NGL · B2C · anonymous messaging app
Track users who post a link and get 2+ replies; don't add feeds
Product barely changed since going viral; outlasted rivals that overcomplicated
Workedfeature-developmentproduct-activation
What they did
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.
What happened
NGL today looks very similar to the version that went viral and is still growing; rivals that added features faded.
- Stage
- scale
“A big lesson I learned with apps is just how do you make it like one flow, one funnel, and don't overcomplicate it, and just focus on like a North Star metric? In the case of NGL, our North Star metric was like, how many people are posting a link, and then they're posting like at least two replies?”
“They added feeds, and they added complicated profile tools, and like, if you look at NGL today, and you look at NGL when it went viral, it's very, very similar.”
Related topics
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