How the biggest consumer apps got their first 1k users(lennysnewsletter.com)
lennysnewsletter.com
How the biggest consumer apps got their first 1k users
https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-the-biggest-consumer-apps-got
85 comments
LinkedIn: got access to your email contacts list, and spammed everyone in it, multiple times. (This is the reason I do not use LinkedIn, is I do not support a company that is founded on sending out spam).
Yup, they got sued for it too: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/linkedin-class-action-email...
I will never ever create a LinkedIn account, the hard sell techniques, spam to my inbox and aggressiveness is so off-putting that I would rather eat my own barf. This whole company and its power users reeks to me from outside like a scene from Glengarry Glen Ross: a bunch of hustlers trying to fake-it-till-they-make-it, appear super-important and trump up their bogus businessperson profiles and pretend connections.
you not missing anything. The LI I enjoyed some 5-8 years ago is nothing like LI today. I got literally blocked twice because someone was spreading misinformation re vaccines, and when I point it out that LI is not even a place for this, I got reported by so many anti vax that my account got automatically suspended.
Nathan Blecharczyk, co founder of AirBNB, and once on FBI 100 wanted as a top spammer on US soil [1], also spin off AirBNB by posting unrealistically (fake) cheap rentals of beautiful apartments in places where normal rent should be 10x more. Once people reply to these offers he auto-responded that the unit has been rented, but they should be looking for another unit on AirBNB website. Super clever, super immoral, illegal?
[1] https://venturebeat.com/2011/10/27/airbnb-spam-allegations/
[1] https://venturebeat.com/2011/10/27/airbnb-spam-allegations/
Spam, the mother of all growth hacking.
It makes me laugh thinking about my time as a growth hacker. Reading these style of posts and thinking that there's going to be some hidden gem of dam buster that will unleash all leads.
Nope just spam. Spam will get you the results you need.
It makes me laugh thinking about my time as a growth hacker. Reading these style of posts and thinking that there's going to be some hidden gem of dam buster that will unleash all leads.
Nope just spam. Spam will get you the results you need.
> Reddit: As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, they created tons of fake accounts to show a community.
My personal conspiracy theory right now is that they're behind 90% of awards on posts. It costs them nothing and normalises the behaviour.
My personal conspiracy theory right now is that they're behind 90% of awards on posts. It costs them nothing and normalises the behaviour.
Many people buy Reddit Premium to get rid of ads. Each month also grants you 700 coins, which is enough to award a gold and two silvers. Receiving a gold gives you enough coins to give a silver (I think, I don't remember the exact ratio). That is where a ton of awards come from.
Employees do get free gold to hand out, but the ratio isn't as high as you'd think.
Employees do get free gold to hand out, but the ratio isn't as high as you'd think.
I fully admit it's a baseless conspiracy theory :) Perhaps it happened in the early days to get traction if not now, or perhaps not, but anyway thanks for the information.
I've pretty much only ever seen TikToks on YouTube!
Meme compilations, best TikToks and so on...
The kids watch them, but dont use TikTok!
Meme compilations, best TikToks and so on...
The kids watch them, but dont use TikTok!
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Long time back when IRC was in use, we had server operators removing bots from IRC channels. It was easy to discover a bot as when you ping them on direct message they were not able to have good conversation with you.
They were multiple simple AI systems that tried to emulate human but it was easy to discover that it is a bot.
One botnet came up with solution that was brilliant. Put bot on few channels and it someone start talking to it, have the bot randomly outreach person who is active from different channel. Then rely conversation between them as man-in-the-middle, just changing the nicknames. You could have full conversation with actual person and it was hard to spot that it's a bot:-)
I think they missed "create fake users" which is less likely to be admitted but likely a viable strategy. Are there any good studies on how fake users influence your ability to acquire new users?
Anecdata, but when starting a web forum years and years ago, I had to post regularly as a dozen sock puppet users to kick start it. Nobody wants to be the first, and 99 percent of people just lurk.
I’ve been a soundsystem mc and organizing parties since 97. I have noticed similar behavior on the patrons attending. People either need to get tipsy enough or someone else has to have the courage and be the first one dancing. Now, even if it’s not my show, I tend to be early on dancing and that usually opens up “queue”.. ratio of lurkers is ofcourse high but the genre is more geared towards people coming to actually dance.
