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Nikita Bier built 15 apps. 14 flopped.

With 60 days of runway left, app number 15 hit #1 in the App Store. Facebook bought it. His next app, Gas, sold to Discord.

Then he ran product at X (Twitter).

He charges $36,000 a month to advise founders.

My breakdown of his playbook went viral last week:

The tweet has his 10 core principles.

Here are 5 more that matter if you sell software 👇🏼

1. Value in 3 seconds

Most app installs happen in bed or on the toilet.

Nikita says if your signup needs sound or voice, you've accepted a 60% tax on growth.

For SaaS:

Cut every signup field you can

Time how long a new user takes to reach value

If your trial needs a setup wizard first, you've already lost

2. Charge for your top support request

On tbh, the #1 support message was people asking to pay to see who sent them polls.

Gas answered with God Mode. It's a paid feature that hints at who your secret complimenters are.

Read your support inbox like a pricing page. What people ask for most is what they'd pay for.

3. Know which app you're building

There are two types:

Durable apps: repeat use is the whole business, and growth compounds

Paywall-ad arbitrage apps: you found an ad channel that pays back, but retention is almost nonexistent because revenue comes from people forgetting to cancel

Both can make life-changing money.

His rule: never raise outside funding for the second type.

4. Know which step you're on

He validates growth in order:

Does the core flow work?

Does it spread inside one group?

Does it hop to other groups?

Do people pay?

Skip a step and your data lies to you.

tbh proved itself in one school first. 450,000 messages in 7 days.

For SaaS, ask:

Are users keeping it to themselves?

Are they sharing it with a teammate?

Does it jump to other companies?

Fix the first thing that's broken.

5. When numbers drop, find the missing signal

At X, link posts looked demoted.

Nikita's diagnosis was simple. The browser covered the post, so people forgot to like or reply. X got no quality signal.

Nobody demoted links. It was a UI byproduct.

He made posts collapse to the bottom so people can react while reading. Link reach went up, by his claim.

Before you blame the algorithm, look for what you stopped measuring.

Reply and tell me 👇🏼

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Video of the week

In other news, I’m now a musician ;)

Tweet of the week

This is one of the best pieces of content this week on X.

That's it for this week.

See you next week.

Keep winning!

Tibo 💻

PS: Does this help you? feel free to reply and tell me what else you want me to write about 👇🏼