare (or, dare I say, “iconic”) items in the safest possible way. It’s quite amazing to see both the creator and curator economies transform before our eyes.

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See you next time,

Kazuki

P.S. — You can see what I’ve read and highlighted about NFT from here.