# User you don't want

**Author:** Michael Seibel
**Type:** Video
**URL:** https://www.ycombinator.com/library/67-user-you-don-t-want
**YouTube ID:** BSYExUUrmD4

---

When you’re just getting started, many startups will take every user they can get. They have a strong idea of a problem
and they want to attract as many users with that problem as possible. Unfortunately, when you open up the barn doors you
get all sorts of people with all sorts of problems. Some of them will try to hijack your product to solve a problem you
didn’t intend to solve. By and large, these hijackers are users you don’t want.

For example, say I’m starting Uber for babysitters. Our target customers are parents with kids from around the age 4
to 12. These kids we can service with committed babysitters who don’t have special training therefore allowing us to
provide our service at a reasonable price point to a wide variety of users. Now, what happens if someone with an infant
or developmentally challenged teenager signs up? Their needs present an entirely new set of problems, problems that
could be solved by a startup but not necessarily by ours. Remember you don’t have to pivot your business because a
customer needs something that you don’t offer.

**Why Not Solve Their Problem, Too?**  
Sometimes you should. Sometimes the hijacker users are actually showing you where there’s an even more acute need, an
even bigger problem. But, in other cases, they are leading you into a trap where you are solving a problem for a smaller
group of users or in the worst case just them. This is a consulting business and if you are doing a tech startup - you
don’t want to be in the business of solving one off problems for users.

So what should you do? Well, there is no right answer but before diving into this new problem have this conversation
with your co-founders. Should you explore switching the problem you are trying to solve? Does this user represent a
larger group? Are the economics of your business different or broken if you serve this user or others like them? Does
this user represent an even better opportunity for you to grow your business?

In the case of Justin.tv, pivoting to serve video gamers was the right move. Our video game broadcasters always
represented a small but consistent group of users. It tooks us 4-5 years to realize how important they were. Serving
them didn’t change the costs of the business too much: our major costs were salaries and bandwidth and we didn’t care
what video was being streamed as long as people were watching and chatting. Also it opened up monetization avenues that
were very interesting: online video advertisers would prefer to advertise against video gameplay than general UGC
content.

**Saying No**  
If you decide you don't want to serve this customer that is okay\! Remember that being good at customer service doesn’t
mean serving every potential customer. You should always be courteous with people you can’t serve but you shouldn’t feel
bad telling them that you’re focused on solving another problem. They’ll survive and you’ll be much more likely to serve
your target customers better. Also, focusing in on a specific problem will help you find product/market fit.

In the early days, by focusing on solving one problem really well, you’re betting on making a small amount of people
very happy. If you let any user that walks in the door steer the product roadmap you’re going to end up doing a shitty
job at half-solving a lot of problems.

## Transcript

users you don't want and this one was Stannis yeah this was fun yeah when you're just getting started many startups will take every user they can get they have a strong idea of a problem and they want to attract as many users with that problem as possible unfortunately when you open up the barn doors you get all sorts of people with all sorts of problems some of them will try to hijack your product to solve a problem you didn't intend to solve by and large these hijacks hijackers are users you do not

want when is this happen to you I mean justin.tv was by definition hijacked yeah like we built a product to allow people to livestream their lives and within a year it was being used to stream copper and content around the world absolutely hijacked from and and and what's interesting is that I'm a little afraid of my phrasing here I I wish I

didn't say that these hijack users are not are not users you want because it turns out that like sometimes they are yeah it turns out that like you know the reason why we even had an inkling to do twitch was because some percentage of the hijack users were video gamers and like it turns out that that could have been a much bigger community if we if we helped it and then eventually became one so this kind of like users using your product for a whole variety of things I like to think about it more like on a spectrum mm-hmm like there's the user

who's using your product as intended yeah great makes feel good maybe there's a business there maybe there's right there's the user who's using your product in interesting ways with potential yeah right yeah study those users those users are very important video gamers are justin.tv there are users who are using your product with ways that it's extremely clear to you that there isn't long term value even if there is short-term value right I'd argue that those were the copper and in

streamers on justin.tv there's a short term value because we can monetize with ads and so once over the long term we weren't really creating value and then they're like hi Jack users I'd argue like those are users who are using your product and they're creating no value and they're probably actively do you like decreasing your value they're there they're harming your network right and like for us you know that would be people like you know some people's dreams like pretty horrible things on justin.tv right like that was that was not good and so um what's interesting is that now when I

talk to startups at YC they don't know how to recognize these hijack users and just kick them out mmm and like they kind of like no one no one talks about these people they always talk about like everyone before them yeah right we're just like those of uses that have some value and no talk about the highe just users and it's like if you can identify the hijack users you need to kick them out like they're actually going to hurt you more than they're gonna help you and so I think this is important and I think

that like it's not that the hayek users have like bad intentions even um they can some do but some it's just they want to use your prod to do what they want to do and that is literally going to hurt your business there are some things that like if people do on your platform it hurts your business how would you how would you classify someone who just takes up all the customer support time it depends on how much revenue they're generating yeah right like I'd argue

that if they are generating enough revenue to justify that support time great yeah if you have a free product not so much yeah so much probably right especially if you're not learning if they're taking up a bunch of your support time but you're learning and like you're actually improving your product because of it great but like for example like let's see I'll create a hypothetical example without my head right imagine that I'm the beginning of Airbnb someone wanted to use Airbnb to

host like drug parties right like a legal drug bar is a crack parties and they thought of these Airbnb ziz like mobile crack dens right well let's think about this for a second like so on one hand right they are paying yeah I mean they're paying for the big apartment it's paying for the nice places yeah right yeah they got money all right interesting the other hand they're probably destroying this apartment doing something highly

illegal getting the police called on them like deadheaded it out right and it's like these are hijack users like these are not the types of people you want and like you can be a hijack user and there's still some positive yeah but it says like if there's like way too much negative it's not worth the positive now and that's actually where I see a lot I actually see it a lot where it's like the high tech users paying so you'll feel bad cuz when the hydrogen she's not paying usually you feel less bad taking on here yeah when they're paying you're like well but they're paying right and

and you and it's like no you just okay come out yeah especially in the context of like you have these metrics you want to hit and you're like yeah right oh my god like like this is real this is stop it's like shut it down yeah yeah and you end it in a nice clean way by saying by focusing on solving one problem really well you're betting on making a small amount of people very happy if you let any user that walks in the door if the product roadmap you're going to end up doing shitty job at so half solving a lot of problems yeah I

mean to be clear with this ending my whole goal is that like like I said there's like this spectrum of potentially useful users yeah my whole goal is like don't let the hijack users steer your product roadmap totally like the it's really totally ok if you want to explore some of those use cases that are not these case that you thought that are still use cases that like could be good for you huh then it's a totally ok to explore to experiment so and so forth but it's like don't let your app like don't let the crack den guys on Airbnb

control the product or a math for air B&B right and suggest two features that they like right not where you want I mean this is sort of the mentality it's like at the end of the day you have to have some opinion about your product you can't just be like I don't know if the markets gonna take it wherever the customers take it wherever yes it's been really hard to build product without some opinion yeah you
