Nikita Bier Biography: Why He Clashed with InfoFi, Perhaps You Can Find the Answer Here

Author: Hongyu

Introduction

I have been following Nikita Bier since I started my social product entrepreneurship in 2023, and I have wanted to write about him ever since he joined X as the Head of Product last year.

His three products: Politify/TBH/GAS have all achieved considerable success, and his company has only a dozen people. These three products may not have reached the level of being "too big to fail," as that requires the right timing, location, and people. But he is one of the most insightful social product managers in my mind, and many people in English-speaking communities refer to him as the king of viral growth.

Nikita Bier's entrepreneurial trajectory resembles a precise experiment targeting human weaknesses: from a policy simulation tool on the Berkeley campus to two addictive viral applications for teenagers, and now leading product iterations on X (formerly Twitter). He always finds leverage in the subtle psychological gaps of users' "why they click, why they stay," driving large-scale behavioral changes. At 31, he has turned small team ideas into high-value exits twice, and now he is bringing this approach to Musk's platform, attempting to reshape the future of a social giant. But behind the glamorous success are countless failures and a confrontation with the "shameful truth."

Politify: A Zero-Cost Customer Acquisition Project for College Students

Image: Nikita discussing why he founded Politify at TED

Link:++https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9QTVII_lkg++

Nikita's starting point was not Silicon Valley, but his early tinkering with websites. He began building consumer application web pages at the age of 12, such as a complete e-commerce site, pondering why users would click and why they would stay—perhaps out of curiosity, urgency, or emotional impact. This early practice cultivated his sensitivity to user behavior.

This sensitivity was evident during his time at Berkeley.

His first product, Politify, appeared to be a tax calculator but went further than similar tools at the time. Around the 2012 election, many competing products were merely simple tax calculators based on rough tax rates to estimate personal burdens; Politify required details like family status to simulate how different presidential candidates' policies (such as Obama's or Romney's tax reforms and welfare adjustments) would comprehensively impact individuals, communities, and even national finances, including income changes, spending impacts, and government service usage.

This design stemmed from Bier's observation: most Americans ignore their economic interests when voting, leading to "self-destructive behavior." Politify, through data algorithms and visual charts, directly addressed this blind spot, showing users results like "supporting a certain candidate will cost you $2,000 a year," naturally prompting them to stay, share, and even reflect on their voting choices.

This logic is not function-driven, nor is it about creating a simple imitation; it naturally extends from user pain points. In fact, this is the biggest difference between products and tools. I see many so-called Vibe coding projects on Twitter (including my own) that are essentially just tools, not products. A product is an extension and reshaping of emotions, while a tool solves a specific problem. I won't elaborate further here.

The influence of Politify far exceeded the campus. During the 2012 election, it attracted 4 million users with zero marketing budget, topped the download charts, and won multiple awards. The Knight Foundation supported its expansion into ++Outline.com++, collaborating with governments like Massachusetts to promote discussions on "digital democracy." Bier stated in his TED talk: "The information asymmetry in voter decision-making is the root of social problems." Although there is no data proving that the product achieved significant returns, it demonstrated Bier's viral talent: approaching human weaknesses through policy.

Later, he reflected on similar logic on X: "Consumers do not adopt products because of functional gaps, but because of the feelings they evoke." This insight became the underlying thread of all his products—from Politify's "self-interest simulation" to the dopamine loops of subsequent apps.

TBH: Viral Growth Among Students

Image: TBH's homepage on LinkedIn

What truly brought Nikita Bier into the spotlight was TBH (To Be Honest) in 2017. An anonymous mutual appreciation app for high school students, it only allowed positive feedback to avoid toxic social interactions. It started in a high school in Georgia and relied on natural viral growth within the student community, reaching 5 million total users and 2.5 million daily active users within two months—all with just four people: Nikita Bier and three co-founders (Erik Hazzard, Kyle Zaragoza, Nicolas Ducdodon).

Image: TBH product illustration

Analyzing the reasons behind the product's explosive success, it likely stemmed from its capture of teenagers' primal desire for "social validation": mainly the excitement young people feel when receiving anonymous praise, forming a dopamine loop (Who finds me interesting? Who actually likes me? Should I develop something with them?).

