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How to find hidden growth opportunities in your product | Albert Cheng (Duolingo, Grammarly, Chess.com)
Albert Cheng has led growth at three of the world’s most successful consumer subscription companies: Duolingo, Grammarly, and Chess.com. A former Google product manager (and serious pianist!), Albert developed a unique approach to finding and scaling growth opportunities through rapid experimentation and deep user psychology. His teams run 1,000 experiments a year, discovering counterintuitive insights that have driven tens of millions in revenue.
What you’ll learn:
1. How to use the explore-exploit framework to find new growth opportunities
2. How showing premium features to free users doubled Grammarly’s upgrades to paid plans
3. What good retention looks like for a consumer subscription app
4. Why resurrected users drive 80% of mature product growth
5. Why “reverse trials” work better than time-based trials
6. The three pillars of successful gamification: core loop, metagame, and profile
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Brought to you by:
Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security.
Jira Product Discovery—Confidence to build the right thing
Miro—A collaborative visual platform where your best work comes to life
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Where to find Albert Cheng:
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/albertcheng1/
• Chess.com: https://www.chess.com/member/Goniners
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Where to find Lenny:
• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/
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Referenced:
• How Duolingo reignited user growth: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-duolingo-reignited-user-growth
• Inside ChatGPT: The fastest-growing product in history | Nick Turley (Head of ChatGPT at OpenAI): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-chatgpt-nick-turley
• Explore vs. Exploit: https://brianbalfour.com/quick-takes/explore-vs-exploit
• Grammarly: https://www.grammarly.com/
• Reforge: https://www.reforge.com/
• Chess.com: https://www.chess.com/
• Everyone’s an engineer now: Inside v0’s mission to create a hundred million builders | Guillermo Rauch (founder & CEO of Vercel, creators of v0 and Next.js): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/everyones-an-engineer-now-guillermo-rauch
• Building Lovable: $10M ARR in 60 days with 15 people | Anton Osika (CEO and co-founder): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/building-lovable-anton-osika
• Figma:
Published on 2 months, 3 weeks ago