The Lazy, Vain, Selfish User Lens
Design acquisition and onboarding for a user who is lazy, vain and selfish — not for your loyal fans.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 95%
Product teams optimise for the users already inside the product and assume everyone thinks about it as much as they do. Anuj Rathi flips this by forcing teams to model the non-user: someone who is lazy (no time — blow my mind or I ignore you), vain (I already solve this problem another way, why would I change my habit?) and selfish (show me what's in it for me). Every acquisition message, onboarding screen, copy line and first-run welcome is then written to convert that hostile, indifferent stranger — which he argues moves product success more than the core features built for loyal users.
Origin
Rathi credits the three attributes (lazy, vain, selfish) to Scott Belsky, formerly of Adobe/Behance, and says the insight 'stayed with him'. Rathi's contribution is operationalising it into an onboarding and cross-sell discipline at Swiggy and Jupiter Money, and connecting it to Marc Andreessen's point that a user's time is already fully allocated.
Core principles
- 01Your product is not on the marginal user's mind — assume indifference, not awareness.
- 02Lazy: they will not invest attention unless the first moment is remarkable.
- 03Vain: they already have a habit that solves this; you are asking them to change it.
- 04Selfish: every screen must answer 'what's in it for me'.
- 05The marketing message and the product's first screen must be one continuous story, not two teams' work.
- 06Pick ONE hook product / one value prop for the new user — greed (showing everything you do) kills conversion.
How to run it
- 1
Reframe your product from the non-user's point of view
Stop describing yourself internally as 'we are a food delivery app with these features'. Rewrite it as what the stranger would want and how they could use you: what is it in it for them.
Pro tip Assume the user has heard of you 20 times and still not downloaded. Ask why — and what exact trigger would finally make them.
- 2
Reconstruct the full journey from trigger to first action
Map where the user actually finds you, what the trigger was, what marketing message and promotion they saw, and how that message continues into the onboarding — including the offer (e.g. 200 rupees off) and the language they understand.
Pro tip Ask the uncomfortable question: have they used us in the past and rejected us? Rejection history changes the copy you need.
Watch out Marketing-to-product discontinuity is the most common leak: they promise one thing, the app opens on another.
- 3
Choose one hook, not the whole menu
Identify the single positioning statement and hook product that will get the stranger to try you. Introduce the other product lines only later, at the right moment, once value has been found.
Pro tip PMs should understand out-of-market category consumers as well as the marketer or brand expert on the team does.
Watch out Being greedy — letting the new user try everything at once — is why cross-sell and cross-pollination stall.
- 4
Audit every pixel of first-run against the three attributes
Review copy, onboarding, and the first warm welcome asking: does this survive a lazy, vain, selfish reader? Fix the ones that assume the user cares.
Watch out Do not design as 'here's my app, go figure' — assuming the icon tap alone will produce activation.
In the wild
Rather than presenting Swiggy as 'a food delivery app / a grocery delivery app with these features', the team rewrote the framing around what the user wants, then stitched the marketing message, the promotion and the onboarding into one continuous story in the user's own language.
→ Rathi says it 'instantly started showing us results', and he has since reapplied the lens at companies he has worked with and consulted for.
Jupiter is a neobank with savings accounts, credit cards, mutual funds, gold and FDs. Instead of asking why users won't use everything, the team recognises that a user has found value in ONE service and is not interested in the rest, then uses behavioural-science-driven sequencing to move them from one product to the next.
→ Cross-sell is treated as an empathy and timing problem rather than a merchandising problem.
Common mistakes
Optimising for the people already using you
Teams are close to the product, look at it all day, and unconsciously assume everyone else is too. The features built for loyal consumers matter less to product success than the first-run experience built for the indifferent stranger.
Treating onboarding as a checkbox
Most teams 'kind of get that user onboarding is important' but massively under-rate how important — and never do the hard craft of thinking like a user who is actively rejecting the product.
Is it for you?
Best for
Consumer PMs and growth leads at multi-product apps where activation, first-run conversion or cross-sell is flat despite strong brand awareness
Not ideal for
Enterprise/B2B products bought through a procurement process, or internal tools where usage is mandated rather than chosen
From the transcript
“having three attributes so they are lazy they are Vain and they're selfish”
“it's going to make the biggest amount of change in terms of a product success than your core product features that you're going to build…”
“the other thing that I feel is a lot of product managers don't do right is forget about everything here's my app go figure”
From the episode
The full-stack PM
Anuj Rathi (Swiggy, Jupiter Money, Flipkart)