User you don't want

This was fun. Yeah.

Let's bring it back. Alright. When you're just getting started, many startups will take every user they can get. They have a strong idea of a problem and they want to attract as many users with that problem as possible. Unfortunately, when you open up the barn doors, you get all sorts of people with all sorts of problems.

Some of them will try to hijack your product to solve a problem you didn't intend to solve. By and large, these hijacks are hijackers are users you do not want.

When has this happened to you? I mean, Justin TV was by definition hijacked. Yeah. Like we built a product to allow people to livestream their lives and within a year it was being used to stream copyright content around the world. Like absolutely the definition of a hijacked product. And and and what's interesting is that I'm a little afraid of my phrasing here.

I wish I didn't say that these hijacked users are not are are not users you want because it turns out that like sometimes they are. Yeah. It turns out that like, you know, the reason why we even had an inkling to do Twitch was because some percentage of the hijacked users were video gamers.

And like it turns out that that could have been a much bigger community if we if we helped it and then eventually became one. So this kind of like users using your product for a whole variety of things, I like to think about it more like on a spectrum. Mhmm. Like there's the user who's using your product as intended. Yeah. Great. Makes you feel good.

Maybe there's a business there, maybe there isn't. Right? There's the user who's using your product in interesting ways with potential. Yeah. Right? Study those users, those users are very important. Yeah. Video gamers at Justin TV.

There are users who are using your product with ways that it's extremely clear to you that there isn't long term value even if there is short term value. Right? I'd argue that those were the copywritten streamers on Justin TV. There was short term value because we could monetize with ads and so on and forth but long term we weren't really creating value. And then they're like hijack users.

I'd argue like those are users who are using your product and they're creating no value and they're probably actively like decreasing your value. They're they're they're harming your network. Right? Yeah. And like for us, know, that would be people like, you know some people streamed like pretty horrible things on Justin TV. Right? And like that was that was not good.

And so what's interesting is that now when I talk to startups at YC, they don't know how to recognize these hijack users and just kick them out. Mhmm. And like they kind of like no one no one talks about these people. They always talk about like everyone before them. Yeah. Right? Which like those are users that have some value.

And I'm talking about the hijack users and it's like if you can identify the hijack users you need to kick them out. Like they're actually going to hurt you more than they're gonna help you. Mhmm. And so I think this is important and I think that like it's not that the high-tech users have like bad intentions even. No.

They can, some do but some it's just they wanna use your product to do what they wanna do and that is literally going to hurt your business. There are some things that like what people do on your platform it hurts your business.

How would you how would you classify someone who just takes up all the customer support time?

It depends on how much revenue they're generating. Yeah. Right? Like, I'd argue that if they are generating enough revenue to justify that support time, great. Yeah. If you have a free product Not so much. Yeah. Not so much probably.

Right? Especially if you're not learning. If they're taking up a bunch of your support time but you're learning and like you're actually improving your product because of it, great. But like for example, like let's say, I'll create like a hypothetical example on top of my head. Right? Imagine that in the beginning of Airbnb, Someone wanted to use Airbnb to host like drug parties. Right?

Like illegal drug parties, crack parties. And they thought of these Airbnb's as like mobile crack dens. Right? Well, let's think about this for a second. Like so on one hand, right, while they are paying. Yeah. Right? They're paying for the big apartments.

They're paying for the nice places. Yeah. Right? Yeah. They're they're they got money. Yeah. Right? Interesting.

On the other hand, they're probably destroying those apartment buildings. Doing something highly legal Yeah. Getting the police called on them like, duh duh duh duh. Right? And it's like, these are hijacked users. Like, these are not the types of people you want. And like, you can be a hijacked user and there's still some positive. Yeah.

But it's just like if there's like way too much negative, it's not worth the positive, you know. And that's actually where I see a lot. I actually see it a lot where it's like the hijacked user's paying. So you feel bad. Because when the hijacked user's not paying, usually you feel less bad kicking them When they're paying, you're like, well, but they're paying. Right.

And and you and it's like, no. You.

just still can't come out. Yeah. Especially in the context of like, you have these metrics you wanna hit and you're like, even during the season. Yeah. Right? Oh my god. Like like, this is real. This is stuff.

It's like Shut it down. Yeah. Yeah. And and you end it in a in a nice clean way by saying, by focusing on solving one problem really well, you're betting on making a small amount of people very happy. If you let any user that walks in the door, the product roadmap you're going to end up doing shitty job at. So half solving a lot of problems. Yeah. I mean to be clear with this ending,.

my whole goal is that like like I said, there's like this spectrum of potentially useful users. Yeah. My whole goal is like don't let the hijack users steer your product road map. Totally. Like the it's really totally okay if you wanna explore some of those use cases that are not the use case that you thought, that are still use cases that, like, could could be good for you. Uh-huh.

Then it's totally okay to explore, to experiment, so on and so forth. But it's like, don't let your app like, don't let the crack den guys on Airbnb control the product road map for Airbnb Right. And suggest the features that they want. Like, not.

where you wanna go. I mean, this is sort of the mentality. It's like, at the end of the day, you have to have some opinion about your product. Yeah. You can't just be like, I don't know. Like, the market's gonna take it wherever. The customers take it wherever. Yes.

It's really hard to build product without some opinion. Yeah.