How to consistently go viral: Nikita Bier’s playbook for winning at consumer apps

honored to be on a product management

podcast for a person who doesn't believe

product management is real we're already

already getting into the hot takes you

launched TBH went viral you end up

selling it to Facebook what was the

Insight that helped you come up with

this is a big idea that we should try I

looked on the App Store and the number

one app in the United States was an app

called saraha but the entire app was in

Arabic like the strongest signal that

you could ever have that people want

something this is insane I did not know

this whole story so we launched this app

it immediately took off servers started

crashing I looked at our numbers and I'm

like we will be number one in the United

States in like six days a tip that

you're sharing here is look for lat and

demand where people are trying to obtain

a particular value and going through a

very distortive process if you can

actually crystallize what their

motivation is you can have this kind of

intense adoption I I didn't know you're

actually a product manager at Facebook

the thing I didn't real realiz as a

product manager in a large tech company

is there is very little product

management that you do they're mainly

just writing a documents and then kind

of being the team secretary and running

around getting approvals but products

Live and Die in the pixels you should be

designing the hierarchy the pixels the

flows everything that's on you at some

point you started tweeting like hey I'm

working on you app everyone was going

nuts I saw stat that you made $11

million in sales 10 million downloads

the thing that is hard to really

understand is it is absolute chaos to

keep the thing online I was sleeping 3

hours a day for 3 months our team was

also Relentless though they would come

over to my house 9:00 a.m. stay until

midnight and just do that 7 days a week

is there anything else that's just like

this is something that is probably going

to help you with your app with certainty

if you're good at your job you can make

an app grow and go viral over the years

of building all these apps I've accured

all these growth hacks that still nobody

knows about

[Music]

today my guest is Nikita beer Nikita has

built launched and helped get more apps

to the top of the App Store than any

human I've ever come across he sold his

first big hit TBH to Facebook for over

$30 million he sold his second big app

gas to Discord for many millions more he

did this all with a tiny team and very

little funding he's also helped dozens

of Founders and apps and as an adviser

or investor to companies like flow

citizen be real locket and wealth simple

and many more today he spends his time

advising companies on file growth

strategies design feedback structuring

their product development process and a

lot more what I love about Nikita is

that he has very strong opinions about

how to build successful products that

are rooted in him actually doing the

work over the past decade to see for

himself what works and what doesn't

Nikita has been the single most

requested guest on this podcast and

you'll soon see why this episode is

packed with tactics and stories and

lessons that I am sure will leave you

wanting more more if you want to work

with Nikita on your app you can actually

book his time at intro. c/ Nikita beer

and if you enjoy this podcast don't

forget to subscribe and follow it in

your favorite podcasting app or YouTube

it's the best way to avoid missing

future episodes and helps the podcast

tremendously with that I bring you

Nikita

beer Nikita thank you so much for being

here welcome to the podcast thanks for

having me I'm excited to to dive in I'm

also I feel uh honored to be on a

product management podcast for a person

who doesn't believe product management

is real we're ready ready getting into

the hot takes uh we're definitely going

to chat about wait and you said not real

okay I thought you were gonna say not uh

not useful okay this is good okay let's

put a pin in that I think we think this

I think everyone already feels this I

think it's gonna be a very special

conversation I've been looking forward

to chatting you for a long time and

there's so much that I want to ask you

the way that I'm thinking we frame this

convers ation is we go through the story

behind the apps that you've built or

helped build that have hit the top of

the App Store and basically hear the

inside story of what it took to build

those apps and to make them successful

and then through that try to extract as

many lessons as we can about what it

takes to build a successful viral

consumer app these days how does that

sound to you sounds amazing and a lot of

it was luck but a lot of it was uh very

very tactical work that uh went into it

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Lenny First I want to start with

something that I think very few people

know about you so the first thing that

you built the first product that you

built was uh very different from what

you do these days and it was a product

called potify which something I actually

would really want it helps you decide

who to vote for based on how it would

impact your life can you just share a

bit about just that part of your life

and why you decided to Pivot away from

that into consumer apps yeah so when I

was in college I was really interested

in this kind of uh thing that American

voters do which is like they they vote

against their own Financial

self-interest like people in New York

and San Francisco you know vote for

democrats for higher taxes people in

Kansas uh vote for Republicans for low

taxes and not uh and they you know they

make less money and so that fewer

government benefits and I wanted build

this tool that would help communicate

the financial impacts of these policy

proposals of presidents and I I built it

in like my last year of college and we

it was just a web app that we put out

and it would it would calculate their

tax proposals the government benefits

that they were proposing and you would

enter in your basic personal information

how many kids you have uh if uh your age

and then it would just tell tell you in

dollars what the impact would be and it

also tell you uh we simulated those