Building Teflon Technology

The Obsession With Sticky

In the world of tech, there’s one metric everyone obsesses over: stickiness. How long can you keep people on your site? How do you get them coming back every day?

The tricks are everywhere:

All carefully designed to keep us glued to the screen. Social media nailed it. DuoLingo perfected it. And nearly every SaaS founder chases it.

Not us.

Our Opposite Approach

We’ve built two tech companies, SignUpGenius and now Meetify, where the goal is the exact opposite.

We’re anti-sticky.

Our aim isn’t to keep you clicking. It’s to help you accomplish your task and get you off the site as fast as possible.

At SignUpGenius, that meant quickly organizing your group so you could spend more time actually volunteering. At Meetify, it means scheduling coffee or lunch with ease so you can spend less time wrangling calendars and more time in real conversations.

We even designed Meetify so you don’t have to come back to the site at all. Set up your schedule and put your meetings on autopilot. That’s Teflon technology.

When Less Clicks Was the Right Call

Now, anti-sticky technology doesn’t sit well with short-term bean counters and hockey stick revenue chasers. It can feel risky.

I remember redesigning the signup builder at SignUpGenius. We were overhauling the core software that had been in use for ten years and was helping organize 3.3 million events a year. We spent hours poring over the process, shaving off clicks, trimming steps, and rethinking the flow just to make it simpler.

Ironically, the site made millions of dollars through ads, so fewer pageviews could mean less revenue for us.

But we did it anyway.

Because the mission mattered more. And in the long run, we knew it would make users happy and build loyalty.

What Really Matters

Here’s the bigger picture: technology should serve life, not the other way around. Life is better when you choose tools that make it easier to flourish as a human, not just rack up clicks.

So, use Meetify only if it adds value to your life. If you can walk across the hall and just invite someone to meet, do that. If you can call, call. And when you want to coordinate a coffee meetup, we’d love to make that easier.

Because at the end of the day, it’s not about the software. It’s about the people.

The best technology isn’t sticky at all. It lets go so you can hold on to what matters.