In partnership with
Hey, {{first_name | product-preneur}}!
I'm sitting in bed rushing through my nightly Spanish. Chess too now, because apparently I have a problem.
And Duo hits me with this: "Does scrolling distract you from doing Spanish?"
I clicked yes. I said thank you. And then I sat there realizing I'd just handed Duo the keys to my entire phone.
That's the potion this week.
Brewers' Bulletin
🎥 Last week on YouTube: I explored the psychology behind Gamma, Notion, Beehiiv, and HubSpot to offer insights for improving conversion rates. Watch now!
📒 The Leak Ledger: Every week, I audit three real products from Product Hunt and score them across five UX and conversion categories. Free, delivered every Friday. View now!
Potion of the Week
Let me tell you about a category of apps you might not know exists.
BlockWalk. Brick. Opal. Real apps, real users, real subscription fees, all doing exactly one thing: locking you out of your own phone. Because phone addiction is that bad and willpower is that weak…
Duolingo just built that. Inside their app. For free. And made you ask for it.
Instead of saying "stay in our ecosystem longer," they asked: "Does scrolling distract you from doing Spanish?" Like they woke up thinking about your personal development.
Do you smell the silly stink of it now?
They framed a retention play as a favor. And once you said yes, you stopped being a user they were retaining. You became a person who asked them for help. One of those churns when something better comes along. The other has skin in the game.
This is mandatory positioning. Your product stops fighting for attention and starts becoming the price of admission for everything else. Not one more notification competing with Instagram. The thing they open first. Every day. Because you are literally standing in the doorway.
That is a whole category shift.
Spanish lessons didn’t suddenly get more fun. They absorbed an entire competitor category whole. Like Kirby. Except instead of inhaling a porcupine and becoming spiky, they inhaled BlockWalk and became the only distraction blocker you'll ever need.
Duolingo's native distraction blocker prompt
The move in three steps:
Find the enemy category. Not a competitor doing what you do. The app solving the adjacent problem your user also has.
Absorb it natively. Optional. Free. Let them ask for it.
Frame it as a favor. "Does [problem] get in the way of [thing they actually want]?" Wait for yes. That yes is the conversion.
If you're building a writing tool, your enemy category is focus apps. One toggle: "Block distractions for 30 minutes?" You just absorbed the category. They don't need Freedom anymore. You are Freedom now.
Want me to find exactly where your product is leaking revenue? That is the Revenue Leak Map. 👇
Treat Every Account like your Top 10
Every CS team has a top tier. The strategic accounts that get briefed QBRs, fast escalations, executive sponsors checking in mid-quarter. The other 190 get a generic quarterly email and a renewal scramble in week 11.
What if your top-tier playbook ran across your entire book? Every QBR briefed. Every renewal flagged 60 days out. Every usage drop surfaced before the CSM notices. Every sponsor change flagged the day it happens on LinkedIn.
That's what your CS team gets when there's a colleague in Slack reading the portfolio every morning, drafting every QBR brief, and watching the health signals around the clock. Your CSMs talk to customers. The prep work runs in the background.
11,000+ teams use Viktor daily. SOC 2 certified. Your data never trains models.
"Viktor is now an integral team member." Patrick O'Doherty, Yarra Web
Corking Things Up
That is the whole move. Identify the category competing for your users' time. Absorb it natively. Frame it as a favor. Become the price of admission.
One question before you go: what category of app is already stealing time from your users right now? Reply and tell me; I am genuinely curious what you are building!
👋 I’ll see ya next week! — Dana
P.S. If you enjoy my emails, move them to your primary inbox and let me know by sending a reply or clicking the poll below.
