Zoomer Privacy Attitudes

Shaan Puri shares his evolving perspective on privacy in tech products, noting a significant shift in consumer attitudes towards data privacy. He believes the market for privacy-focused products is growing, though still remains a niche segment of larger markets.

• Privacy Attitudes Are Changing:

  • People historically traded privacy easily for free services
  • Now seeing increased concern about privacy due to:
    • Repeated data breaches
    • Trust issues with big tech companies
    • Accumulation of privacy violations ("things stack up")

• Business Strategy for Privacy-Focused Products:

  • Must target mass-market products to succeed
    • Example: DuckDuckGo (62M queries/day) vs Google (3.5B queries/day)
  • Can be profitable with small market share:
    • Only need 1-2% of massive markets
    • Similar to Superhuman charging $30/month for email

• Key Requirements for Privacy-Focused Products:

  • Target globally used products/services
  • Avoid niche products ("niche of a niche")
  • Need large enough total addressable market

• Business Model Considerations:

  • Can still monetize without personal data
  • Example: DuckDuckGo shows ads based on search intent, not personal data
  • Slight drop in personalization offset by privacy value proposition

• Generational Questions:

  • Uncertainty about Zoomer (Gen Z) attitudes toward privacy
  • Different privacy values across generations
  • Need to understand how younger generations think about data privacy