Adjacent User Theory: Unlock Growth Beyond Your Current Users

Key Insights

• Adjacent users are aware of your product but struggle to adopt it due to barriers in positioning or experience
• Instagram grew from 400M to 1B users by focusing on adjacent user segments rather than just power users
• Cohort decay signals the presence of adjacent users—declining conversion rates over time reveal untapped opportunities
• Sequential expansion through adjacent users compounds impact across acquisition, retention, and monetization
• The adjacent user landscape evolves constantly; successful companies reassess quarterly based on data and research

Why Adjacent Users Drive Exponential Growth

When Instagram had 400 million users in 2016, the product faced a critical challenge: linear growth instead of exponential growth. The solution wasn't building new products for existing power users—it was identifying and solving problems for adjacent users.

Adjacent users are people aware of your product who tried it but couldn't successfully adopt it. The gap between your current retention and potential retention exists because these users face barriers preventing them from crossing activation thresholds. By removing those barriers, you realize the true potential of your product-market fit.

This impact compounds over time. When you enable adjacent users to experience core value, they don't just improve near-term cohorts—they influence future cohorts through word-of-mouth and change long-term growth trajectories across acquisition, retention, and monetization loops.

How to Identify Adjacent Users: From Data to Empathy

Start with data. Look at the edges of user state transitions—signup to activation, casual to core, free to paid. Declining conversion rates cohort-to-cohort signal adjacent users entering that funnel and struggling to progress.

At Instagram, if a user had 10+ followers in the first 7 days after signup, there was over 65% chance they'd activate. Users on that margin struggled, but the reasons varied by segment and evolved over time.

At Slack, users active 3 of 7 days (3d7) were on the edge—roughly 50/50 chance of churning or retaining the next week.

Then build empathy. Use four techniques:

1. Be the adjacent user: Force your team to experience the product as new users do, including empty states and slow network conditions. Instagram built "Air Traffic Control" to simulate international device permutations and network speeds.

2. Watch the adjacent user: Conduct usability tests. Observe what users struggle with before helping, revealing unrecorded workarounds and behaviors.

3. Talk to the adjacent user: Use surveys for speed, then go deeper with in-person conversations. At Instagram, interviews about login churn revealed two critical insights: users logged out due to prepaid data plans or phone sharing, and they used fake email addresses because email is a Western paradigm.

4. Visit the adjacent user: Observe users in their real environment—how they work, constraints they face, authentic workflows they employ.

Sequencing Adjacent Users: The Path to Sustainable Growth

Not all adjacent users should be pursued simultaneously. Poor sequencing wastes effort on impossible expansions.

Choose segments that differ on only one or two attributes. Expanding across five vectors at once is hitting a home run every swing—it requires too many changes. Layer micro-expansions: first add small features for users differing on one attribute, then build toward bigger value propositions for multi-attribute users.

Prioritize "in-house" problems first. Users already in your funnel but struggling to progress show intent and convert faster than brand-new audiences. At Instacart, 75% of core users were women, urban, in specific cities, heads of household, with kids, affluent, and willing to spend time filling carts. Expansion vectors emerged from each attribute: women → men, urban → suburban, affluent → price-sensitive.

Evaluate long-term trajectory, not just segment size. A smaller segment growing fast may outpace a larger stagnant segment. At Slack, India users monetized worse than France users, but India was growing faster with a clear monetization hypothesis—making India the higher ROI choice on a longer horizon.

The Adjacent User Landscape Is Always Evolving

When Bangaly joined Instagram, the adjacent user was women 35-45 in the US with Facebook accounts. By the time he left, it was women in Jakarta on older 3G Android phones with prepaid plans.

The landscape shifts for three reasons:

New information from unexpected experiment results, new data instrumentation, or research discoveries reshapes your understanding and reveals new segments.

New users showing up arrives when solving for one adjacent user unlocks word-of-mouth from that cohort, bringing their friends—a different adjacent user segment—into your orbit.

New value propositions fundamentally change activation requirements. When Instagram launched Stories, new users struggled because story content disappeared after 24 hours. They needed to follow more accounts, raising the activation bar and changing the experience needed at that edge.

Successful companies reevaluate adjacent users every quarterly planning cycle and cross the cognitive threshold—seeing the product through their eyes—repeatedly as the landscape evolves.

Conclusion

Rapid success in your first audience leads to saturation. Maintaining growth requires shifting focus from core to adjacent users—selecting the right segments and solving their problems sequentially. Adjacent User Theory replaces static personas with dynamic, adoption-behavior-driven definitions that evolve every 3-6 months during hypergrowth. The companies that win are those that continuously discover and serve the next adjacent user with just a little more help.

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원문출처: The Adjacent User Theory at andrewchen

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