Ah yes the classic Dancing Guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fW8amMCVAJQ
For people who want to avoid YouTube, the transcript is https://sive.rs/ff and the video is https://sive.rs/file/DancingGuy-ff.m4v.
This would have been gold if it was narrated by Steve Irwin/Crocodile Hunter. I felt like I was watching a nature documentary.
I was expecting cops to arrest him for being stoned.
Also, YT recommended this video: https://youtu.be/SA7bKo4HRTg
It might be the best 5 minutes of your day
Also, YT recommended this video: https://youtu.be/SA7bKo4HRTg
It might be the best 5 minutes of your day
In case anyone else wants to know about it before investing their time:
The YouTube video title is "Funniest Leadership Speech ever!"
It's a little humerous, but I didn't hear anything about leadership - the word was never even said by the speaker! The speaker ended by saying "…and that's where I learned where I'm from." So yeah... not about leadership at all. Decent speech, but bad YouTube title. There wasn't any lessons or anything, just a story about the guy when he was a kid.
The YouTube video title is "Funniest Leadership Speech ever!"
It's a little humerous, but I didn't hear anything about leadership - the word was never even said by the speaker! The speaker ended by saying "…and that's where I learned where I'm from." So yeah... not about leadership at all. Decent speech, but bad YouTube title. There wasn't any lessons or anything, just a story about the guy when he was a kid.
> the word was never even said by the speaker
the first sentence of his speech starts off with "when you think of leadership" lol
the first sentence of his speech starts off with "when you think of leadership" lol
Oops. I guess that's how uninspiring the speech was. Thank you for the correction.
This is so incredible! Not sure if real or not but it seems plausible as to how movements are created. Very illuminating if true. Hope to apply it in future ventures.
Reddit did this in the early days
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/reddi...
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/reddi...
Where would dating sites be without bots?
Not just that, there was one dating site that I joined after a friend of mine recommended it to me, and I soon realized that said site was “recycling” direct messages. What I mean is, they took real messages that their users had sent to other people on the site and they sent these messages to new users. In this way they roped people into paying for premium so that you can respond to messages. And canceling the membership was really difficult too. And when I went to their terms and conditions I saw that they had sneakily put in the ToC, that no one reads, that the site was “for entertainment” and some additional wording, in order to be able to defend what they were doing. At the end of the day it’s basically fraud IMO, and super scummy behavior even if they are able to get away with it legally.
Yea, it really frustrates me that some companies can create bot accounts and basically lie to their customers and trick them into paying and it doesn't seem to be fraudulent in a legal sense. But maybe it is. Maybe there's a legal case for fraud against some of these dating sites/apps. Anyone know?
> recycling direct messages
That's kind of a genius way. Fraud for sure though.
That's kind of a genius way. Fraud for sure though.
Every single one have fake data, guaranteed. I have yet to see a public facinh site I worked on that didn't have some fake data.
Some outrageously fake, like x10 times the user count.
Some outrageously fake, like x10 times the user count.
What you will learn is that the biggest consumer apps get their first 1k users through gray-hat tactics. And if you’re not willing to do the same you will not beat them.
You're not going to beat them regardless. Once a consumer tech market/segment has an overwhelming winner (or duopoly), forget about it, it's done. It's very rare that the market winners in consumer tech get unseated. The odds are you'll have to wait 10-20 years for the next inflection point (as with smartphones & apps) to have any shot.
Google/YouTube/Maps, Priceline/Booking, eBay, Amazon/Prime/Kindle/Twitch, Match.com & Co., Windows/Office, Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp, Netflix, Craigslist, Wikipedia, Reddit, PayPal, Android/iOS, Airbnb, Uber/Lyft, and so on.
Once on top, they tend to stay there (for all sorts of obvious reasons). Reddit for example has already been on top for a decade now and there are no challengers of consequence (despite how much their site and app both suck, they abuse their users and yet nothing, momentum is an amazing thing).
Google/YouTube/Maps, Priceline/Booking, eBay, Amazon/Prime/Kindle/Twitch, Match.com & Co., Windows/Office, Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp, Netflix, Craigslist, Wikipedia, Reddit, PayPal, Android/iOS, Airbnb, Uber/Lyft, and so on.
Once on top, they tend to stay there (for all sorts of obvious reasons). Reddit for example has already been on top for a decade now and there are no challengers of consequence (despite how much their site and app both suck, they abuse their users and yet nothing, momentum is an amazing thing).
