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I was recently reading the book- Stories at Work: Unlock the Secret to business Storytelling and came across the term 'Anti Story'. What are anti-stories? Anti-stories are stories that listeners in the audience have in their heads about why a proposed lesson will not work. I had my anti-story moment just now. In my last blog , i made an argument that user acquisition ensures that users get on to the platform, but user commitment (how much time users spend on platform) is actually a bigger determinant of a platform success as it ensures that a user finds something of value that leads her to repeatedly leverage the platform. When i wrote this, it made a perfect logical sense till i came up with th is piece on the driving philosophies of WeChat, China's number 1 communication app having close to 1 billion active users. As per Wikipedia,  WeChat was launched in 2011, primarily as a messaging app and eventually evolved and grew its use cases to social media, mobile app paymen...

As was hypothesized in the case of PayPal , a frictionless user experience is a must to pull the users towards the platform. But is it enough to drive long-term success of the platform ? The answer is probably Yes and No both. To think of it, an effortless induction of user into a platform is the right first step. It ensures that the user discovers enough value to be drawn towards the platform. But what ensures a long-term success is not just the user acquisition but user commitment. I am reminded of an all hands conversation when one of the senior engineering leaders in my organization was asked what is the key metric that worries him the most ? Without losing a beat, he responded "Daily Active Use" of our products and services. Aptly, the prominence of user commitment is not just limited to consumer products but is equally applicable for enterprise products. This discussion also takes me to one of the articles i wrote 4-5 years back when i called out Google's Tooth-Bru...

I came across this story while reading the book- Platform Revolution – How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy–and How to Make Them Work for You 1. The year was 1998. One of the key events happening during this time, was the explosion of internet. Many new businesses emerged. 2. In this tumultuous atmosphere, entrepreneurs named Peter Thiel (31 years,German, philosophy/law graduate at Stanford, one of US's top ranked Chess player) and Max Levchin (23 years, Ukrainian, Studied computer science at University of Illinois, had a passion for cryptography). 3. They opened a start-up named 'Confinity' with the vision of enabling money transfers on Palm Pilot and Personal Digital Assistants, the popular mobile devices of that time. Confinity gathered around 10000 users in 2 years but eventually had to be shut down due to the lack of momentum. 4. During their Confinity stint, one of their engineers built a prototype for receiving and send payments over email. 5. Thiel and...

I came across this story while reading the book- Platform Revolution – How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy–and How to Make Them Work for You Here is the summary: 1. In October 2007, there were two gentlemen named: Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia. They were finding it difficult to pay their lofts rent. After much deliberation, they came up.with a novel idea. 2. There was a design conference happening in San Francisco. These guys put up an ad in the conference newsletter about the availability of a rented space at their loft. They positioned the ad as a unique opportunity to network with conference participants in a casual setting. 3. The ad fetched them 3 guests and 1000 USD, they were all set till next month. The first taste of success made them wonder if they can routinely offer such facility to other conferences. By not just lending their space but by also enabling others in the community who wished to lend their space. 4. Soon they had a website to help facilitate this in...