In partnership with
SaaS Strategists,
Merry Christmas! 🎄
We’re closing 2025 with a bang! 💥
So today, I’m bringing you the strategy that can literally break your whole platform. 💔🔨
But for the higher-end benefit.
Let’s discover how below. 👇
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🤔 What happens when you ask users to break your app?
In short, Break My App strategy is a structured way to invite your most engaged users to actively look for vulnerabilities, UX issues, or performance bottlenecks in exchange for rewards.🎁
Curiosity drives marketing.
This strategy can even replace your entire QA team for a while.
Here’s the blueprint:
1⃣ Announce that you’re giving away a reward for any user who can break your app (the bigger the reward, the more hype you’ll collect). 📣
2⃣ Be specific on the requirements, e.g. “Our reset password screen should now only contain your Twitter handle where we can reach you”. 💻
3⃣ Sit back and enjoy your free QA session, for which you only paid a fraction of a QA’s real salary. 😎
🎯 Strategy goal
The main goal is to turn your user base into a distributed QA team, reduce the cost of finding bugs, strengthen brand trust, and increase product security. 🛡️
It’s essentially launching a bug bounty program, but with a twist - you direct the focus to a specific part of your platform. 🪲
The underlying goal is simple:
Turn curiosity + incentives into a scalable feedback engine that hardens your product + helps distribute it further.
🧩 Real-world examples
Rows
Rows.com recently launched its #BreakTheAnalyst campaign, a perfect example of this strategy.
You can target specific parts of your app that you need feedback on. Rows only focused on their AI analyst feature. ✨
Stripe
Stripe runs one of the longest-standing bug bounty programs on HackerOne.
They have a database of targeted bug bounties that users compete to solve and get paid for.
Dropbox
Dropbox launched its public “Find a flaw” campaign in 2014.
It paid out more than 1 million dollars in bounties and credited the community for identifying deep security issues that internal teams missed.
Replit
Replit has a bounty program that allows you to request and get paid for coding tasks or project work using a platform-specific currency called Cycles.
GitHub
GitHub is a leading development collaboration platform and naturally they always have a bug bounty program open.
🧪 Why it works?
2 reasons:
1) You receive valuable insights on where your platform lacks security. 🛡️
2) Your users get rewarded for their hard work. 💰
In the end, both parties win.
💎 Best use cases
3rd-party authentication tools: Finding edge cases in the user auth process. 🔐
Password managers: Highly important to keep the master password secure and to be bulletproof. However, the bounty program must be structured in a very safe environment. 🛡️
Automation and workflow-heavy SaaSes: Break My App works here since real customers chain tools, triggers, and workflows in unpredictable ways that quickly reveal brittle logic and breaking points. 🔄
🌯 Summary
Break My App is the perfect strategy to give your QA team a well-deserved rest for a while. 🌴
The approach works because it taps into curiosity, ownership, and incentives rather than passive feedback forms. 📝
For the company, it reduces risk and improves product quality.
For users, it creates trust, engagement, and a sense of contribution to the product.
You can start your own bounty program on HackerOne today.
Merry Christmas, dear SaaS Strategist! 🎄
I’m wishing you everything that you wish for yourself in 2026!
And I’ll be seeing you with the new strategies in the next year.
Have a good one!
Ognjen Gatalo
Chief SaaS Strategist ☁
