Consumer product startups have to bake a viral channel into their product from the get-go. They can’t merely glue it on later. Here are 9 ways to build virality into your product: medium.com/gabor/9-ways-t… 1/14
YCombinator’s @sama says your product has to be “so good that users spontaneously recommend it to their friends.” It’s true that people don’t recommend crappy products. But you can do a lot to nudge users to invite others. 2/14
1. Two-Sided Rewards: You create an incentive a user to invite their friends, and for the invited to accept. Dropbox was the master at this - this is an early flow from their product 3/14 
3. Collaboration: Apps built for collaboration between people are inherently viral. Some have a single-player mode, but additional value is realized from the product when multiple people are using it. Think Slack and Google Docs. 5/14
4. Embeds: Create the ability for others to embed content in your product on their website. This will create exposure, and also model to potential users the expected content and behaviors in the product. Think Twitter and YouTube. 6/14
5. Artifacts Shared on Social: Your product naturally produces artifacts that can be shared manually or automatically on social networks. Clicking through takes them back into your product. Think early Pinterest. 7/14
Instagram was another example of this: It would let you create beautiful images to share elsewhere, but then had its own network of additional content to explore. @cdixon calls this “Come for the tool, stay for the network.” 8/14
6. Artifacts Shared via Messaging: Your product produces artifacts or URLs that can be naturally shared via messaging, with a strong use case for sharing them. For example, Lyft and Uber do this in their “Send ETA” flows. 9/14
7. Signatures. A classic - Your product generates messages of some kind, and can attach a signature to each one that links back to it. You may remember Hotmail’s signatures back in the day, but a more recent example is Mailchimp. 10/14
9. Highly Visible Hardware: A hardware product set in a highly visible location that is exposed to potential customers. Square is an inherently viral product because SMB owners see the product in other small businesses. 12/14
There are many ways a product can go viral, but the one commonality is that all viral loops contain the user spreading awareness and consideration of your product. 13/14
This mostly happens by creatively reusing an existing channel with user exposure, and creating the right incentives for users to promote your product for you. More here: medium.com/gabor/9-ways-t… 14/14
