Introduction
I have been following Nikita Bier since I started my social product entrepreneurship in 2023, and I have wanted to write about him ever since he joined X as the head of product last year.
His three products: Politify/TBH/GAS have all achieved considerable success, and his company has only a dozen people. These three products may not have reached the level of being too big to fail, as that requires the right timing, location, and people. But he is one of the most insightful social product managers in my mind, and many people in English-speaking communities refer to him as the king of viral growth.
Nikita Bier's entrepreneurial trajectory resembles a precise experiment targeting human weaknesses: from a policy simulation tool on the Berkeley campus to two addictive viral applications for teenagers, and now leading product iterations on X (formerly Twitter). He always finds leverage in the subtle psychological gaps of users' "why they click, why they stay," driving large-scale behavioral changes. At 31, he has turned small team ideas into high-value exits twice, and now he is bringing this approach to Musk's platform, attempting to reshape the future of a social giant. But behind the glamorous success are countless failures and a confrontation with the "shameful truth."
Politify: A Zero-Cost User Acquisition Project for College Students
Image: Nikita talks about why he founded Politify at TED
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9QTVIIlkg_
Nikita's starting point was not Silicon Valley, but his early tinkering with websites. He began building consumer application web pages at the age of 12, such as a complete e-commerce site, pondering why users would click and why they would stay—perhaps out of curiosity, urgency, or emotional resonance. This early practice cultivated his sensitivity to user behavior.
This sensitivity was evident when he was studying at Berkeley.
His first product, Politify, appeared to be a tax calculator but went further than similar tools at the time. Around the 2012 election, many competing products were merely simple tax calculators based on rough tax rates to estimate personal burdens; Politify required details like family status to simulate the comprehensive impact of different presidential candidates' policies (such as Obama's or Romney's tax reforms and welfare adjustments) on individuals, communities, and even national finances, including income changes, spending impacts, and government service usage.
This design stemmed from Bier's observation: most Americans ignore their economic interests when voting, leading to "self-destructive behavior." Politify directly addressed this blind spot through data algorithms and visual charts, showing users results like "supporting a certain candidate will cost you $2,000 a year," naturally prompting them to stay, share, and even reconsider their voting choices.
This logic is not function-driven, nor is it about creating a simple imitation; it naturally extends from user pain points. In fact, this is the biggest difference between products and tools. I see many so-called Vibe coding works on Twitter (including my own) that are essentially tools rather than products. A product is an extension and reshaping of emotions, while a tool solves a specific problem. I won't elaborate further here.
The influence of Politify far exceeded the campus. During the 2012 election, it attracted 4 million users with zero marketing budget, topped the download charts, and won multiple awards. The Knight Foundation supported its expansion into Outline.com, collaborating with governments like Massachusetts to promote discussions on "digital democracy." Bier candidly stated in his TED talk: "The information asymmetry in voter decision-making is the root of social problems." Although there is no data proving that the product achieved significant returns, it demonstrated Bier's viral talent: approaching human weaknesses through policy.
Later, he reflected on similar logic on X: "Consumers do not adopt products due to functional gaps, but because of the feelings they evoke." This insight became the underlying thread of all his products—from Politify's "self-interest simulation" to the dopamine loops of subsequent apps.
TBH: Viral Growth Among Student Communities
Image: TBH's homepage on LinkedIn
What truly brought Nikita Bier into the spotlight was TBH (To Be Honest) in 2017. An anonymous mutual appreciation app for high school students that only allowed positive feedback, avoiding toxic social interactions. It started in a high school in Georgia and relied on natural viral growth within the student community, reaching 5 million total users and 2.5 million daily active users within two months. And all of this was achieved with just four people—Nikita Bier and three co-founders (Erik Hazzard, Kyle Zaragoza, Nicolas Ducdodon).
Image: TBH product illustration
Analyzing the reasons for the product's explosive success, it likely stemmed from its capture of teenagers' primal desire for "social validation": mainly the excitement young people feel when receiving anonymous praise, forming a dopamine loop (Who finds me interesting? Who actually likes me? Should I develop something with them?).
