How to earn trust in high-stakes categories

1 The bottom line

In high-stakes categories, trust comes from proof others can check: real experts, honest claims and rules you refuse to break. It matters because people trust you with their health, money or safety, and one bad mistake undermines it.

2 Key takeaways

• Put real experts and real people behind every claim. Skeptical buyers discount a company praising itself.
  • Jetpack used ex-flight attendants as experts and opened with the credential Dawson Gibbs, Evo Marketing5:46.
  • Zero hired several chief medical officers, which Mike says no other fasting app has done Mike Maser, Zero27:25.
• Let other people vouch for you. Nobody believes a pitch from the company that benefits.
  • Wise found landing page trust signals far weaker than a friend's recommendation Nilan Peiris, Wise17:28.
  • In voice dictation, a user calling the tool insane is a new claim nobody has heard Tanay Kothari, Wispr Flow37:40.
• Give up growth that breaks your promise. Trust pays back over time, even if the shortcut is faster.
  • Natal's founder turns down brand deals and affiliate links, though agencies say she leaves half a million to a million dollars a year on the table Nancy Anderson, Natal26:44.
  • Pok Pok skips pop-ups, streaks and rewards, because parents trust that kids see only the toys Melissa Cash, Pok Pok18:50.
• Build the promise into the product and the structure. A promise that depends on one person or one good mood is not credible.
  • Community Notes has no admin override, so a bad note is treated as a flaw in the system Keith Coleman and Jay Baxter, X1:11:48.
  • Founders can be replaced by investors, so promises belong in governance Eric Ries, Long-Term Stock Exchange1:35:00.
• When something goes wrong, explain it plainly and in public. Silence lets rumors set the story.
  • Gas cut daily account deletions from 3% of users to 0.1% after fighting a false rumor on every channel Nikita Bier, TBH and Gas1:07:44.
  • Figma held a Twitter space with the founders and CTO the day after a hostile reaction, and the tide began to turn Claire Butler, Figma54:40.

it's actually just a signal that trust has been built before the paywall.

Nancy Anderson, Natal

2.1 Choose who speaks for you

Match the messenger to the kind of purchase, and show real humans.

• Cast experts for considered purchases and relatable creators for impulse ones. Source: Dawson Gibbs, Evo Marketing5:46
  • For travel or buying a business, open with the credential, such as "I am credible because I'm an ex flight attendant."
  • For a $40 furniture dupe or a faith app, cast someone who shares the same pain point.
  • Jetpack used ex-flight attendants. Dupe.com and Bible BFF used relatable creators.
  • For travel or finance apps, people follow the creator and buy weeks later, so the creator's page matters more than one video Dawson Gibbs, Evo Marketing33:10.
• Put credentialed people inside the company, not just in the ads. Source: Mike Maser, Zero27:25
  • Invest in science-backed content and hire chief medical officers with decades of metabolic health experience.
  • Skip the swimsuit-model, overpromising ads common in the category.
  • Users noticed and told others the company was legit.
• Use real people in ads when the product is healthcare. Source: David Futoran, Honeydew32:25
  • Avoid AI humans in visual and video ads, since real patients should be shown.
  • Find creators by DMing people who are on Accutane.
  • Honeydew uses Upfluence to manage creator contracting and content, and still relies heavily on manual DMing.
• Put a human name and face on the product. Source: Ryan McLeod, Blackbox8:40
  • Make your name prominent in the app and answer support from your own email, not a corporate "we".
  • People get mad at a company more easily than at a person, which brings sympathy and fewer bad reviews.
  • Arc shows its meetings and team in public videos because a browser holds sensitive data. Josh warns this can make the CEO too central Josh Miller, The Browser Company41:20.

2.2 Borrow credibility from outside

Research, customers, press and physical places carry a claim further than your own voice.

