Hunter Isaacson - Meet The Guy Who Solved Growing Apps

Instagram removed the 10,000-follower requirement for Story links at the end of Oct 2021. Hunter and friends met on Halloween, asked 'what's the most viral thing we can think of?', and built anonymous messaging on top of Instagram (an old behavior: Formspring, ask.fm, Yik Yak, YOLO) in about a month, expecting many clones. The framework: take something that worked on other networks, switch the distribution mechanism to the biggest graph, and improve the product somewhat. Any big graph can work (Snapchat, X, Facebook for older moms).

During the six months with no users, NGL spent purely on 'activating the graph': small tests paying influencers ~$100 each to post the link on Instagram Story or TikTok. About four months in, one paid influencer activated a school on the other side of the world, and it spread to nearby schools but not to other countries.

In the slow six months, first redesigned the app, then renamed it NGL (teen slang for 'not gonna lie') and bought ngl.link, the domain shown in every shared Story link.

When the only traction was a school cluster in a lower-income country that stopped spreading, the team concluded the audience was on Android, built it quickly (May 2022), then ran another round of marketing.

Tested many versions with different message texts, all funny, controversial or edgy so they stop the scroll. The winner: a girl showing an NGL message like 'I was with your boyfriend last night' and trying to get a hint about who sent it. Each video ties back to the product: you can get lots of messages and maybe find out who sent them.

Every user posts their NGL link to their Story or keeps it as their link-in-bio. In some countries it is every 17-19-year-old's link-in-bio, so a user who churns keeps seeing friends' links, sends a message, and comes back to make their own.

Keep the app free for most users. Sell a weekly subscription priced per region by GDP per capita, always a low impulse buy ($1-$7). Paid features: hints about who sent a message (phone type, rough location), who viewed your profile, and extra 'link games'. Relies on huge volume.

Tapping a friend's Story link opens a lightweight web page inside Instagram to send an anonymous message (dice button suggests what to write), with a persistent download button. After sending, the page says 'Get your own messages' rather than asking for a download, then the user can send another or leave.

Onboarding takes 15-20 seconds and drops users on a two-step home screen: copy your link, then share. Share shows animated GIFs: tap the sticker button, tap the link sticker, add it to your story, frame it. NGL auto-creates a share image with the user's profile picture. Received messages can be answered by replying straight onto your Story, which spreads the link again.

One flow, one funnel, one north-star metric: how many people post a link and then post at least two replies. After going viral, NGL was refined to be cooler and more engaging but did not add feeds, extra tabs or complicated profile tools, which Hunter says sank earlier anonymous apps after their success.

Named the double-dating app after the 'Zoom University' meme during COVID and leaned into it: posted funny content on meme pages and joined every college's Facebook group to build a waitlist before the app was built.

Double dates over video: two friends meet two others, with a shared group chat plus a private chat for each pair ('these guys are weird, let's leave'). Both people on each side must match or skip ('quadruple opt-in'); matches land in a group chat to swap Instagram or Snapchat.

V1 of the double-dating product ran over Zoom, with the team sending meeting codes to matched pairs, before building the app.

During lockdown, bored young people wanted new friends and Snapchat lacked good friend suggestions. Wink offered Tinder-style swiping, but a match added the person on Snapchat instead of inside Wink.

Influencer posts a preview plus a Story link; fans tap it, get an animated ticket, see their place in line, then video-chat with the celebrity with a countdown and add-time option, and receive the recording by email.

Faves lets users save TikTok videos before they get deleted: tap share, tap more, scroll to Faves. The multi-step tutorial to add it to the share menu only works if the user is sold on the value first (as with NGL, where they had seen friends get messages). Keep the tutorial simple and measure how many drop out at each step.

Bags charges 1% on trades and passes most of it back to the friend who invited the trader, or to the group-chat member who posted a token another user then bought. Group chats with built-in trading replace Telegram bots.

Bags' token launchpad lets anyone create a coin and gives the creator a 1% royalty on every trade rather than only on the liquidity-pool transaction; e.g. $2M of volume earns the creator $20,000.

Bags integrates MoonPay to on-ramp funds via Apple Pay, with a credit-card-style wallet, sends by username, and a sticky quick-buy button on each token.

Hunter puts easy invite flows and share prompts (sometimes forced) into every product where it makes sense; a text or Story post acts as a friend's endorsement. With paid acquisition, the goal is to get a set share of new users to invite someone right away, which lowers effective CPI.

Starting in 2017, Hunter iterated through multiple designs with a paid development agency for 2.5 years on a social graph where hanging out with friends earned more views. It was a very hard problem with a confusing UI.