Bier revealed in a podcast that they failed 14 apps before hitting this point; the team had also tried a more negative anonymous rating system but received no positive feedback, as it was merely a productization of traditional online bullying. They switched to anonymous positive evaluations.
After launching, TBH quickly caught the attention of anxious Facebook, which, from Instagram to Mnus, always tries to solve problems through acquisitions, and this time was no exception.
At that time, Snapchat was seizing the teenage market, and Facebook faced an "aging" crisis, with its content ecosystem filled with negativity.
TBH's positive interaction model aligned with Zuckerberg's shift towards "healthy communities"; more importantly, its viral mechanism proved the potential to engage young users with zero budget. After the acquisition, TBH operated independently but was shut down in 2018 due to declining usage. Bier joined Meta as a product manager until 2021.
In hindsight, this deal was a win-win: Facebook successfully executed a competitive defense strategy (like the early acquisition of Instagram), Bier gained money and experience from a big company, and it was likely during this time that he learned to maintain iteration speed while scaling.
Gas: Finally Profitable After Clashing with Teenage Culture
Image: Gas app
In 2022, Bier made a comeback with Gas—considered an upgraded version of TBH, the app added voting, gamification, and a paid feature to reveal who liked you. Within three months, it reached 10 million users and generated $11 million in revenue, briefly surpassing TikTok and Meta in App Store rankings, becoming the most popular app in the U.S.
In detail, it capitalized on users' curiosity to pay to see who praised them, creating a closed-loop monetization. The product was acquired by Discord for $50 million in January 2023, due to its understanding of the teenage community and its growth hacking skills, which had proven capable of transforming fleeting viral growth into sustainable profitability.
Image: "Five years later, sell to the next big player."
To summarize his two entrepreneurial models, they both relied on small teams, no funding, and rapid trial and error. Although the failure rate is high, once they hit the mark, they explode virally.
Product Methodology: Emotional Leverage and the "Madman" Mentality
Bier's product methodology is actually quite simple and very harsh.
Image: Serving network interests rather than individual pain points
He repeatedly emphasizes: good consumer applications do not solve a single user's pain point but serve the entire network; they do not fix bugs in competing products but reshape the growth flywheel.
"Don't optimize 10% of messages or photos; that has already been done well enough by WeChat and Instagram. New players must rely on viral creativity and dopamine loops to leverage from zero."
His favorite concept is "life turning points"—moments like starting school, trading, or starting a job are fragile times when users crave connection, and if the product hits the mark, it can explode.
Bier also candidly states: we must acknowledge the "shameful truth" in human nature, such as the primal desire for praise, status, and social validation. Only by amplifying these emotions can we create addictive products. He views consumers as having a "lizard brain": political or decentralized factors do not drive adoption; only primal needs like making money or dating do. Building products requires a "madman" mentality: 99% of decisions are life-and-death, the failure rate is extremely high, but iteration is key. On X, he abstracted it as "academic honesty": quickly admitting mistakes, embracing feedback, and avoiding large companies chasing illusions.
Crypto Interlude: From Advisor to Promoter of Solana's Mobile Ecosystem
After two exits, Bier did not rest but turned his attention to Crypto/Web3—his approach remained pragmatic: not speculating on coins or building chains, but using his viral growth experience to help top public chains like Solana build consumer-grade mobile ecosystems. In September 2024, he joined Lightspeed Venture Partners as a product growth partner. Lightspeed is an old player in the crypto space, having invested in Solana in its early days. At Lightspeed, Nikita focuses on optimizing viral growth, network effects, and distribution strategies for portfolio companies, allowing him to engage with more Web3 projects without being tied to a single chain.
On March 25, 2025, Bier officially joined Solana Labs as an advisor. He publicly stated that the past few years have been filled with controversy regarding Crypto, but recent regulatory relaxations, a more friendly App Store towards Crypto, and the memecoin craze have led to the Phantom wallet being adopted on millions of phones, making Solana an ideal platform for consumer-grade applications. His specific work at Solana involves helping to grow the Solana mobile ecosystem and related projects.
However, he maintains a certain distance from Crypto. Although he has also served as an advisor for Pump.fun through his connections at Solana and has publicly praised founder Alon, he emphasized that he does not hold any equity in pump.fun.
