Sterling Proffer

13. Collab with an established community or brand: One of the biggest trends in media and commerce has been the rising impact of brand collaborations. Whether it’s pop stars bringing in A-List producers, remixers or features to bolster a track or Supreme collaborating with the likes of Louis Vuitton and Comme des Garçons, collabs have become an... See more

In its early days, Substack primarily catered to a certain set of internet-savvy writers and journalists, lured by the promise of monetizing a direct relationship with their readers. But as it morphs from a niche publishing concern into a heavyweight start-up mentioned in the same breath as Twitter and Facebook, its user base is proliferating... See more

Most product teams know their existing users pretty well. But your future audience is always evolving. The challenges that these potential users face in adopting the product increase over time. Without a team dedicated to understanding, advocating, and building for your next set of users, you end up never expanding your audience. This stalls... See more

Solving for your adjacent user is not short term thinking; it is this disciplined sequential execution that will enable your longer-term roadmap and faster growth.

Once you have hypotheses for who is successful and why they are successful, you can hypothesize possible adjacent users segments. This will involve changing one or more of the vectors that you identified.

The second technique is to watch the adjacent user using your product through usability tests. Ideally this is done with trained researchers when possible. Watch the adjacent user try to sign up, activate, see what they struggle on, have them talk about why they are having challenges and what their expectations of the experience are.