Bier revealed in a podcast that they failed with 14 apps before hitting this point; the team had also tried a more negative anonymous rating system but received no positive feedback, as it was merely a productization of traditional online bullying. They switched to anonymous positive feedback.

After launching, TBH quickly caught the attention of anxious Facebook, which, as you know, always tries to solve problems through acquisitions, and this time was no exception.

At that time, Snapchat was seizing the teenage market, and Facebook faced an "aging" crisis, with its content ecosystem filled with negativity.

TBH's positive interaction model aligned with Zuckerberg's shift towards a "healthy community"; more importantly, its viral mechanism proved the potential to engage young users with zero budget. After the acquisition, TBH operated independently but was shut down in 2018 due to declining usage. Bier joined Meta as a product manager until 2021.

In hindsight, this deal was a win-win: Facebook successfully executed a defensive strategy (like the early acquisition of Instagram), Bier gained money and experience from a big company, and perhaps it was during this time that he learned to maintain iteration speed while scaling.

Gas: Finally Profitable After Clashing with Teenage Culture

Image: Gas app

In 2022, Bier made a comeback with Gas—consider it an upgraded version of TBH, with added features like voting, gamification, and a paid reveal of who liked you. Within three months, it reached 10 million users and generated $11 million in revenue, briefly surpassing TikTok and Meta in App Store rankings, becoming the most popular app in the U.S.

In detail, it capitalized on users' curiosity to pay to see who praised them, creating a closed-loop monetization. The product was acquired by Discord for $50 million in January 2023, due to its understanding of the teenage community and his growth hacking skills, which had proven capable of converting short-lived viral growth into sustainable profitability.

Image: "Five years later, sell to the next big player."

To summarize his two entrepreneurial models, they relied on small teams, no funding, and rapid trial and error. Although the failure rate is high, once they hit the mark, it leads to viral explosions.

Product Methodology: Emotional Leverage and the "Madman" Mentality

Bier's product methodology is actually quite simple and brutal.

Image: Serving the network's interests rather than individual pain points

He repeatedly emphasizes: good consumer applications do not solve individual user pain points but serve the entire network; they do not fix bugs in competing products but reshape the growth flywheel.

"Don't optimize 10% of messages or photos; that has already been done well enough by WeChat and Instagram. New players must rely on viral creativity and dopamine loops to leverage from zero.

"His favorite concept is "turning points in life"—moments like starting school, making transactions, or starting a job, when users crave connection the most; if the product hits these moments, it can explode.

Bier is also frank: we must acknowledge the "shameful truths" in human nature, such as the primal desire for praise, status, and social validation. Only by amplifying these emotions can addictive products be created. He views consumers as having a "lizard brain": political or decentralized factors do not drive adoption; only primal needs like making money or dating do. Building products requires a "madman" mentality: 99% of decisions are life-and-death, with a high failure rate, but iteration is key. On X, he abstracted it as "academic honesty": quickly admitting mistakes, embracing feedback, and avoiding the pursuit of illusions by large companies.

Crypto Interlude: From Consultant to Promoter of Solana's Mobile Ecosystem

After two exits, Bier did not rest but turned his attention to Crypto/Web3—yet his approach remained pragmatic: not speculating on coins or building chains, but using viral growth experience to help top public chains like Solana build consumer-grade mobile ecosystems. In September 2024, he joined Lightspeed Venture Partners as a Product Growth Partner. Lightspeed is an old player in the crypto space, having invested in Solana early on. At Lightspeed, Nikita focuses on optimizing viral growth, network effects, and distribution strategies for portfolio companies, allowing him to engage with more Web3 projects at the VC level without being tied to a single chain.

On March 25, 2025, Bier officially joined Solana Labs as a consultant. He publicly stated that his views on Crypto had been controversial over the past few years, but recent regulatory relaxations, a more friendly App Store towards Crypto, and the memecoin craze have made the Phantom wallet accessible to millions of phones, making Solana an ideal platform for consumer-grade applications. His specific work at Solana involves helping to grow the Solana mobile ecosystem and related projects.