• Publish research built on opt-in, anonymized data. Source: Luke Martin-Fuller, Visible11:06
  • Build informed consent flows, ethics committee sign-off through an academic partner, and anonymization pipelines.
  • Talk to researchers early, when you are asking for advice, and let them pull the first study. Join the niche community, because cold outreach is unproven Luke Martin-Fuller, Visible15:30.
  • Papers, including one in Nature and others with Mount Sinai and Imperial College London, show skeptical buyers the company is legitimate. It does not move revenue immediately, and it cannot be cloned over a weekend.
• Make the product good enough that customers do the trust work. Source: Nilan Peiris, Wise17:28
  • Do not lean on trust copy. Deliver an experience worth recommending.
  • In categories full of broken promises, build the plan around other people describing the value prop Tanay Kothari, Wispr Flow37:40.
  • Even Wise customers who arrive through marketing usually heard about it from a friend first.
• Treat press as a credential, not a traffic source. Source: Jason Feifer, Entrepreneur Magazine39:40
  • Put "as seen in" on your website, and link the article in outreach to advertisers and partners.
  • Include coverage in emails to hiring candidates and in cold outbound, where you can measure the effect Zoelle Egner, Airtable1:02:10.
  • If your product is hard to cover, pitch yourself as an expert. A quote in a story is enough to claim "as featured in" Jason Feifer, Entrepreneur Magazine1:09:50.
  • A Variety story about Feifer's podcast produced nothing directly, yet every advertiser and partner email now links it.
  • Offer one outlet an exclusive at a time. Steve landed TechCrunch, Huffington Post and The Next Web this way Steve Young, App Masters5:53.
• Show up in places your buyers already trust. Source: Jelte Liebrand, Savvy Navvy54:25
  • Put QR codes in chandleries and boat shops. Seeing the app in a store they trust validates it.
  • To win enterprise buyers, buy remnant billboards near their offices Zoelle Egner, Airtable33:33.
  • Airtable bought billboards near fashion and media offices in New York. Some inventory costs in the low thousands of dollars per billboard.

2.3 Market honestly

Earn the connection first, never oversell, and protect the audience's trust over short-term income.

• Check your brand before you test off-brand or shaming creative. Source: Yuliya Lennox, Solid Starts24:49
  • Ugly or quirky ads suit most apps, but categories like baby feeding carry trust expectations.
  • Refuse aggressive shaming ads and stress that fitness is a journey Saulo Marti, 8fit6:59.
  • An ad with babies made of fruit drew feedback asking whether people should trust the company to feed their babies.
  • Saulo is sure the aggressive competitor ads convert, and 8fit still refuses to run them.
• Build trust before the paywall, and soft sell. Source: Nancy Anderson, Natal23:23
  • Connect through content, socials, DMs and emails before asking for a trial.
  • End content with a gentle call like "click here to learn more", and share the product link in DMs only when asked Nancy Anderson, Natal20:17.
  • 93% of web checkout visitors download the app. Trial conversion is 68% against a 38% industry average. Download to trial is 17% against a 6% health and fitness average, at $25 a month.
• Post like a person, not only about the product. Source: Nancy Anderson, Natal17:00
  • Mix in funny, relatable personal content so people get to know the founder and feel safe.
  • Skip free workouts as lead magnets, since they attract the wrong audience and devalue expert-built programs Nancy Anderson, Natal51:23.
  • An audit showed her organic content outperforms competitors by 90%.
  • She made about $10,000 a month with 10,000 followers, while a peer with 300,000 followers could not sell programs Nancy Anderson, Natal10:26.
• Tell prospects when you are not the right fit. Source: Jen Abel, JJELLYFISH1:13:05
  • Do not oversell to land a logo or satisfy investors, since the customer will churn within months.
  • Saying you may not be the right fit often makes prospects probe what you are great at.

2.4 Build the promise into the product and the organization

A promise only counts if the product, the funding and the structure make it hard to break.

• Refuse growth hacks that break your core value promise. Source: Melissa Cash, Pok Pok18:50
  • Write down core values so these calls settle quickly. Pok Pok did it only in the last year.
  • Stay founder funded, pick investors carefully, and commit to no ads, no data selling and no engagement maxing Raj Singh, Purpose37:50.
  • Pok Pok would not use a pop-up even to promote the free play kit that helps retention.
  • Wabi names dark patterns such as tiny light-gray paywall close buttons, and moves auth, security and payments to the platform layer Eugenia Kuyda, Wabi29:39.
• Set limits on AI before you ship it. Source: Cori Shearer, Headspace33:17
  • Let a clinical expert codify the principles for AI. Build safeguards, including AI detection of risks such as suicidality.
  • Say the AI augments developers and keep static analysis and unit tests in place Ryan J. Salva, GitHub Copilot53:10.
  • For safety-critical data, use AI for personalization, not as a replacement for verified data Brandon Gador, onX56:06.
  • The Headspace team accepted being slower to protect a trusted brand, and reporters said Ebb felt distinctly different.
  • Pep AI frames the app as user-input only with no medical advice, and adds features with research and attorney input Cedric Roberge, Pep AI24:15.
  • Captions designs products to make misuse hard for documentation video and easy for storytelling Gaurav Misra, Captions1:06:45.
• Engineer predictability and care into every touchpoint. Source: Shweta Shrivastava, Waymo13:22
  • Design for an uneventful ride from day one. Trust should not be an add-on.
  • Combine visibility into system behavior with an easy path to a person, such as a screen showing what the car sees and support that calls if your seat belt is not buckled Shweta Shrivastava, Waymo14:22.
  • Reread every email and write sample content that references your users' industry instead of "Jane Doe" Zoelle Egner, Airtable29:55.
  • Riders say the first five minutes feel like wow, then it feels normal.
  • Airtable closed six-figure deals with a 15-person team partly because of this perceived care.
• Take away your own power to bend the rules. Source: Keith Coleman and Jay Baxter, X1:11:48
  • Have no button for the company to change a note's status. If a note is so bad you want to remove it, redesign the system.
  • Set the bar high and treat showing a bad note as the worst mistake Keith Coleman and Jay Baxter, X20:20.
  • Publish the scoring code and daily ratings data so outsiders can replicate the service Keith Coleman and Jay Baxter, X1:14:15.
  • About 8% of proposed notes show, typically between 7% and 11% over time.
  • Show a note only when people who have disagreed in the past rate it helpful. Notes were seen about 30 billion times in 2024 from about 95,000 notes Keith Coleman and Jay Baxter, X7:48.
  • Outside the product, put promises in governance. A manifesto and good intentions would not persuade tenured academics Eric Ries, Long-Term Stock Exchange1:35:00.

