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Nikita Bier
Nikita Bier is an American entrepreneur, angel investor, and product executive known for creating social applications that achieved significant user growth. He is the founder of the social apps Gas and TBH, which were acquired by Discord and Meta Platforms, respectively. As of August 2026, he is a former Head of Product at the social media platform X and serves as an advisor to the company.[6][7][8][5]
Education
Nikita Bier earned a B.S. in Business Administration and a B.A. in Political Economy from the University of California, Berkeley (2008–2012), with honors and activities including Dean’s Scholar, Phi Beta Kappa, the Charles H. Percy Prize, Big Ideas @ Berkeley (First Prize), and work as an Undergraduate Research Apprentice. He also completed study abroad programs in Social Welfare at the University of Copenhagen (Spring 2011, Denmark) and in Global Studies through UCLA (Summer 2010, Paris), and attended the University of Virginia’s Summer Language Institute for Russian (Summer 2007, Charlottesville).[4]
Career
Before tbh and Gas, Nikita launched a number of viral products including Politify—a presidential policy analysis tool—while a student at UC Berkeley. He has been developing consumer-facing websites since his childhood.[1]
Bier's career is marked by the development and successful sale of two social applications that gained substantial popularity among younger demographics, both centered on mechanics of positive social interaction.[1]
TBH
Bier co-founded TBH, an acronym for "To Be Honest," which was an anonymous social media application designed for high school students. The app's primary feature allowed users to answer positive, pre-written multiple-choice poll questions about their friends. Following its launch, TBH experienced rapid user adoption, attracting millions of users in a matter of weeks. This growth led to its acquisition by Facebook (now Meta Platforms) in 2017 for a sum reported to be less than $100 million. Facebook later discontinued the app in 2018, citing low usage as the reason for the shutdown.[1]
Gas
After his tenure at Facebook, Bier founded Gas, a social networking application also aimed at a teenage user base. Similar to his previous app TBH, Gas was built on a model of positive engagement, enabling users to anonymously send compliments to friends through polls. The application was highly successful, accumulating more than 10 million downloads. In January 2023, the communication and social platform Discord acquired Gas.[1]
X (formerly Twitter)
In late June 2025, Bier joined X as Head of Product, a move interpreted as a strategic decision to leverage his experience building engaging consumer social products and driving user growth.[8][3] During his appointment, he publicly emphasized plans to use the Grok artificial intelligence system to create more “hyper-relevant” timelines and help users understand what was happening on the platform.[3] Regarding his new role, Bier was quoted as saying, "I've officially posted my way to the top."[3] He led product at X for just over 13 months before transitioning to an advisory role in August 2026.[8][6]
Transition to Advisory Role at X
On August 5, 2026, Bier announced that he was stepping back from leading product at X while remaining with the company as an advisor, framing the move as “passing the torch” and a return to his “natural state: a poster.”[5][7] He said the role required continuous involvement and that he planned to take a break from day-to-day product management, noting that running the app had become a “24/7 job.”[5] Reflecting on his tenure, Bier stated that X had rebuilt major parts of its platform—including its timeline, Android application, onboarding, notifications and messaging—and launched nearly 30 products over approximately 400 days, during which time the platform was experiencing record growth in new users and engagement and “continued to break records every month.”[5][6] He also credited the team with introducing country-of-origin information on user profiles and developing measures intended to reduce automated and AI-generated activity, highlighting leaders such as Benji Taylor, Singhai and Dinkin Flickaa as responsible for design, core product engineering and mobile engineering, respectively.[5] External reporting characterized his just-over-year-long tenure as unusually visible, noting that he became a public-facing voice for product changes, creator payouts and spam and bot-enforcement efforts at X.[8]
Investing and Advisory Roles
In addition to his work as a founder, Nikita Bier is an active angel investor and advisor in the technology sector, sought after for his skills in viral growth, network effects, product design, and going-to-market. He has invested in or advised a number of top-ranking consumer apps such as Locket, BeReal, Flo, and many more. He also serves in an advisory capacity for several prominent companies, including the artificial intelligence research company xAI, the cryptocurrency platform Coinbase, and the blockchain company Solana. He is also a partner at the venture capital firm Lightspeed Venture Partners (LSVP), where he leverages his experience to help portfolio companies as their products scale up and hit critical inflection points.[1]
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