Most Product Builders Are Thinking About Dopamine Wrong

Happy Sunday from NYC! 

Summer here is awesome. Everyone is building cool things, and I'm obsessed with the energy surrounding me. This is, hands down, the coolest city I’ve ever lived in. 

I’m Julia, and every week in this newsletter, I break down marketing insights I’ve learned building software and consumer products (bootstrapped + VC-backed) and lean into the organic, creator, and paid strategies that fuel viral growth. 

I recently spoke at the “Creative Innovation & Consumer Insights in the Age of AI Summit” hosted by Johannes Leonardo and Suzy  – my session was on “The Voice of the Consumer, Reimagined.”

I know my customer better than anyone because it’s my job to be obsessed. They’re LOUD: tweeting at Citizen, talking in iMessage group chats, posting on Reddit, even making crazy rap songs (you NEED to watch this fan made Citizen App music video with 3.7 million views 🤯). This is the only thing I’ll link today, so you need to click and go watch it because it’s crazy that people will make music videos about your software product. Surprisingly it’s not the only one. I’m not endorsing this video btw.

The best user signals deserve human energy in the response. AI can’t replace that but it can help me catch signals faster, respond quicker, and build around them at speed.

Thanks to everyone who came out & great to see so many of you as new subscribers now! If you’re reading this and we met at the event, WELCOME! 

I’ve seen a lot of content recently online talking about dopamine overstimulation in life. From the immediate gratification given swiping on dating apps, to easily checking out on a Shopify store, to handing off your entire workflow to an AI agent…people are going in on this content angle.

Most product builders and marketers seem to misunderstand dopamine all together.

Here are some points to know (with evidence) : 

Dopamine doesn’t run out or get “cheap,” but when it's triggered too frequently in the same way, the brain can start to tune it out. That’s habituation: the reward loses its impact, and the behavior becomes less reinforcing.

So when people say dopamine is cheap, they’re usually borrowing from addiction language rather than neuroscience. It’s a reinforcement signal, not a finite resource. And if you’re like me and designing products, you’re ultimately shaping what gets reinforced.

So, is this the real question: Are we using dopamine to reinforce meaningful progress or just uncarefully trying to use it to keep people hooked?

This, however, is very difficult. Because as the Yagishita study showed, dopamine’s ability to create lasting behavioral change depends on timing and context.

So if you want to build habits, you need to design dopamine moments with intention.

Today, I’ll break down ways across B2B and B2C products that we can design dopamine into the product journey to strengthen behavior, learning, and long-term engagement.

Why do you think most B2B products look and feel boring… with minimal color, no delight, no clear reward moments. It’s because the goal is utility: help people do their job faster, better, or more accurately.

But dopamine still matters. Here are some easy things to implement to reinforce progress with smart, well-timed feedback (like lifecycle emails or visual impact stats) that can increase retention and make the product feel more rewarding.

I went to an AI tool’s site recently and the only links in the header were “Install” and “Discord.” That stopped me b/c community is being prioritized like THIS now?

If you connect your power users in a B2B space through Discord or forums, you can turn your product into a hub for power users and top thinkers solving real problems together. It’s a MOAT. 

I recently used Runway AI (B2B2C AI video tool) and hopped over to their discord for community help on making better videos. This absolutely made the experience better (immediate feedback from real users) and will help me retain longer because I can continue to see the cool things people are building in real time.

Community creates a new layer of inspiration and connection to B2B products that can inherently feel isolating and dull. 

In a stark contrast to B2B, B2C products almost overdo trying to set up reward systems that inherently elicit dopamine. 

Creating these reward systems can both build and destroy your long-term UX (aka user experience). Downsides when you reward users too fast, too often, or too predictably that happen in consumer products:

Great consumer products have mastered using dopamine guiding users toward habit, identity, or transformation (and ultimately have killer retention and LTV). Here’s a good blueprint to follow as you build:

We all want to build the best products possible, and it's interesting to look at how reward systems come to life across B2B and B2C to get us, and our customers, there. 

What motivates a user depends on the context and product. Some people crave speed and ease. Others want to feel progress or transformation. In B2B, it's often about momentum and mastery. In B2C, it’s usually about identity or emotional ties. With AI, it’s about control, co-creation, or even just surprise (like when you never really know what image you’ll get with GPT even with a detailed prompt).

There’s no single reward system that works everywhere. I love mixing and matching across categories and think that the best marketers and product builders steal ideas from people outside their realm.

That is a true skill required to set up unique rewards and create a legendary product experience.  

I hope you have an incredible week ahead. Talk again next Sunday!

Julia

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