Sophia Matveeva had me on Tech for Non-Techies, and we got into something I don’t always unpack in this much detail: the exact psychology behind how Bang with Friends went from zero to a million users in three months without spending a dollar on advertising.
Listen to the full episode here.
The short answer is we built something so curiosity-driven that people couldn’t stop sharing it. The longer answer involves admitting out loud that my original startup idea was going to fail, an overnight pivot in a Silicon Valley accelerator, and a product name that made people do a double take.
In the episode I walk through three techniques any founder can use to get inside the mind of their users, even when the user is nothing like them:
- The overnight pivot that took a failing startup to a million users in three months, and why admitting failure out loud was what made it possible
- How we seeded Bang with Friends anonymously through our own networks, and why the curiosity factor did all the heavy lifting
- Why the lessons from a scandalous dating app apply just as much to software for accountants
- Three methods for understanding users who aren’t like you: the method acting technique, building personas that go beyond demographics, and doing user research like an anthropologist rather than a salesperson
- Why critiquing your own product before user interviews makes you a dramatically better listener
- What it actually felt like to become a live streamer for three hours a week just to understand our content creators
The thread running through all of it: growth isn’t about tactics. It’s about understanding what your users feel in the specific moment they encounter your product, and building for that.
If that resonates, Outrageous Startup Growth goes much deeper on all of it.