The Best of andrew chen

Guest Post by Bangaly Kaba (EIR @ Reforge, Former VP Growth @ Instacart, Instagram) The following was written by Bangaly with contributions by other Reforge EIR’s Elena Verna (Miro, MongoDB,…

«The Adjacent Users are aware of a product and possibly tried using the it, but are not able to successfully become an engaged user»

[Dear readers, this essay is on the future of marketplaces. Is there still room for marketplace startups to innovate? We answer, emphatically, yes! Am excited to share a vision on the past and future…

[Andrew: Excited about today’s guest post! I was recently interviewed by the folks at Reforge, a new company started by my friends Brian Balfour and Susan Su focused on advanced professional…

Entrepreneurs and investors base decisions on user growth forecasts. But common models for user growth rely on lagging indicators. In this clever article, venture capitalist Andrew Chen details a method for understanding and predicting growth via user “acquisition loops” and “engagement loops.” Start-up investors and entrepreneurs will appreciate Chen’s authoritative take on this crucial subject, as well as his emphasis on sustainability and quality.

Hi readers, The growth teams at Uber and Airbnb occasionally met over the years to share best practices, brainstorm ideas, and share observations on the startup world. I’ve had folks over to 1455…

Metrics are merely a reflection of the product strategy that you have in place Data is powerful because it is concrete. For many entrepreneurs, particularly with technical backgrounds, empirical data…

Readers, Starting from a blank canvas is the absolute hardest thing to do. It’s insanely hard. And yet the brave entrepreneurs in the tech industry do it, time and time again, and every year, a few…

[Andrew: Paid marketing remains an integral part of many products’ acquisition channels, and one of the key metrics is Cost of Customer Acquisition, which is a nuanced calculation with lots of…

Marketplaces are easily underestimated When marketplaces get big, they can get really big. Some of the biggest tech successes ever – eBay, Airbnb, Alibaba, Uber – are marketplaces worth tens of billions of dollars each. And yet marketplaces often start small, in niches and weird corners of the Internet. As we all know, when eBay […]

Dear readers, Building a new growth team is hard. You have to figure out the macro organizational issues – how it fits in with marketing, product, and other functions – as well as the micro, like how…

[Originally tweetstormed at @andrewchen, Follow me for more!] Many of the biggest implosions in recent history – especially ecommerce – have been due to startups getting addicted to paid marketing while fooling themselves on Customer Acqusition Costs. As spend scales, it always gets more expensive and harder to track – never less. A familiar story: […]

Exclusive data on retention curves for mobile apps In a recent essay covering the Next Feature Fallacy, I explained why shipping “just one more feature” doesn’t fix your product. The root cause is that the average app has pretty bad retention metrics. Today, I’m excited to share some real numbers on mobile retention. I’ve worked with mobile […]

Am I just getting old?When I encounter a new product idea for the first time, I find myself asking: Is this idea dumb? Or I just getting old? Early on, there’s often not much to judge it on besides…

The end of the cycle One of the best essays written last year was Elad Gil’s End of Cycle? – referencing our most recent 2007-2017 run on mobile and web software, and the implications for investing, startups, and entrepreneurs. Although he doesn’t directly talk about it, the end of a tech cycle has major implications for launching […]

I recently was interviewed by Tim Chang, Managing Director of the Mayfield Fund at the Manifesto conference. We talked about growth, what I has learned from trying different tactics, and how to…

What’s a “viral loop?” A term I’ve heard tossed around frequently in real life, but not in the blogosphere is the term “viral loop.” In fact, when googling it, I only saw one mention from Jia Shen (cofounder of RockYou, with $120M raised from Sequoia/Softbank), a very smart guy: “The viral loop of people inviting […]

Dear readers, I’ve only been writing sporadically recently on here — mostly because I’m working on a new book project (more to come soon on that!!) which has been taking all my time. In the interim,…