good addiction products
written on:
when we started ripen, it was with a dream. a dream to build 'good addiction' products. an attempt to positively impact India, in a world full of reels, stories, onlyfans & tweets.
we want to create a bigger dent. a bigger impact. something so grand, that it changes user behaviour for good. we might be very stupid to think we can tweak user behaviour as a consumer social play, but there has been precedence, but we can't shy away from trying.
an observation over time has been: India doesn't lack ambition, nor does it lack aspiration. rather, it lacks discipline, it lacks direction. it lacks 'good addiction products'. i'm not taking privilege, opportunities & luck into consideration when i say this^.
although the math is simple, everybody wants 100 crores, but kaam kisiko nahi karna, yaar. we just want to hit that lottery, without having to show-up everybody. to make it worse, gen-z's have REALLY adopted this behaviour. they've grown up watching people go to clubs, travel abroad, buy fancy shoes, work at fancy coffee shops, wear designer clothes, fancy 'job titles' -- and that's what they're attached to.
at the risk of sounding insensitive, this is the gen-z workforce in a nutshell: chahiye sab, kaam ki quality kharab, aur zyaada karva liya to burn out hojayega. they're attached to the goals, not the process. kaam nahi karna.
i was one of them till i was 19. thankfully, i started chasing the journey more than the goal short after, when i read about how life is nothing but a moving goal post.
ripen is here to build products to increase discipline, consistency & direction. because when ambition = discipline, the right direction, the right outcome, the right grind. you unlock something massive.
what we dream of: make showing up easier. bring in a revolution. build 100x +ve impact products.
this isn't an easy change. this requires one to get people addicted to good habits, like:
Exercising
Learning
Eating right
Deep work
Sleeping well
Investing in relationships
Taking care of your mental health
i'm going to quote gaurav munjal on this one, because of how beautifully he summarises the current situation of bad-addictive products winning the battle over good-addiction products.
and good addiction products require:
Internal Motivation -- to stick to it no matter what,
Gamification - to make it fun, gen-z's don't like boring apps
Friends and Social - to make it competitive & shareable
Community - because P2P conversation is winning
Progress tracking - to remind you on the long journey you're on
Money - Skin in the game + nothing motivates a human more
i have a strong conviction that a combination of these elements, used in the right balance, can tweak user behaviour to work on more +ves that don't give instant gratification (i.e. long term bets) but the contrarian (and popular) thought process is to tweak strategies according to user behaviour.
whether it works or not, this is exactly how we're building ripen games - where you build habits, one-time life goals (insurance, taxes, resume revamp etc) with friends. as much as we wanted to include betting money on yourself as an important product feature, the Indian government clearly doesn't like it. [the GST bill for real-money gaming is what i'm talking about]
while i have a looooot to say on how user behaviour needs to evolve for a more positive future, i shall stop myself from writing about the utopian future we dream of.
here's what we're doing to create good addiction products. we're building ripen labs.
a house of apps. built for positive impact. a meta for the next decade of aspiring gen-z's.
a) ripen's community:
a year ago we launched cohorts & communities. fast forward to now, there have been a total of 9,000 people across discord and whatsapp who've been a part of this joyride. after a lot of user testimonials later, we're sure that these people have found immense value, and stick with us no matter how much time we take to figure things out.
initially, we thought we don't need a community for this. there's no urgency, and has no behaviour, but a couple hundred thousand messages later & snuggling for attention, we found
b) ripen app
(jan'23 to may'23)
we initially built a duolingo for adulting. (think task lists, a community, and resources to help you file your taxes, move out of your house, or negotiate your rental agreement) -- which did have 3,000 users a week into it's launch. but we realise motivation is hard to sustain in this environment. it ended up becoming a lot of content, and less execution.
(June'23 to now - re-launching in a couple of weeks)
we decided to solve for consistency, motivation & discipline for all things adulthood. imagine you can go up against your colleagues, society friends, family, flat-mates, batchmates on who can eat healthier? who can work out more? who can work out consistently? who can manage their finances the best? who can read more?
this behaviour does exists. in a very dis-organised way, but we dream to make it organised and scale -- use the beauty of competition, rewards & self-improvement to bring in a revolution.
if it works in india, we go global.
c) venti
so many people across India don't find the right person to talk about their struggles of single-hood, childhood trauma, addictions & emotional baggage.
India has never had the 'Alcoholics Anonymous' like support groups -- maybe because the behaviour doesn't exist. but with anonymity, closed groups & expert-led conversations... can we build a positive impact product here?
maybe we can. we'll launch this in a week. do check our Instagram to keep in touch.
d) weekly
keeping in touch with your 'good friends' is hard. it's harder when you don't tweet/post about every life detail, be it big or small, on social media.
what if we could summarise our entire week into a single page, and share it with friends. no social feed. no algorithm to feed. just keeping in touch with friends. photos, voice notes, and some generic stats.
(like.. your most listened to song this week, how many kms you travelled this week, how many meetings you attended this week, how many calories you burnt this week, how many hours you spent on social media - all automated with APIs)
again, we aren't sure this behaviour exists or not. whether people would use it to keep in touch with their friends abroad. but we are trying. trying to see if we can help people in 'long-distance friendships'
we will give private access to 50 of our friends, in 10 days.
e) Entrepreneurs-In-Residence
nothing in college prepared us for building a company. although we had the good fortune to go to a tier-1 college, there was no direction to channelise our enthusiasm to building for the world.
as an ode to this, we hired 40 EIRs from some solid Tier-1,2 & 3 colleges like IIT-B, IIT-D, NIT-K, SRCC, Ashoka, Christ, BITS Goa, Thapar, St. Xaviers, IGNOU, et al.
Thanks to the bull-run of startups in 2021-22, entrepreneurship became a desired gamble to take. We want to work with the builders of tomorrow. the founders of tomorrow. you can read everything about it, here.
all of these products are something we need. they have 0 toxicity involved. now, there are very few consumer social products that don't play on envy, toxicity & jealousy. but here's to trying. because if we don't, we'll be one of those ambition > discipline folks.
these are very long-term bets, they'll take probably 5-10 years, but here for it all.
these are some projects (there are more that i'm not discussing) that we think the world needs. even if they don't work, they'll always have 7 users. the ripen team. here's to building a lot of 'good addiction' products. because that is what the next decade needs. because if we don't, i worry that we will hit a point of no return.
if you're driven by this mission, write to me at tike@ripen.in.