Assertion Not checkable as stated
Isaacson: NGL spent under $10,000 marketing to reach 250M downloads
“We spent less than 10,000 dollars marketing the entire product to get the quarter of a billion downloads that we got.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Isaacson: Apple already has unannounced AR glasses fully developed
“I don't know when Apple's going to finally unveil what they have. There, but I'm sure it's sitting somewhere in the basement and they have the glasses ready to go, but I can't wait for that.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Isaacson predicts smart glasses will use phones for compute, not on-device hardware
“I do think that the phone will be the driving compute for whatever the glasses are. I don't think that the compute is going to be happening on the glasses.”
Insight
Isaacson: Young founders should prioritize consumer mobile apps over B2B SaaS
“When you're young, you want to take a lot of swings and a lot of risks and a lot of like, you want to have a lot of at bats, a lot of tries. So I do think that building consumer mobile apps is like the best thing to be doing. If you're a young person”
Insight
Isaacson: Cal AI succeeded through packaging and onboarding, not proprietary tech
“You know, the reality is anyone can go and make a calorie tracking app, but they built an amazing funnel, right? So I think like the key lesson in a Cal AI is they packaged it really, really nicely and made it seem even more valuable than it is, which I think …”
Opinion
Isaacson: Massive market opportunity exists for apps across all world religions
“Across all religions, yeah, there's a huge opening for this.”
Insight
Isaacson: Apps must nail single-player retention before adding multiplayer growth loops
“If you have, you know, you have a really good single player app, it's easy to then add like some kind of multiplayer experience or some kind of social experience where you're porting in contacts or you're connecting socials or they're sharing something to soci…”
Insight
Isaacson: Applying proven ideas to new channels beats inventing original concepts
“Looking for like, you know, existing ideas that could work in a new channel. I feel like that's a great way to just find good ideas because you don't have to come up with fully original, fully fleshed out thoughts.”
Insight
Isaacson: Using community slang in app names and copy builds instant user rapport
“By using slang, by using like, you know, words from a specific community, it can kind of set the vibe and the tone to be more like young and like comfortable and like colloquial and like, we're just friends talking and hanging. And that's why the app is called…”
Insight
Isaacson: Apps should use a single onboarding flow without branching paths
“You want to have one flow, right? Because if you have branching user journeys, then it gets also complicated, right? You want like everyone to go through the exact same flow. And then you can see, you know, was I successful in getting them to do this or was I …”
Disclosure
Isaacson: NGL's North Star metric was link-sharing and reply rates
“With NGL, our Northstar metric was the percentage of users that are sharing the link and sharing a few replies.”
Disclosure
Isaacson: Bags' core metric is first-day account funding and trading
“And then with DAGS, right, with my latest app, the core metric is How many people are coming in that are funding their accounts and making one trade, ah, in the first day, right?”
Assertion Supported
Isaacson: Viral photo app Laps required inviting three to five friends
“We saw that with Laps, for example, very viral photo app. You would invite, I think, three to five friends to get in the app.”
Insight
Isaacson: Embedding invite loops in core flows boosts app K-factor
“If you have some kind of loop in the app or some kind of way of inviting people, whatever it is, I would put that in the core experience because then if you just drop in a thousand people and 50% of them share. That's 500 people that have now shared your app o…”
Disclosure
Isaacson: Bags reached 100,000 Twitter followers via an invite leaderboard loop
“One of the loops we had was, you know, you would log in with Twitter, you claim your bags link, and then you share it. And then if people join from your link, we would mark those people as like one of your invites. And then we had like a leaderboard of all the…”
Disclosure
Isaacson: NGL seeded viral growth paying influencers $50 to $100 per post
“In the case of NGL, we were paying, you know, 50 dollars, a hundred dollars here or there to influencers to just post the link on their story.”
