The Adjacent User Theory

https://andrewchen.co/the-adjacent-user-theory/

by anayar • 6 years ago

45 29 6 years ago

andrewchen.co

benrapscallion2• 6 years ago

This is the kind of pathological “growth mindset” that brought our social media troubles upon us.

scribu3• 6 years ago

Why is it pathological?

jbob20002• 6 years ago

They want exponential growth purely because it is exponential. They aren't chasing anything other than that metric, they didn't ask how they could make it better, they didn't ask their current users what could make it better, they aren't asking if they are creating value, they simply said "huh, 400mil isn't enough, give me more". It's the obsession that makes it pathological.

jpab• 6 years ago

Why is cancer pathological?

Because cancerous cells prioritize their own growth over the health of the wider system in which they exist.

Companies with this mindset do not reach a point at which they say "ok, we're big enough now". There is no target size they're trying to reach, there is only a target year-over-year multiplicative growth rate. They prioritize growth over providing value to the users they have. They grow without regard for the effect it has on social dynamics within the system (changing what the product is good for and what it's bad for), or the effect it has on social dynamics beyond the system.

It's the Paperclip Maximizer approach to business. And, of course, it's the stock market approach to business too.

dang• 6 years ago

Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.

benrapscallion2• 6 years ago

How is this unsubstantive? I am adding an opinion re the article. I find your comment quite unsubstantive though even though you’re the top dog around here.

ggambetta• 6 years ago

The tone of the article rubs me the wrong way for some reason. Consider these two paragraphs:

The Adjacent Users are aware of a product and possibly tried using the it, but are not able to successfully become an engaged user. This is typically because the current product positioning or experience has too many barriers to adoption for them.

While Instagram had product-market fit for 400+ million people, we discovered new groups of users who didn’t quite understand Instagram and how it fit into their lives.

There's so much assumption there. "not able to successfully become an engaged user"; "too many barriers to adoption"; "didn't quite understand [...] how it fit into their lives". No question about whether potential users are interested in the product in the first place? It's so life-changing that if someone decides not to use the thing, it's because they failed at becoming engaged, or just don't understand that it's life-changing?

I'm confused. Maybe this is the level of delusions of grandeur you need to succeed at that scale with that kind of product, and I'm just hopelessly naive :(

jbob20002• 6 years ago

The article completely dehumanizes Instagram users, it's a window into the lack of empathy social media companies have for other human beings.

alexpetralia• 6 years ago

Anything at scale does this.

scribu3• 6 years ago

No question about whether potential users are interested in the product in the first place?

They do show interest, tho. From the article:

There are a set of users who show intent for your product but are not quite able to get over the hump. Those are your adjacent users.

grawprog• 6 years ago

I've never found 'the hump' to be the issue with most things i've shown intent for then decided against. Typically it's because I discover the product does not in fact suit my needs. This is the primary reason. I'm not an adjacent user of said product and I never will be unless the product changes to suit my needs in some way.

throwaway744678• 6 years ago

Nice work on that 'sign-up for my newsletter', fullscreen, non-closable modal screen that pops up after reading a few paragraphs! Nice way to capture your adjacent users and convert them to whatever-core-something-engaged power customer.

yetihehe• 6 years ago

Customers have been immunized to full screen modal dialogs, don't read them and close immediately, this represents obstacle to subscribe to their newsletter. In order to remove that obstacle, they bravely decided to remove close button, so that potential customers have no other way than "The Right Way", are not distracted by close buttons anymore and can successfully subscribe to their newsletter, which helps with growth and widens funnels (that's good, right?).

tezzer• 6 years ago

Oh good, I thought there was something wrong with my browser that was hiding a close button. That's a very strange design decision.

nhlx2• 6 years ago

Very strange, and a bad idea to boot! It is distracts from whatever point they are making in the article. The medium is the message!

lmeyerov• 6 years ago

In sociological studies of innovation adoption, a general finding here is that different niche communities often have different needs, so a successful innovation adapts to fit it, generally through involvement of the niche members. Growth in turn often follows those niches. I like to think of this kind of growth as where the product is a circle in the middle of a bunch of niche communities, and growing the product surface moves it through adjacent niche communities. There are different levers here via different people once you think that through.

So, it's good to map out those niches and help them one-by-one. Likewise, studies like this became a research field soon after gmo corn became a thing, and worth understanding the many kinds of innovation adoption if your job is here. (Broad area is called the Diffusion of Innovation.)

general_orr• 6 years ago

i can't read this seriously with an over complicated term from "adjacent" combined with "theory"

pgt• 6 years ago

I stopped reading when a giant modal newsletter popup filled the screen and there was no way to close it. So much for exponential growth.

antoremin• 6 years ago

This isn't new by the way. Many people talked about it. Off the top of my head, Patrick Collison mentions the importance of reviewing and expanding your product-market fit on Tim Ferris's podcast.

juanbyrge• 6 years ago

My snake oil detector perked up here. It seems like this guy is attempting to take credit for Instagrams success while simultaneously trying to apply a hand-wavy growth 'theory'. Seems like he is attempting to market a startup in incubation.

nickff• 6 years ago

This sounds like a blog-form re-write of Geoffrey Moore's "Crossing the Chasm", a book from 1991.

There seems to be a rash of people blogging up with 'new' ideas and theories that have existed for a long time.

The Adjacent User Theory

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