Latent Demand Detection
Find product ideas where people already fight through a distorted process to get a value
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 95%
Instead of inventing demand, look for evidence that people are already straining to obtain a value through clumsy, improvised workarounds. The strongest signals are things like a #1 app in a language its users don't speak, or a viral behaviour hacked together on top of another platform. Crystallize the underlying motivation and build a clean product around it to trigger explosive adoption.
Origin
Nikita Bier's heuristic, refined across ~15 consumer apps and crystallized when he spotted Sarahah (a #1 US app entirely in Arabic) and the emoji-based 'TBH' game teens were playing on Snapchat, which together revealed the demand that became his app TBH.
Core principles
- 01People signal real demand by going through distorted, effortful processes to get a value
- 02A product topping the charts despite being in the wrong language is maximum-strength demand evidence
- 03The job is to crystallize the motivation, not invent it
- 04Read the complaints on the existing hack to find what to fix (Sarahah users hated the bullying/negative messages)
How to run it
- 1
Scan the charts for anomalies
Look at what is already ranking on the App Store, especially things that succeed despite being broken, foreign-language, or obviously unpolished. Anomalous success is a demand signal.
Pro tip A top app in a language its audience doesn't read means the pull is coming purely from the underlying need.
- 2
Spot the distorted workaround
Watch for behaviours people improvise on top of other platforms (e.g. posting emoji polls on Snapchat stories) to obtain a value the platform wasn't built for.
- 3
Read the pain in the existing hack
Study reviews, tweets and comments on the incumbent workaround to see where it hurts users, then design that pain out.
Pro tip Bier saw anonymous apps produced bullying, so he let users only send positive messages via authored polls.
- 4
Crystallize and clean up the motivation
Build a product that delivers the underlying value directly and removes the friction and downsides of the distorted process.
In the wild
Bier noticed the #1 US app (Sarahah) was entirely in Arabic and that teens were playing a 'TBH' compliment game with emojis on Snapchat. Both showed teens wanted a vehicle for positive disclosure, but anonymous text produced bullying. He built an app where users only answered positive authored polls.
→ One school sent 450,000 messages in the first 7 days; the app hit #1 in the US and sold to Facebook for over $30M.
Common mistakes
Waiting for a market that doesn't exist yet
Trying to educate users into a brand-new behaviour is far riskier than serving demand people are already straining to satisfy.
Copying the hack without fixing its pain
The workaround usually has a downside (bullying, effort). Cloning it faithfully reproduces the downside instead of removing it.
Is it for you?
Best for
Consumer app founders hunting for a first idea with genuine pull
Not ideal for
Deep-tech or enterprise problems where demand is latent because the solution is not yet technically possible
From the transcript
“the way you should be searching for product ideas is this concept of a latent demand where people are trying to obtain a particular value…”
“the strongest signal that you could ever have that people want something”
“if you can actually crystallize what their motivation is and build a product around”
From the episode
How to consistently go viral: Nikita Bier’s playbook for winning at consumer apps (co-founder of TBH, Gas, advisor, investor)