The Game Done Changed

Sarah Lacy on Color:

I remember when Max Levchin was launching Slide. At PayPal they’d concocted a clever method of paying users $20 to refer a friend, and the product spread rapidly — and it was cheaper than how other companies were grabbing users back then. With Slide, he was struck by how his pedigree, his experience, his team, his cash — none of this could force adoption. There was no trick the way there was in the late 1990s. “You just can’t force users to get up off their asses and use your product,” he told me in exasperation at the time.

We are living in more exciting times.