Build Something People Have a Selfish Reason to Share
The litmus test for generational potential is whether a product creates an earned media money glitch.
By that, I mean you’ve built something so good that talking about it is in other people’s interest:
- Creators get content that grows their audience
- Journalists get a story
- Users discover something that makes their lives better and immediately want to show someone
From what I’ve seen, Instinct is the first company since OpenClaw to have this kind of cultural impact without much of a formal marketing push.
OpenClaw was a perfect example of “build an undeniable product, and word-of-mouth scales.”
At one point, I was seeing more content about OpenClaw from creators seemingly organically compelled to shill than companies in a similar space who were spending millions of dollars on big influencers to be on the FYP.
The product kept unlocking new things for people to talk about. Every use case gave someone another reason to make a video, write a post, or send it to their group chat. Peter didn’t have to come up with every angle himself. People were discovering them just by using what he’d built.
Because they were motivated to. A creator can see the potential to go viral by covering your tool. They want to be the first to discover the new meta and share it with their audience.
The same thing happens offline. Someone figures out how to get twice as much work done and shows their team. You’ve made their life better, so they share it with their friends IRL without you having to ask.
I think getting to this point where WOM compounds mostly comes down to three things:
- Are you creating a magical experience that makes people 10x?
- Shipping velocity.
- Loudness in the market.
Getting the first one right matters most and can be enough to create that earned media money glitch.
The magical experience gives people a reason to talk. Shipping velocity gives you more chances to create that experience, then keeps giving people new things to talk about. Loudness gets those discoveries in front of more people who can try the product and make discoveries of their own.
And loudness doesn’t all have to come from you. That’s what OpenClaw unlocked, and what I’m seeing with Instinct. Other people have so much to gain from sharing that they become a huge part of the marketing.
Clipping runs on a similar incentive. People see an opportunity to make money from someone else’s footage. Knowledge creators see an opportunity to grow their audience by showing people something new they can do with AI.
If you’re still working on the first two, being loud can help keep you in the game. It can bring in users, feedback, and revenue that buy you more time. But it can’t save you if the product never gives people a reason to shill.
The point is to stay alive long enough to build something people keep recommending. Optimizing for growing the fastest in the shortest amount of time is cool, don’t get me wrong, but it doesn’t tell you who will still matter in a few years.
Your product doesn’t have to be new for someone to feel early to it. A creator who missed your launch can still be the first to show their audience a use case nobody’s covered. Shipping keeps creating those opportunities, and each one gives someone a selfish reason to put you back in the conversation.
But know that WOM can be your best friend or your worst enemy. Your savior or your killer.
If the experience disappoints, or you stop shipping while the rest of the market keeps moving, people start telling each other what to use instead.
People don’t stop wanting the result just because your product disappointed them. If another tool delivers it, creators have something more novel to cover and users have something better to recommend to their friends and coworkers.
The same people who made you the new meta can make someone else the new meta.