When Reddit replaced Digg, it was because Reddit was trailing Digg closely in the shadows. Specifically, Reddit was already successfully grown, well featured, reasonably scalable, merely ranked #2 in public perception and numbers. Digg made multiple critical mistakes, and Reddit was ready to accept the thrown.
Reddit has made some critical mistakes, also has had a small number of long outages, but there is no powerful force lurking in the shadows.
The forces in the shadow of Reddit today usually have several terminal weaknesses. They won't be able to handle a 100x traffic surprise, both culturally and their servers, when a true exodus will probably be at least 1000x. They often exist for a single topic, which is frequently bigotry.
Best of luck to anyone trying.
Reddit has made some critical mistakes, also has had a small number of long outages, but there is no powerful force lurking in the shadows.
The forces in the shadow of Reddit today usually have several terminal weaknesses. They won't be able to handle a 100x traffic surprise, both culturally and their servers, when a true exodus will probably be at least 1000x. They often exist for a single topic, which is frequently bigotry.
Best of luck to anyone trying.
One of my favourite stories was Paypal - they spent tonnes of their money buying things on eBay and demanding to only pay with PayPal.
PayPal's most effective technique by a dramatic margin was paying users $10 to get other users to sign up. It was an early example of using that sign-up referral payment approach at scale online.
https://www.businessinsider.com/peter-thiel-paypal-paid-cust...
https://www.businessinsider.com/peter-thiel-paypal-paid-cust...
I remember the good days when Uber paid £20 per sign up here in the UK.
I was on early and would just round people up at the end of a house party by shouting “who wants a free taxi home?!”.
I had free service for about a year.
I was on early and would just round people up at the end of a house party by shouting “who wants a free taxi home?!”.
I had free service for about a year.
That's so dirty, and very fitting for PayPal.
Long time ago (2010 or earlier) I sold some things on eBay/had money in PayPal only place I could cash it out at the time was Home Depot that was supporting their money... was interesting, would buy some peanuts/an Ice Tea.
The problem is not getting your first 1k users (anyone with enough time and money can do that). The real challenge is how to make a sticky product that people care enough about to tell their friends.
If you've created multiple "things" and it's never been a problem to get your first 1K users/viewers/listeners, you're been amazingly lucky. Congratulations.
You start by pretending you're 10 users to create social proof, then a massive spamming campaign should get you to 100 users, and then you fudge the books and say you have 1k to anyone who asks.
That's generally what the companies listed in the article did too.
That's generally what the companies listed in the article did too.
By time and money do you mean just running paid ads?
Would love a similar article for b2b saas!
Straight up corruption, bribery and kickbacks, is apparently a sound strategy.
At least it was for the Netskope, Platfora (now owned by Workday), Sumo Logic, and half a dozen other companies who paid hundreds of thousands in kickbacks to a Netflix VP. Didn't work out so well for the former VP, who's been convicted of wire fraud and money laundering, and is facing prison time [1]. But as far as I can tell, none of the companies involved have faced any kind of sanction at all for their involvement.
[1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-netflix-executiv...
At least it was for the Netskope, Platfora (now owned by Workday), Sumo Logic, and half a dozen other companies who paid hundreds of thousands in kickbacks to a Netflix VP. Didn't work out so well for the former VP, who's been convicted of wire fraud and money laundering, and is facing prison time [1]. But as far as I can tell, none of the companies involved have faced any kind of sanction at all for their involvement.
[1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-netflix-executiv...
Apparently he wrote two articles on this, the second of which is paywalled:
https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-todays-fastest-growin...
https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-todays-fastest-growin...
https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-todays-fastest-growin...
https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-todays-fastest-growin...
Me too!
I think the majority of them are known or not surpsiring at all, but there are a few ones that are interseting, like TikTok's hacking* of App Store title length.
* I know it isn't hacking, but I couldn't find a better word?
* I know it isn't hacking, but I couldn't find a better word?
Please elaborate
> There was a secret in the app store. You could make the application name really really long. And the search engine on the App Store gives more weight to the application name rather than the keybookwords defined. So we put a really long application name, "make awesome music videos with all kinds of effects for Instagram, Facebook, Messenger”. And then traffic came from the search engine. That's how we initially got started.
Longer app length = more random/other stuff matches = more views
Longer app length = more random/other stuff matches = more views
Yeah, a f2p gaming company I worked for briefly got started this way.
