Elon Musk's Ex-X Product Chief Nikita Bier Charges $15,000 for 30-Minute Startup Consulting

Nikita Bier, who recently stepped down as head of product for Elon Musk's social media platform X (formerly Twitter), is now offering exclusive, high-stakes consulting services to venture-backed startup founders. Through a platform called Intro, Bier is charging an eye-watering $15,000 for a 30-minute one-on-one video consultation. The pricing structure is set at $7,500 per 15-minute block, with a mandatory 30-minute minimum, effectively making each session a significant investment for founders. These consultations are designed to address critical startup challenges, allowing founders to pose up to three questions focused on areas such as scaling businesses, refining growth strategies, navigating investment landscapes, achieving product "virality," and securing capital. Bier, who continues to advise X despite his departure from the product leadership role earlier this month, is positioned as one of several distinguished experts available on the Intro platform. Other notable figures offering their expertise include Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit, and Andrew Chen, a partner at the prominent venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Intro operates with a bold satisfaction guarantee: users are promised to "find value in your first session or your money back," aiming to mitigate the perceived risk of such substantial financial outlays for advice.

Bier, a 37-year-old serial entrepreneur, brings a wealth of experience and a proven track record of success to his consulting role. His entrepreneurial journey includes the creation and successful exits of two startups that were acquired by major technology corporations. In 2017, Facebook, now known as Meta Platforms, acquired tbh, Bier's innovative anonymous polling application targeted at teenagers, for an undisclosed sum reportedly in the region of $30 million. Following this success, Bier developed another app, Gas, which focused on anonymous compliments and shared a similar conceptual framework. Gas was subsequently acquired by Discord in 2023, again for an undisclosed amount. Under Bier's leadership, both tbh and Gas achieved remarkable success, reaching the coveted No. 1 position on the App Store and accumulating millions of downloads, underscoring his ability to build and scale popular consumer applications. After these significant exits, Bier transitioned to the venture capital world, joining Lightspeed Venture Partners as a product growth partner. More recently, last year, he launched Explode, a novel mini-application integrated within Apple's Messages app, designed to facilitate the sending of ephemeral content.