Andrew Chen

Quotes are word for word from the source.

• Revisit rate convergence

  “The key metric is really the number that the revisit rate converges to.”

  Our noteFocusing on the long-term stability of user retention.

• Product execution and hooks

  “The specific issues that pop up from the monetization side shouldn't detract from the fact that adding deeper hooks is something that every network should do, and Facebook has done it with incredible execution.”

  Our noteAndrew discusses Facebook's product strategy despite monetization hurdles.

• Idea versus utility

  “people are more excited about the idea of Glass than any particular use case. And I'm excited about the product category too, but think the v1 might suck.”

  Our noteDiscussing why initial excitement for a new technology might be misplaced.

• Input method failure

  “I think it'll doom the product in the same way that horrible handwriting recognition doomed the Apple Newton.”

  Our notePredicting how poor voice input could lead to product failure.

• Product vs User Focus

  “An overfocus on product - meaning the features and functionality, or the underlying technology - can cause friction with motivations from the user.”

  Our noteAndrew explains why being a product fanatic can distance you from what users actually want.

• The difficulty of optimization

  “It may be that in the universe of thousands of permutations, they are using the most optimal configuration. Yet you'd never know unless you were able to duplicate the same page layout, product, and audience.”

  Our noteAndrew explains why it is hard to analyze a competitor's viral success just by looking at their UI.

• Importance of goals

  “The topic of setting goals, especially quantitative ones, is a really important topic for any team and any startup.”

  Our noteAndrew introduces the guest post about OKRs and their significance for startups.

• Avoid too many goals

  “The surest way to negate any positive impact from a good OKR is to set 10 good OKRs.”

  Our noteThe author warns against the trap of setting too many objectives at once.

• Distinct user behavior

  “It only works if it's a fundamentally distinct behavior being segmented into a stand-alone application.”

  Our noteDefining the condition for successful app unbundling.

• Economic cycles and focus

  “A large number of them related to freemium, which tells you how much interest there was in making money in 2009 :-) Perhaps with the economy returning, there will be a shift of interest towards growth again.”

  Our noteAndrew reflects on how the 2009 economic climate influenced his readers' interest in monetization over growth.

• High fidelity signals

  “My central argument is that if you believe that every startup is an iterative learning process that converges towards product/market fit, then you need extremely high-fidelity signals to tell you if you're going in the right direction.”

  Our noteAndrew explains why startups need clear feedback loops to reach product-market fit.

• Negative feedback loops

  “you should give people valves to tell you "I hate this!" so that you can learn more faster.”

  Our noteAndrew argues that making it easy to quit provides essential learning data.

• Content quality decay

  “It seems like the material always evolves from the alpha geek material (technical, long-form stuff) to time-wasters.”

  Our noteAndrew discusses how niche technical platforms often lose their depth as they gain mass appeal.

• Data estimation errors

  “He has the following image, which tells you how 3 different providers of stats give you crazy different numbers: Who's really right?? We'll probably never know.”

  Our noteAndrew discusses the inconsistency between different internet traffic data providers.

• Emotional sharing prerequisite

  “Tapping into an emotional desire to share and communicate is a prerequisite for building a long-term product.”

  Our noteAndrew explains why viral mechanics must align with human emotions.

• Entrepreneurial opinion

  “the process of figuring out the core product requires the entrepreneur to have an opinion, perhaps one that is difficult to test or takes many years to test.”

  Our noteQuantitative data cannot replace the qualitative vision required to build a core product.

• Product feedback loops

  “The main thing is a feedback mechanism for when you do stuff. I sort of expect there to be a action->feedback loop that doesn't really exist.”

  Our noteAndrew critiques the lack of immediate response mechanisms in early Twitter.

• Startup growth costs

  “Startups are cheaper to build, but more expensive to grow - here's why Lots of important trends - cloud computing, open source, etc. - are making it cheaper to start a company.”

  Our noteAndrew discusses why starting a company is easier while scaling it has become more difficult.

• Next Feature Fallacy

  “Featured essays from 2015 The Next Feature Fallacy "The fallacy that the next new feature will suddenly make people use your product."”

  Our noteAndrew defines a common mistake product teams make when trying to increase engagement.

• Healthy Metric Benchmarks

  “It's not a good idea to just blindly try to hit a certain set of metrics - different kinds of products have different sets of healthy numbers.”

  Our noteHe warns against using universal benchmarks for different types of mobile products.

• Recommended business authors

  “For those of you who haven't read Michael Lewis's books, they are amazing. I first found Lewis through his book Liar's Poker , about Wall Street.”

  Our noteAndrew Chen recommends the works of Michael Lewis for their quality and insight.

• Aggressive networking goal

  “Meet 5 new people per day, every day. It helped that working at a venture firm is all about networking, so I picked aggressive goal!”

  Our noteAndrew describes his networking strategy when he first arrived in Silicon Valley.

• Fresh perspective

  “Vuja de is when you've seen something a million times, but see it like it's the first time.”

  Our noteHe discusses the importance of maintaining a fresh perspective on familiar industries.

• Volume of attempts

  “Don't think that Silicon Valley has better entrepreneurs. They don't. But they have more people trying”

  Our noteA mentor's advice to Andrew about the reality of the Silicon Valley ecosystem.

• Learning by doing

  “People who want to learn about startups should start companies (or, in a worst case scenario, be employed at a startup).”

  Our noteThe best way to gain relevant experience for the startup world.

• High churn growth

  “If you have an 70% annual churn rate, you have to have a strategy to replace almost your entire customer base each year, plus a bunch of percentage points to drive topline growth.”

  Our noteExplaining the mathematical difficulty of growing a business with high annual churn.

• Monetization and stickiness

  “Long run, it strikes me that you need monetization engines, in the form of subscriptions and compelling products that capture purchase intent, yet you want to wrap that with the sticky things that make people come back again and again.”

  Our noteAndrew discusses the balance between making money and keeping users engaged over the long term.

• Focus on customers

  “The goal of building great products is for you to deliver something great to the customer, not to impress your designer friends on what new layout or interaction you've just developed.”

  Our noteAndrew warns against seeking novelty for its own sake instead of serving the user.

• Long term vision

  “It's worth thinking about what kind of company you want to be in 5 or more years, rather than just grabbing onto whatever trend seems to be floating by at the moment.”

  Our noteHe emphasizes the importance of building for the long term instead of chasing short-term hype.

• Ignore the competition

  “In most cases, you're better off focusing on your customer and learning from them both quantitatively and qualitatively, rather than emulating what your competitors are doing.”

  Our noteAndrew advises founders to prioritize customer insights over competitive benchmarking.