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3 Pillars of the Most Successful Tech Products

If you’ve started a tech company to make a lot of money, chances are you’re bad at math—or simply delusional. Statistically speaking, your odds of a big-time payday are somewhere between zero and almost zero.

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Ninety-two percent of startups fail within three years. Only one percent of apps in the Apple App Store are financially successful. And even for the fortunate few companies that raise venture funding, seventy-five percent will fail to generate a return on investors’ capital.

Why do some companies scale to millions of users while others wallow in obscurity? What explains the runaway success of a company like Facebook while a startup like Viddy, a mobile app for video, attracted millions of users and millions of dollars in financing, only to lose both? (more…)

Die Dashboards, Die! Why Conversations Will Reinvent Software

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In years to come, conversations will breathe new life into software—particularly the boring enterprise tools millions of knowledge workers begrudgingly use every day. Conversational user interfaces (CUIs) work because of our familiarity with messaging. Even the most technically complex interactions can look as simple as getting an SMS text when presented as a conversation.

There are three benefits conversational user interfaces have over traditional software and we believe these lessons can inform and inspire the redesign of countless online services. (more…)

“Think Different” is Bad Advice

Nir’s Note: This guest post is an excerpt from the new book Invisible Influence: The Hidden Factors that Shape Behavior, written by my friend and Wharton School professor, Jonah Berger.

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Being different, the notion goes, is the route to success. Think different was even Apple’s motto for a period. And Apple is often held up as a poster child of the benefits of this ethos. Conventional wisdom suggests that products like the iPhone and Macintosh succeeded because they were different from the rest. Steve Jobs was a visionary because he thought different from everyone else.

There’s only one problem with this advice. It’s wrong.

(more…)

How to Win Your Competition’s Customers

About a year ago, I wrote an essay about how to win your competition’s customers habits.

Today, I’d like to share a quick video of the ideas in that article. Let me know what you think about this format and if you’d like to see more videos like this one…

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Hooked for Good: How Habit-Forming Products Improve Lives

Below is my opening presentation from Habit Summit highlighting examples of companies changing user behavior for good.

BTW – If you couldn’t attend the Habit Summit, you can get access to the presentations you missed here.

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