Kayvon had me on The Vault Unlocked for a 45-minute conversation that got into the mechanics of why startups actually stall — and why the answer almost never has anything to do with the product.
What separates the startups that go viral from the ones that don’t isn’t the feature set, the funding, or the founder’s hustle. It’s psychology. The kind that gets engineered on purpose, measured against a number, and run as a system.
We broke down:
- Why most startups fail to scale — and what actually unlocks growth
- The three-pillar framework behind it: FOMO, decision engineering, and magic moments
- How Clubhouse manufactured a citywide case of FOMO out of just two invites
- How Facebook’s entire growth engine came down to one number most founders never bother to find
- Over 65 cognitive biases that quietly decide whether a buyer says yes
- The ethics line between influence and manipulation — and why it matters more than most people think
- Why negative, judgment-driven content outperforms positive content — and what that reveals about all of us
- How to find your North Star metric and align your entire team around it
- The wine list trick that exposes how pricing manipulates you every day
We also got into something that doesn’t come up enough: the difference between building for customer progress versus building tricks that eventually collapse under their own weight.
If you’re a founder, operator, or product leader who’s done guessing and wants growth you can repeat — not growth you got lucky with once — this one’s for you.
Listen here: Apple Podcasts · Spotify · YouTube
And if you want to go even deeper on all of it, that’s exactly what Outrageous Startup Growth is built around.