Delete Virality
Chamath: The most important thing we did was delete virality and say you cannot do it. Don't talk about it. Don't touch it. I don't want you to give me any product plans that revolve around this idea of virality. I don't want to hear it.
What I want to hear about is the three most difficult problems any consumer product has to deal with. How do you get people in the front door? How do you get them to an aha moment as quickly as possible? And how do you deliver core product value as often as possible?
Only after all of that is said and done can you propose how you're going to get people to get more people. That single decision about not allowing the conversation to revolve around virality was the most important thing we did.
Don't talk about virality. Don't touch it. I don't want any product plans that revolve around it.
Kill the Lore
Chamath: In any given product, there's always people who strut around the office like — I have this gut feeling. It's all about gut feeling. And most people with gut feelings are morons. They don't know what they're talking about.
One of the most important things we did was invalidate all of the lore. You can't believe your own BS. Because when you do, you start to compound massively structural mistakes that don't expose core product value.
Most people with gut feelings are morons. They don't know what they're talking about.
Seven Friends in Ten Days
Chamath: We knew we were going to beat MySpace when we had like 45 million users. They had like 115 million. We just knew.
After all the testing, all the iterating — you know what the single biggest thing we realized? Get any individual to seven friends in 10 days. That was it. That was our keystone.
There's an entire team now, hundreds of people, that have helped ramp this product to a billion users based on that one simple rule. A very simple, elegant statement of what it was to capture core product value.
Get any individual to seven friends in 10 days. That was it. That was our keystone.
Work Backwards From Engaged Users
Chamath: You've got to start with a broad cross-section of engaged users. When you work backwards from each of those and figure out the different pathways they got to that place, you can tease out what those simple things are.
Then you path more and more people into those same click flows. It starts with looking at an engaged user — not thinking about how many emails can I send or how do I trick everyone into clicking a select-all.
It starts with looking at an engaged user. Not thinking about how many emails can I send.