It’s in the article.
Doesn't this consideration involve a lot of survivorship bias?
I guess any study of what the 'survivors' did could inevitably be accused of survivorship bias, but IMO the framing of the article itself manages to avoid it, it's mostly just listing the growth strategies that these companies had and stays away from any claims that others will be successful by implementing them.
If we had 1,000,000 apps using the same tactics but in the end only 10 get successful would think the tactics had anything to do with the success of the 10?
You have to look at the losers too.
Nobody claimed that these strategies guarantees getting a global audience. What in the article would you claim is survivorship bias? Just looking at survivors doesn't automatically lead to survivorship bias, it is a good strategy if you just want to find a bunch of strategies that has worked rather than trying to gauge how likely they are to work.
I thought of it more as a bunch of ideas, than some kind of scientific evidence of what works.
How do we know when its 'a lot' versus 'a little bit'?
Never understood the point of those articles. Do you think you can grasp the market strategy of a startup in two sentences ? For Dropbox, they say "Drew created a simple video, demoing the product, and published it on April 2007 on Hacker News" and that's how they got their first 1k users. I doubt it (the product was not even released at that point, it is explained in the source).
It is the same kind of articles that try to unbundle popular apps and say that any startup is the result of the unbundling of a previous company.
People invent a concept and try to make every thing that happen fits this concept. And then they say, look this concept it awesome even if it is bullshit
It is the same kind of articles that try to unbundle popular apps and say that any startup is the result of the unbundling of a previous company.
People invent a concept and try to make every thing that happen fits this concept. And then they say, look this concept it awesome even if it is bullshit
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I very much admire the how devoted some of these founders are to their startups. Going out to malls and parties just to pitch your app to random people is definitely not an easy task, nor very rewarding emotionally.
I’d bet that this commitment is also part of the reason they succeeded.
I’d bet that this commitment is also part of the reason they succeeded.
Weren't the first Facebook users female student profiles stolen from hacked student societies databases?
(I assumed the movie "social network" was somehow telling some truth.)
(I assumed the movie "social network" was somehow telling some truth.)
What are borderline immoral things are startups doing today to achieve growth?
All 7 ways boil down to "hype", as hard as you can.
In short, find people and pitch them. Repeatedly. It's not complicated, just labor intensive. The complicated part is creating something compelling to pitch.
You can eventually get 1k people to use your product but making them stick around and refer their friends is one hell of a task.
How about gmail?
IIRC, they kickstarted it by having their employees hand out invite codes after the internal beta had ironed out the worst bugs and most Google employees switched over for their internal communication, and then these users could also create invite codes... and given that Gmail offered a whopping 1GB of free storage whereas common providers offered sometimes only single-digit megabyte quotas, people were going nuts for invites.
This is correct IIRC.
I got in early when it was 1GB!
As you say, at the time over free email was only in the single or 10s of MBs.
Or you had your work email!
OMG to think I used to use Work email for personal emailing!
GMAIL also came out with a different and fresh approach to sorting and filing! No more folders, it was tagging and filtering! Which felt very cool and modern at the time!
I got in early when it was 1GB!
As you say, at the time over free email was only in the single or 10s of MBs.
Or you had your work email!
OMG to think I used to use Work email for personal emailing!
GMAIL also came out with a different and fresh approach to sorting and filing! No more folders, it was tagging and filtering! Which felt very cool and modern at the time!
Definitely FOMO with their limited invites. I'm not sure what other strategies they employed beyond seeding initial users and getting them to invite friends to what was a superior service (1-2 orders of magnitude more e-mail storage than offered by just about anyone else, and for free). IIRC, I got my GMail address off an invite from a high-school colleague.
I do not recall it being FOMO. It was 2GB of free email when Yahoo and Hotmail were offering what, 20MB or 200MB?
I also recall Google offering some combination of IMAP/POP/email forwarding/"send mail as" features whereas Yahoo/Hotmail did not, but I do not recall the exact features that Google offered that the others did not.
It was a superior email service, from a company that was growing by leaps and bounds and was obviously going to be huge, so you also wanted to grab an email address without too many numbers.
I would have thought Google requiring invites was simply so that they did not get overwhelmed by demand all at once that they could not handle.
I also recall Google offering some combination of IMAP/POP/email forwarding/"send mail as" features whereas Yahoo/Hotmail did not, but I do not recall the exact features that Google offered that the others did not.
