Nikita Bier
Founder & Consumer App Expert at tbh / Gas (acquired by Facebook and Discord)
Nikita Bier has built, launched, and helped get more apps to the top of the App Store than almost anyone, selling tbh to Facebook for $30M+ and Gas to Discord, all with tiny teams and minimal funding.
Dimension Profile
Key Themes
Episode Summary
Nikita Bier reveals how he repeatedly built apps that reached the top of the App Store with tiny teams, from tbh (sold to Facebook) to Gas (sold to Discord). He shares his approach to finding latent demand, why he believes products live and die in the pixels rather than in documents, and the absolute chaos of keeping viral consumer apps online during hypergrowth.
Leadership Principles
- → Look for latent demand — people going through distortive processes to obtain a particular value
- → Products live and die in the pixels — you should be designing the hierarchy, the flows, everything
- → Product management in large companies is mostly writing documents and being the team secretary
Notable Quotes
"The thing I didn't realize as a product manager in a large tech company is there is very little product management that you do. They're mainly just writing documents and being the team secretary. But products live and die in the pixels."
— On why he believes traditional PM roles miss the point of product building
"I looked on the App Store and the number one app in the United States was an app called Surah, but the entire app was in Arabic — the strongest signal that people want something."
— On discovering the latent demand that led to building tbh
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