2.5 Handle mistakes and criticism in the open

Explain what happened, talk to people directly, and make rumors less viral than your product.

• Explain mishaps plainly, with the facts and the process. Source: Claire Butler, Figma54:40
  • After downtime, publish a postmortem covering the technical cause and the fix, and take full accountability.
  • When a bad Wordle answer coincided with news, the Times said it was mid-integration and explained what happened Alex Hardiman, The New York Times39:52.
  • Figma ran a Twitter space the day after the acquisition news turned social hostile, and answered any question.
  • Some people still believe the Times makes Wordle harder, but honesty is the only option.
• Explain trade-offs for the onlookers, not the critics. Source: Adam Mosseri, Instagram51:55
  • Join contested debates, since they happen with or without you. Lay out what you are doing, why, and the trade-offs.
  • He began this practice with the News Feed redesign in 2009, and compares criticism of a redesign to rearranging someone's desk without warning.
• Fight a viral hoax on every channel. Source: Nikita Bier, TBH and Gas1:07:44
  • Get the press headline to say the app is not for the false claim so it ranks first in search.
  • Have schools and a police station retract posts, ask Apple to remove review bombs, and get TikTok to remove videos.
  • Gas showed a debunking video to users who deleted their accounts. Daily deletions fell from 3% to 0.1%.
• Answer people fast, with real experts, and welcome honest criticism. Source: Nancy Anderson, Natal20:53
  • Reply to every DM, comment and email within 24 hours with no AI and no canned responses. Use coaches such as physical therapists, with SOPs to keep it scalable.
  • Staff for dialogue. Copilot grew its product team faster than its engineering team to answer doubts about public code, security and buggy suggestions Ryan J. Salva, GitHub Copilot50:55.
  • The 24-hour practice has run for eight years and underpins the high trial conversion and retention.
  • Notion's outside community called out the weak Projects launch. Their praise is believable only if they sometimes say something was not good Rachel Hepworth, Notion48:18.

2.6 Where they disagree

Some tactics depend on the product, and a few operators pull in opposite directions.

• Does press move anything? It depends on whether you want users or credibility.
  • An early Wall Street Journal piece was Notion's big break and showed clearly in the traffic graphs Camille Ricketts, Notion58:41.
  • Airtable found press rarely brings leads, since few readers click through, so it uses coverage for hiring and outbound Zoelle Egner, Airtable1:02:10.
• How should you treat AI content? Labeling, avoiding and limiting all appear.
  • Instagram would not filter AI content. It would label it and show more about the poster Adam Mosseri, Instagram44:30.
  • Honeydew avoids AI humans in ads because it is a healthcare service David Futoran, Honeydew32:25.
• Should a person or the institution carry the promise? A named founder helps in some products and is risky in others.
  • Putting the founder's name and email up front earns sympathy when things go wrong Ryan McLeod, Blackbox8:40.
  • No individual can make promises for an organization, so they must be built into governance Eric Ries, Long-Term Stock Exchange1:35:00.
• How much does brand matter? It matters most where users rely on you for safety or high stakes.
  • A boating safety app needs trust, while a recipe app may not need a brand Jelte Liebrand, Savvy Navvy1:04:00.
  • Melissa believes growth might be faster without the trust rules, but retention would suffer Melissa Cash, Pok Pok18:50.