Famous advice, tried on real businesses.

Community-led growth (the SPACES model)

David Spinks (CMX) — SPACES Model: The Framework for Defining Your Community's Business Value (post, 2021)

David Spinks: Co-founded CMX, a community for people who build online communities.

“These communities operate as a network of ambassadors and advocates who drive awareness and growth for the business.”

A customer community is not only a cost or a support forum: members can answer each other's questions, feed product ideas, bring in new customers, create content, stay engaged and get more out of the product. Pick which of these jobs the community is for and measure it accordingly.

When it applies: Customers share an interest, craft or problem and gain from talking to each other, not only to the company.

Hooked: trigger, action, variable reward, investment

Nir Eyal — Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products (book, 2014)

Nir Eyal: Behavioral design writer who taught at Stanford; wrote Hooked and Indistractable.

Products become habits by repeatedly taking users through four steps: a prompt (external at first, later an internal feeling), a very easy action, a reward that varies so it stays interesting, and an investment of time, data or effort that makes the next use more valuable and more likely.

When it applies: The product is meant to be used often (daily or weekly) and becomes more useful the more it is used.

Contested. Critics argue habit design feeds compulsive use and the attention economy; unpredictable rewards resemble gambling mechanics and attract regulatory scrutiny, especially where minors are involved. Must not cross into dark patterns (fake urgency, hard-to-cancel flows, manipulative notifications).

Customer obsession, not competitor obsession

Jeff Bezos — 2016 Letter to Shareholders ('True Customer Obsession' and 'Resist Proxies'); first set out in the 1997 letter ('Obsess Over Customers') (letter, 2017)

Jeff Bezos: Founded Amazon in 1994 and grew it from an online bookstore into a giant.

“customers are always beautifully, wonderfully dissatisfied, even when they report being happy and business is great.”

Build the business around customers, not around competitors, products or technology. Customers always want something better even when they say they are satisfied, so keep improving things for them. Learn from many individual customer stories, because survey averages can quietly replace real understanding of customers.

When it applies: A business is deciding what to improve next and is tempted to copy competitors or chase a satisfaction score.

Lock-in and switching costs

Carl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian — Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy (book, 1998)

Carl Shapiro: Berkeley economist; twice the U.S. Justice Department's top antitrust economist.

Hal R. Varian: Google's chief economist for over two decades, and a Berkeley professor.

“The lock-in that results from such switching costs confers a huge competitive advantage to firms that manage their installed base of customers effectively.”

When a product sits inside a larger setup of the customer's data, habits, files and connected tools, moving to a rival costs real money and effort. A firm that understands those costs can build its strategy around keeping and serving the customers it already has, and buyers should price in the lock-in before they commit.

When it applies: Customers put time, data or integrations into the product, so moving to a rival means real work or expense.

Contested. Value that accumulates naturally is fair; making exit artificially hard (blocking data export, obstructing cancellation) is a dark pattern targeted by consumer and data-protection law (for example the GDPR right to data portability), and we exclude that version. Customers who feel trapped resent it, which hurts word of mouth.