However, he maintains a certain distance from Crypto. Although he has also acted as a consultant for ++Pump.fun++ through his connections with Solana and has publicly praised founder Alon, he has emphasized that he does not hold any equity in ++pump.fun++.

He occasionally comments on memecoins on X, such as mocking "dropping a meme coin is a liquidation of your brand equity" or lamenting "every single meme coin launched in the last year has gone to zero." But these are more about teasing or expressing moral boundaries, and he has never genuinely promoted specific coin products.

This crypto interlude aligns closely with his consistent style:

• Capturing "turning points" (here, regulatory + mobile turning points)
• Amplifying network effects rather than chasing short-term fluctuations

After joining X, he was occasionally teased by the crypto community as a Solana maxi, especially when recent algorithm adjustments affected crypto-related content. However, all of this also lays the groundwork for X's financial positioning.

Joining X: From Self-Recommendation to Leading Product Timeline

At the end of June 2025, Bier officially joined X as Head of Product.

Image: In 2022, Nikita Bier publicly recommended himself to Musk for the position of Product VP at Twitter

After taking office, he began to ramp up again, implementing a slew of features; here’s a brief menu: optimizing the core feed flow in early July, previewing community features in October. January 2026 was the climax—collaborating with the algorithm team to adjust the recommendation page, increasing the proportion of friends, mutual follows, and followers' content, while launching Smart Cashtags (real-time stock prices + discussions), synchronizing drafts (from app to web), combating AI spam, and more.

Why do this? It actually aligns with his logic:

• The recommendation page targets "network density," allowing users to see acquaintances, enhancing habits (like the like loop in TBH).
• Smart Cashtags reinforce X's unique positioning (financial news), leveraging "turning points" (transaction decisions).
• The feedback response speed is extremely fast because he believes every user is a lever—ignoring them would undermine network effects.

All these measures serve a closed loop: first enhancing retention, then capturing monetization potential, consistent with his growth-oriented approach. The result was a 60% increase in X app downloads, a 20-43% increase in user time, and subscriptions surpassing 1 billion.

From the virality of Politify to the revenue of Gas, and now to the new high in X's subscription users, he continues to prove: products are "emotional levers" that leverage human nature.

Banning InfoFi: This Might Be What You Want to See

On January 16, Nikita dropped a bombshell, announcing that X would revise its developer API policy, no longer allowing "InfoFi" type apps (which reward users for posting) and directly revoking these apps' API access.

InfoFi was originally a hot term in the Crypto community, referring to a model that incentivizes users to produce content on X through points or tokens, such as projects like Kaito and Cookie. These apps were once all the rage, allowing users to earn rewards by "yapping" (posting casual chats), but they also generated a massive amount of AI-generated "slop" (low-quality content) and reply spam, polluting the timeline. If you've read the above, you should feel that Nikita's ban on InfoFi is a natural decision; the massive generation of low-quality content not only pollutes the timeline but could also lead to a significant loss of Twitter users.

Nikita consistently emphasizes "serving the network rather than individuals"; InfoFi content undermined the quality of Twitter's network content, contradicting his growth philosophy.

Digging deeper, this may also conflict with X's strategic layout in the Crypto field.

X is pushing financial features, such as the real-time asset price display of Smart Cashtags (including Crypto), with a preview version already supporting smart contracts and asset mentions, aiming to make X a reliable hub for financial news and trading discussions.

In Musk's vision, X aims to integrate payments, DeFi, and even the memecoin ecosystem, but the premise is that high-quality content must lead. If InfoFi continues to proliferate, the platform could drown in low-quality yaps, scaring away serious investors and builders. There is already a trend of a significant amount of garbage content.

Banning InfoFi is Bier's way of clearing the path for X's Crypto ambitions: eliminating scams and shifting towards sustainable network effects. This move may cause some minor pain for X in the short term, but in the long run, it could allow X to stand out as the "emotional infrastructure" of the Crypto era.

In today's increasingly challenging landscape for consumer social applications, Bier's approach seems both old-fashioned and avant-garde. We have seen too many apps that rise to fame overnight only to fall. Now, he has X as a larger experimental field: if successful, it may reshape the rules of social platforms; if it fails, it will be another footnote in trial and error. The outcome remains to be seen.