It's All About Human Nature. Build on it.
Most products feed behavior. The best ones build on human nature—pride, envy, sloth, desire. Ignore them, exploit them, or shape them. Your call.
Old Instincts, Real Users
Founders love clever ideas. New features. Shiny tools. But clever fades.
If you want to build something people use again and again, you need to understand them. Not the version they show in surveys or LinkedIn bios. The real one. Messy, impatient, insecure, hopeful.
Someone opens the app “just to check it out.” They’re not looking for anything in particular. They scroll. They click. Something pulls them in.
Fifteen minutes later, they’ve saved three things, started a search, maybe even signed up.
What happened?
It wasn’t the onboarding. Or the design. Or the clever growth loop.
Paul Graham has said the most powerful startup ideas often look like bad ones. Why? Because they don’t match the neat patterns investors expect.
They’re built around something older. Deeper.
Primitive Shortcuts To What People Want
Forget morality for a second. Think mechanics: Pride. Envy. Greed. Lust. Gluttony. Wrath. Sloth.
They’re not sins in product terms. They’re psychological shortcuts. Primitive drivers that still run modern behavior. Pride gets you to post. Envy keeps you scrolling. Sloth makes friction the enemy.
Instagram made pride scalable. Twitter gave wrath a leaderboard. Google made sloth look like intelligence. Reddit turned tribal envy into an operating model.
These companies didn’t create those instincts. They mapped them. They just gave them a home, whether they channeled them or inflamed them is another matter..
They knew people weren’t rational. They’re reactive, insecure, curious, easily bored. Products that scale and last understand this and know what to do with it.
You can ignore instinct. You can feed it. Or you can shape it.
Mirror the User, or Mold Them
Most platforms mirror their users. They reflect what people already want, only faster and easier. That’s how they grow.
Given enough effort and time, growth isn’t the hard part. Taste is.
The best products mold behavior. They start with something shallow. Ego, impulse, boredom. And push people toward something deeper. Toward skill, meaning, connection, reflection.
Most people underestimate how hard it is to build something good. Not just functional. Good. Because good requires taste, and taste requires discipline. Most founders copy what’s popular instead of learning what matters.
This kind of product doesn’t happen by accident. It takes a founder asking
What are people like?
What are they becoming?
And is my product helping or hurting that?
Most don’t ask. Or they ask once, and move on. The great ones ask every time they ship.
Inkjin Is Built on Instinct
Inkjin is a tattoo platform. You find a design. Try it on your body with AR. Connect with an artist. Done.
Except it’s not. Because tattoos aren’t shopping. They’re permanent. And the way most people get them, impulsively, socially, reactively, is a problem.
Inkjin is built on desire. Not the cheap kind. The deeper kind. The urge to express, to stand out, to be seen. It taps into pride, envy, and curiosity. And yes, even a bit of sloth The process is smooth enough to explore without commitment.
But the key is this: it doesn’t just feed desire. It shapes it into intention.
AR lets you try before you commit. That slows the decision down. AI price estimates reduce anxiety and set expectations early. The Inkjin Twin will let you co-create with a digital model of the artist you choose, using their actual style—not a generic template.
Behind the scenes, there’s curation. Every artist is handpicked. Every design is original. Most platforms optimize for volume. Inkjin filters for quality. Not because it’s fancy, but because tattoos are permanent. And bad decisions cost more than money.
One user put it best: “I’m not really into tattoos, but a friend suggested this app, so I thought I’d check it out. To my surprise, I had a great time exploring the designs! It’s perfect for someone like me who isn’t very familiar with tattoos. With so many options and styles to choose from, I might just end up getting my first one after all.”
The goal isn’t just more tattoos. It’s better ones, made with confidence, not impulse. Turn desire into trust and intent, and getting tattoos will follow.
Design Like You Know What You're Doing
Duolingo is a smart example. It knows most users feel guilt about not learning. It gamifies just enough to turn sloth into a streak. That’s shaping behavior.
LinkedIn, in its early days, leaned into pride and greed. Status and opportunity. But it also tried to reward professionalism. There was a floor.
Contrast that with TikTok, where envy and lust run wild, and the whole product trains you to want more of what you don’t have.
You get what you reward.
Build With Intent or Regret It
We’ve got enough platforms that feed addiction, outrage, and shallow validation. We doesn’t need another dopamine slot machine.
What we need are tools that see people clearly. Flaws and all. And still try to lift them up.
That doesn’t mean moralizing. It means choosing. Do you build for behavior, or for growth? Not just business growth. Human growth.
Use the sin to get them in. Then switch the game. That’s what lasts.
The best products don’t just reflect who people are. They help them become someone better.