He occasionally comments on memecoins on X, such as sarcastically stating, "dropping a meme coin is a liquidation of your brand equity," or lamenting, "every single meme coin launched in the last year has gone to zero." But these comments are more about teasing or expressing moral boundaries, and he has never genuinely promoted specific coin products.
This interlude in the crypto space is highly consistent with his usual style:
- Seizing the "turning point" (in this case, regulatory + mobile turning point)
- Amplifying network effects rather than chasing short-term fluctuations
After joining X, he was occasionally teased by the crypto community as a Solana maxi, especially when recent algorithm adjustments affected crypto-related content. However, all of this also lays the groundwork for X's financial positioning.
Joining X: A Timeline from Self-Nomination to Product Leadership
At the end of June 2025, Bier officially joined X as the head of product.
Image: In 2022, Nikita Bier publicly nominated himself to Elon Musk for the position of product VP at Twitter on X.
After taking office, he began to ramp up efforts again, implementing a series of features. Here’s a brief list: optimizing the core feed flow in early July, previewing community features in October. January 2026 marked a peak—collaborating with the algorithm team to adjust the recommendation page, increasing the proportion of content from friends, mutual follows, and followers, while launching Smart Cashtags (real-time stock prices + discussions), synchronizing drafts (from app to web), and combating AI spam, among other initiatives.
Why did he do this? It aligns with his logic:
- The recommendation page targets "network density," allowing users to see familiar faces and enhancing habits (like the like loop in TBH).
- Smart Cashtags reinforce X's unique positioning (financial news), leveraging "turning points" (trading decisions).
- The feedback response speed is extremely fast because he believes every user is a lever—ignoring them would undermine network effects.
These initiatives serve a closed loop: first enhancing retention, then capturing monetization potential, consistent with his growth-oriented approach. The result was a 60% increase in X app downloads and a 20-43% increase in user time. Subscriptions surpassed 1 billion.
From the virality of Politify to the revenue of Gas, and now to the new high in X's subscription users, he continues to prove: products are "emotional levers" that tap into human nature.
Banning InfoFi: This Might Be What You Want to See
On January 16, Nikita dropped a bombshell, announcing that X would revise its developer API policy, no longer allowing "InfoFi" type apps (which reward users for posting) and directly revoking these apps' API access.
InfoFi was originally a buzzword in the Crypto community, referring to a model that incentivizes users to produce content on X through points or tokens, such as projects like Kaito and Cookie. These apps were once all the rage, allowing users to earn rewards by "yapping" (posting casual chats), but they also generated a massive amount of AI-generated "slop" (low-quality content) and reply spam, polluting the timeline. If you have read the above, you might feel that Nikita's ban on InfoFi is a natural decision; the mass generation of low-quality content not only pollutes the timeline but could also lead to a significant loss of Twitter users.
Nikita has consistently emphasized "serving the network rather than the individual," and InfoFi content undermined the quality of Twitter's network content, contradicting his growth philosophy.
Digging deeper, this may also conflict with X's strategic layout in the Crypto field.
X is promoting financial features, such as the real-time asset price display of Smart Cashtags (including Crypto), with a preview version already supporting smart contracts and asset mentions, aiming to make X a reliable hub for financial news and trading discussions.
In Musk's vision, X aims to integrate payments, DeFi, and even the memecoin ecosystem, but the premise is high-quality content leading the way. If InfoFi continues to proliferate, the platform could drown in low-quality yaps, scaring away serious investors and builders. There is already a trend of a large amount of garbage content.
Banning InfoFi is Bier's way of clearing the path for X's Crypto ambitions: eliminating scams and shifting towards sustainable network effects. This move may cause some minor pain for X in the short term, but in the long run, it could help X stand out as the "emotional infrastructure" of the Crypto era.
In today's increasingly challenging landscape for consumer social applications, Bier's approach seems both old-fashioned and avant-garde. We have seen too many apps that skyrocketed to fame only to fall. Now, he has X as a larger experimental ground: if successful, it may reshape the rules of social platforms; if it fails, it will be another footnote in trial and error. The outcome remains to be seen.
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