How to drive word of mouth | Nilan Peiris (CPO of Wise)
Nilan Peiris (guest), Lenny Rachitsky (host)
In this episode of Lenny's Podcast, featuring Nilan Peiris and Lenny Rachitsky, How to drive word of mouth | Nilan Peiris (CPO of Wise) explores wise CPO Reveals Systematic Playbook For Explosive Word-of-Mouth Growth Wise CPO Nilan Peiris explains how Wise built a business where roughly 70% of new customers arrive via word of mouth, powered by a product that is radically cheaper, faster, and easier than alternatives. He details how they use NPS not just as a vanity metric but as a predictive driver of virality, tying recommendation behavior directly to product quality and specific experience pillars. Nilan contrasts incremental optimization with a ‘10x better’ mindset, sharing examples like instant transfers, ultra-low pricing, eKYC in Singapore, and central bank integrations that took years but created remarkable experiences. He also walks through Wise’s product and org design, how they think about experiments vs. conviction, and subtle product-marketing techniques that make customers truly perceive the value they’re getting—thus motivating them to share.
Wise CPO Reveals Systematic Playbook For Explosive Word-of-Mouth Growth
Wise CPO Nilan Peiris explains how Wise built a business where roughly 70% of new customers arrive via word of mouth, powered by a product that is radically cheaper, faster, and easier than alternatives. He details how they use NPS not just as a vanity metric but as a predictive driver of virality, tying recommendation behavior directly to product quality and specific experience pillars. Nilan contrasts incremental optimization with a ‘10x better’ mindset, sharing examples like instant transfers, ultra-low pricing, eKYC in Singapore, and central bank integrations that took years but created remarkable experiences. He also walks through Wise’s product and org design, how they think about experiments vs. conviction, and subtle product-marketing techniques that make customers truly perceive the value they’re getting—thus motivating them to share.
Key Takeaways
Treat NPS as a growth lever, not just a satisfaction metric.
Wise correlated referral behavior with NPS and found that moving customers from 6→7–8→9–10 roughly doubled how many people they told at each step. ...
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Identify a few product pillars that must be 10x better than alternatives.
From qualitative NPS comments, Wise distilled three pillars that drive advocacy—price, speed, and ease of use. ...
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Work backward from the theoretical ideal, then commit to hard, multi‑year bets.
Instead of incremental improvements, Wise asks, “What is the theoretical minimum price and maximum speed? ...
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Align pricing with actual cost drivers and reinvest efficiency into lower prices.
Wise mapped every operational, risk, and partner cost at a transaction level, charged high-cost segments more, and passed savings to everyone else. ...
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Use product marketing to close the gap between actual and perceived value.
Customers often didn’t realize how much they saved or how fast transfers were. ...
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Design your org so local teams can shape a global product without forking it.
Wise runs a single global tech stack with deep local integrations. ...
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Anchor culture on doing hard, novel things and give teams patience to finish them.
Wise’s founders prize solving problems others consider impossible (e. ...
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Notable Quotes
“To get to recommendation, you've got to blow your users' socks off. You have to give them an experience they didn't know was previously possible.”
— Nilan Peiris
“If you move conversion rate by 10%, you get a one‑off hit. If you move NPS from 30% to 50%, you increase the viral coefficient of your customer base.”
— Nilan Peiris
“We only got the advocacy when we were eight to ten times cheaper. Customers would use us if we were a bit cheaper, but they wouldn’t talk about us.”
— Nilan Peiris
“You can’t split‑test your way to love.”
— Nilan Peiris
“The thing that defines success is the speed at which you pick yourself up.”
— Nilan Peiris
Questions Answered in This Episode
How can a smaller or earlier-stage company realistically pursue ‘10x better’ in its product without Wise’s scale or resources?
Wise CPO Nilan Peiris explains how Wise built a business where roughly 70% of new customers arrive via word of mouth, powered by a product that is radically cheaper, faster, and easier than alternatives. ...
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What concrete steps should a team take in the next 30 days to re-orient around NPS-driven word-of-mouth instead of pure conversion optimization?
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Where is the line between healthy conviction and dangerous hubris when you choose not to A/B test certain big product or pricing decisions?
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How might Wise’s global-local product structure translate to non-fintech companies that also operate in many regulated or culturally distinct markets?
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In products where value is more intangible than ‘money saved’, what are effective ways to make invisible value visible so customers want to share it?
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Transcript Preview
Some people focus on conversion rate, like, I'm gonna make this really, really slick. And that's cool, you get a bit more growth. But to get to recommendation, you gotta blow your s- user's socks off. You have to give them an experience they didn't know was previously possible. And when you're in that place of doing something that no one has ever done before, that's when you get it.
(instrumental music) Welcome to Lenny's Podcast, where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and growing today's most successful products. Today, my guest is Nilan Puris. Nilan is chief product officer at Wise, where he's been for over 11 years, basically from the beginning of the journey. If you're not familiar with Wise, you should be. They make it incredibly easy and cheap to send money internationally. I am a regular user and customer. And because the product is so great, they've grown primarily through word of mouth. About 70% of their growth comes through word of mouth. And in our conversation, Nilan breaks down exactly how they made word of mouth so successful for their product. I don't know any founder who wouldn't wish to have more word of mouth growth, and Nilan's advice is the most tactical and useful advice I've ever heard for how to actually drive your word of mouth growth. I am really excited for you to hear this episode and to learn from Nilan. And so with that, I bring you Nilan Puris after a short word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Pendo, the all-in-one platform for product-led companies building breakthrough digital experiences. With all the tools you need all in one simple-to-use platform, Pendo makes it easy to answer critical questions about how users are engaging with your product, and then turn those insights into action. With product analytics; low-code in-app guides; user feedback and session replay; customizable roadmaps; and AI-generated insights and campaigns; Pendo is the only solution you need to build, ship, and optimize a successful product-led motion. But don't take my word for it. Create your free Pendo account today and start building better experiences across every corner of your product. P.S. Want to take your product-led knowhow a step further? Check out Pendo's lineup of certification courses, led by top PLG experts and designed to help you grow and advance in your career. Learn more and experience the power of the Pendo platform today at pendo.io/lenny. That's P-E-N-D-O dot I-O slash Lenny. This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio. Your agency has just landed a dream client, and you already have big ideas for the website. But do you have the tools to bring your ambitious vision to life? Let me tell you about Wix Studio, the new platform that lets agencies deliver exceptional client sites with maximum efficiency. How? First, let's talk about advanced design capabilities. With Wix Studio, you can build unique layouts with a revolutionary grid experience. It watches elements scale proportionally by default. No-code animations add sparks of delight, while adding custom CSS gives total design control. Bring ambitious client projects to life with any industry with a fully integrated suite of business solutions, from e-commerce to events, bookings and more. And extend the capabilities even further with hundreds of APIs and integrations. You know what else? The workflows just make sense. There's the built-in AI tools, the on-canvas collaborating, a centralized workspace, the reuse of assets across sites, the seamless client handover, and that's not all. Find out more at wix.com/studio. Nilan, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast.
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