Instagram prioritizes immediate network effects. If a user sees their friends and feels connected, they’ll stay. Instagram perfects this by pushing for contact syncing upfront, turning a privacy hurdle into a gateway for instant connection. The value is seeing familiar faces immediately.
Productivity apps like Notion focus on creating a personal “aha moment.” They ask about your goals (e.g. in work, school, life) to offer relevant templates, preventing a “blank page” problem. The goal is to quickly show a user how the tool can solve their specific problem, like providing the perfect template to organize a chaotic project, turning confusion into clarity and creating a loyal user.
Finance apps like Venmo must prioritize security over speed. Every verification step, while adding friction, is a deliberate trust signal. While asking for contacts might cause a 10-20% user drop-off for Instagram, requiring bank verification would probably caus a much higher (maybe 40-50%) drop-off for Venmo. It’s a massive initial loss, but it’s the non-negotiable price of building a secure financial platform.
