Latest Essays

Can you persuade one user to switch to your product?

That’s where your growth foundation is.

As 2022 comes to a close, we would like to share some key milestones that our team achieved this year.

Imagine you have just rolled out a new feature after long weeks of development. Or maybe a whole product redesign.

But right after that, you notice the metrics going down. What would you do?

Did you know you can improve user retention but make a product worse?

Product metrics don’t always reflect how effectively a product solves a user’s problem.

We began this series with how product habits get made and why the neurotransmitter dopamine is so important for this process. Then we looked at the Hook Model, which Nir Eyal created to explain habit formation. Here in our concluding article, we will look at which products by definition cannot be habit-forming, what user habits can be confused with, and alternative ways to encourage users to interact with a product more often.

The activation flow of a product is never as easy and straightforward as PMs expect or design it to be.

In reality, users’ paths to the value are usually way more complicated than one might expect.

10 days ago, I mentioned the Lensa app and its great viral loop.

Now, the app has reached the # 1 spot on the App Store in the US and is making over $1 million per day.

Activation refers to more than just onboarding and the initial in-product experience. For most products, activation starts long before. It’s important to prime potential users in advance, especially for products with extended time to value or a long sales cycle.

Most bad product decisions are justified by what the business needs.

Most good product decisions are justified by what the customer needs.

Most PMs don’t notice the difference between the two.

Most product teams dream of a viral loop with a K factor > 1.

6 years ago, the Prisma app team hit that milestone and got over 120 million installs.

Now the same team is at it again with their new product Lensa. If you haven’t heard about it already, you will soon.