Taylor is the founder of Split, you can follow him on X @tee_vee06
If you long to protect yourself from inflationary government spending, and want to change your relationship with the banking system then we want to make it as easy as possible for you to use Bitcoin to do that.
How did Split acquire its first 100 users, and what did you learn from them?
We have not gotten to a 100 users yet. We released the first version of our Bitcoin wallet in January and have been testing and learning with a very small local user base to build out our wallet.
What’s Split ‘s most successful user acquisition channel, and why do you think it works?
We are still super early have a very small user base. Our most effective user acquisition has been through friends and word of mouth. This has been great because when we first released our wallet it was far from ready for the open market. Direct feedback and user requests for features has been essential to developing the product over the last several months. 
How does Split think about pricing, and how has it changed over time?
We don’t think about pricing at this stage. Our goal right now is to get as many users as possible to make multiple monthly merchant transactions with Split. Eventually we will shift gears into nailing down how we will generate revenue, and what our business model will be. We have several different ideas. Maybe it will be a combination of ideas, maybe one will dominate, or maybe it will be a model we haven’t thought of yet.
What’s on Split ‘s product roadmap that you’re most excited about?
We want to get into building more Lightning Network infrastructure products like hosted nodes and build our own LSP node. I am excited for that challenge and have been thoroughly enjoying learning as much as I can about the Lightning network and the cryptography methods that power it. I think if we get this right we could open the door in the future for merchants to easily manage their own Bitcoin payments infrastructure free of any custodial service.
Walk us through Split ‘s product – what makes it unique in the market?
We are the only Bitcoin wallet that I know of that offers Sats for spending Sats with merchants. Beyond that I think we are uniquely positioned because we are small business merchants ourselves, and have built payment infrastructure and POS products in the past. This gives us a deep understanding of the mechanics of consumer/merchants payments and our live sandbox to test and iterate with. Our focus is also unique. our goal first and foremost is to drive Bitcoin merchant transactions. That ripples throughout the design of the product.
What surprising data or pattern have you discovered about Split ‘s users?
The actual amount of present day Bitcoiners that are willing to spend Bitcoin is much smaller than I thought. Our active user base is almost exclusively Bitcoiners who are very close to or are living on the Bitcoin Standard. Spend and Replace just isn’t practiced even if it’s preached within the community. Our total potential user base today is probably much smaller than I originally thought, but some day I still believe there will be exponential growth.
How has Split evolved since launch based on user feedback?
Its evolved tremendously. It was very ugly, rough, basic, and bare bones when we launched. Users demanded features, and many features we released were ignored. We planned for this and although we do have I think a solid foundation now we are still constantly releasing and testing new ideas which I hope will always be the case.
What do you want readers to know about Split that we haven’t covered?
Split is a project designed to drive Bitcoin merchant transactions. Our long term vision is to give anyone the ability to eliminate the need of a bank account. Self-custody and user privacy are always at the forefront of our design decisions.
Describe a moment when user feedback completely changed Split ‘s product direction.
One particular user was really excited about us adding NWC. We released NWC and the ability to remotely connect your own node (LND). We got a lot of positive feedback on the interoperability and went on to add connections to several other nodes right after. Before this I think subconsciously we were designing our wallet in hopes of being your exclusive wallet, but there was no real advantage for us or the user to think that way. Also our target customer is probably already running their own lightning node so why not let them hook it up to our wallet? Seems super obvious now but did not click until we released NWC at our friend’s request, and his excitement was so high that we had to pause and try to understand why.
if you long to protect yourself from inflationary government spending, and want to change your relationship with the banking system then we want to make it as easy as possible for you to use Bitcoin to do that.
What does Split ‘s ideal customer look like, and how do you reach them?
Our ideal customer is anyone that has conviction when it comes to Bitcoin. Many people are interested in Bitcoin because of the price. That is totally fine, but we are into Bitcoin for its liberating qualities. If you are excited about separating your money from the state, if you long to protect yourself from inflationary government spending, and want to change your relationship with the banking system then we want to make it as easy as possible for you to use Bitcoin to do that. I think we reach our customers by building a product that delivers for them and does not compromise on their sovereignty and privacy. We stay true to the ideals of Bitcoin and our customers will find us. I truly believe 95% of our future customers don’t even own Bitcoin yet.
This interview was conducted via Lightning.news