It was a superior email service, from a company that was growing by leaps and bounds and was obviously going to be huge, so you also wanted to grab an email address without too many numbers.
I would have thought Google requiring invites was simply so that they did not get overwhelmed by demand all at once that they could not handle.
> I do not recall it being FOMO.
This may help jog your memory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Gmail#Extended_beta...
Once it became clear that Gmail was real, and not an April Fools' joke, invitations became highly desired. Although the limited rollout was born of necessity, it created an aura of exclusivity which contributed to its publicity windfall. “Everyone wanted it even more. It was hailed as one of the best marketing decisions in tech history, but it was a little bit unintentional” says Georges Harik, who was responsible for most of Google's new products at the time.
During the early months of the initial beta phase, Gmail's well-publicized feature set and the exclusive nature of the accounts caused the aftermarket price of Gmail invitations to skyrocket. According to PC World magazine, Gmail invitations were selling on eBay for as much as US$150, with some accounts being sold for several thousand dollars.
This may help jog your memory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Gmail#Extended_beta...
Once it became clear that Gmail was real, and not an April Fools' joke, invitations became highly desired. Although the limited rollout was born of necessity, it created an aura of exclusivity which contributed to its publicity windfall. “Everyone wanted it even more. It was hailed as one of the best marketing decisions in tech history, but it was a little bit unintentional” says Georges Harik, who was responsible for most of Google's new products at the time.
During the early months of the initial beta phase, Gmail's well-publicized feature set and the exclusive nature of the accounts caused the aftermarket price of Gmail invitations to skyrocket. According to PC World magazine, Gmail invitations were selling on eBay for as much as US$150, with some accounts being sold for several thousand dollars.
I meant that I do not know if Google used the exclusivity as a tactic to create FOMO and hence hype, like the failed attempt with Google+, or was it simply Google trying to limit the number of people so that they did not over extend themselves in the beginning.
It does not make sense to me that they would have needed any tactics such as those discussed in this thread to gain traction for Gmail. The simply fact that it offered an order of magnitude more storage for free, and it was better in every way sold itself.
It does not make sense to me that they would have needed any tactics such as those discussed in this thread to gain traction for Gmail. The simply fact that it offered an order of magnitude more storage for free, and it was better in every way sold itself.
Yeah, I got Gmail in the first week that it was online, and the reason everyone wanted in is because it truly was that much better than anything else at the time. It’s difficult to remember nowadays how bad Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, etc. were in comparison.
FOMO doesn't really apply here.
https://www.verywellmind.com/how-to-cope-with-fomo-4174664
https://www.verywellmind.com/how-to-cope-with-fomo-4174664
People who couldn't get invites literally Feared Missing Out.
"Despite the sort-of fakeness to this methodology, I hate to say it, but it’s working. There’s a bit of FOMO going on. Those without Inbox invites are hitting up their contacts at Google, and bugging their friends. Or yes, selling invites on eBay." — TechCrunch, Oct 24, 2014
https://techcrunch.com/2014/10/24/google-rolls-out-an-invite...
"Despite the sort-of fakeness to this methodology, I hate to say it, but it’s working. There’s a bit of FOMO going on. Those without Inbox invites are hitting up their contacts at Google, and bugging their friends. Or yes, selling invites on eBay." — TechCrunch, Oct 24, 2014
https://techcrunch.com/2014/10/24/google-rolls-out-an-invite...
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I remember the FOMO, it included getting the username you wanted.
Interestingly, this is now a curse, as common usernames receive tons of misdirected emails for people who mistakenly put down the wrong email.
My email is last.first and someone out there has the same first.last. We aren’t related AFAIK. Anyway, there’s been a few conversations we’ve had over the years where some doc or something has put in the wrong email and we forward the appropriate email or delete it. We’ve never had a serious conversation or anything, just “uh hey, did you get this email?”
I understood FOMO in the context of this thread to mean that Gmail got its users by hyping it up, whereas I would say Gmail got its users simply by being so much better than the alternatives. There was FOMO, but not due to any strategy at Google to cause FOMO in order to increase hype, in order to increase number of users.
Or at least that is my unsubstantiated opinion.
Or at least that is my unsubstantiated opinion.
Reddit: As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, they created tons of fake accounts to show a community.
TikTok: Ironically, they launched the platform by having employees spam other platforms with branded videos.