Activation tactics

Went against the 'shorter onboarding' wisdom: grew a 12-step onboarding (one question per step) to 15 steps. Added a threesome question: 'Are you open to threesomes? Yes/no'; if yes, 'Do you have a partner already?', then 'What is your threesome fantasy?'. The answers go on the profile. Goal: 'good friction' that signals DOWN is open-minded and different from Bumble/Hinge, sets the expectation you can meet that kind of person, and makes users invest effort (IKEA effect). Contrast with bad friction such as search-radius or 'bars or clubs' questions that can wait. Run as an experiment on a 13-year-old app; paywall untouched.

After Facebook users arrived with no context on any coach and got lost, rebuilt activation: all non-coach traffic goes through a ~15-question web quiz (days per week working out, days lifting, training styles, equipment, location, goals) that ends with three recommended teams tied to the answers, then into the app to start the right workout quickly. Built internal tools so the founder can reorder questions and change media without engineers.

Every unit (private room in a shared home, furnished studio or backyard ADU) must be fully furnished and include all utilities. There are no showings, so residents can move in about 48 hours after booking. The company tracks how bookable each room is (quality, host pricing, photos, owner availability) and how fast rooms refill rather than raw occupancy.

While analysis runs, a 'warming up' screen shows how much data is being processed. Then: minutes of stress from a recent clean day (e.g. 192 minutes), a timeline of their day with stressed/active/recovering periods and an animated zoom on a blue recovery period ('your body was doing a good job' - empowerment after the scare), then an animated 30-day calendar of built-up stress, and the share they relieved on their own (~20-30%). All numbers come from the user's real Apple Watch data.

V1 was a node-based editor like ComfyUI (upload image -> node, connect nodes, write prompt, many parameters). After users said it was too hard, rebuilt as a ChatGPT-style chat: user uploads sketch/model and types a plain request; an AI assistant ('Vizzy') asks follow-up questions, presents a plan with selectable options (materials, lighting e.g. 'raw concrete', 'blue hour'), builds the prompt, and sends it to image-generation services. Also produces videos.

As soon as someone joined the waitlist, emailed them an invite to a call. On the call, sent a link to the platform, asked them to share their screen, and watched quietly, speaking as little as possible (not even helping when they pressed the wrong login button) to see where they got stuck.

Onboarding includes a step where users pick tasks they already do every day (having breakfast, brushing teeth, studying). Because they will do these tomorrow anyway, they are likely to tick them off on day 1, which raises tasks created and completed.

During the first-time user experience in Simply Draw, AI animates the drawing the child just finished. Kids run to show parents, who see the app as positive screen time worth paying for.

Postpartum users (based on time since birth) can submit a posture assessment reviewed by a real expert (not AI), which recommends a starting program and custom routines. Free without a trial but not promoted, to avoid overloading coaches under the 24h rule; promoted organically in Stories only. Possible future lead magnet / paid ad angle.

Launched a pet profile (set up a profile for your dog or cat; if it runs away, send an alert so nearby Life360 users look out for it). To cut through banner and push blindness, a feature called 'Peekaboo' showed an animated dog popping up on app open asking the user to pet it; tapping opened the pet profile feature.

Worked with the data team to find the 'magic moment' when live interactive video clicks for viewers. Gave viewers a free gift in the app: a small animation they could send to the streamer. The streamer could poke the viewer and the viewer could poke back, with the viewer's name appearing in chat. This moved viewers from passive watching to feeling recognized and part of the show (reciprocity), after which they sent more paid gifts (buying points), watched more streams and stayed longer. Then drove more users to that moment.

Users can record an entire lecture (an hour-plus of use) before seeing the paywall or starting a trial; the paywall was moved from before the audio recording to after it, so users are invested first.