How to find hidden growth opportunities in your product | Albert Cheng (Duolingo, Grammarly, Chess.com)

1. Connect Users to Value

Frame growth as the job of connecting users to the value of your product, rather than merely metrics hacking, to ensure a holistic and durable approach to company growth.

2. Prioritize User Retention

Focus on high user retention for consumer subscription products, as it reduces the pressure to monetize users immediately and is crucial for long-term, sustainable growth.

3. Sample Premium Features

For freemium products, offer a limited ’taste’ of premium features to free users, interspersing them into their experience to showcase the product’s full power and significantly boost upgrade rates.

4. Apply Explore & Exploit

Utilize the explore and exploit framework at a micro (insight) level: explore to find unexpected learnings, then exploit by applying that insight broadly across related product areas to maximize impact.

5. Reframe Negative User Feedback

When users experience negative outcomes (e.g., losing a game), reframe feedback to highlight positive aspects (e.g., brilliant moves) and offer encouragement, which can significantly improve engagement and retention.

6. Share Experiment Learnings Broadly

Disseminate successful (or even unsuccessful) experiment insights across the entire company, enabling other teams to apply the learnings to their own product areas and multiply the overall impact.

7. Hire High Agency Individuals

Prioritize hiring individuals with high agency, ‘clock speed,’ and energy, as their ability to learn and adapt quickly can be more valuable than deep, specific experience, especially in rapidly evolving fields like AI.

8. Leverage Brand & Community

Combine consistent growth experimentation with leveraging brand, community, and cultural moments (e.g., social media trends) to create ‘rocket fuel’ for growth, driving massive, sudden increases in user acquisition.

9. Use AI for Data Analysis

Implement AI-powered text-to-SQL tools (e.g., Slack bots) to automate ad-hoc data queries, making data more accessible and fostering a more data-informed culture by reducing friction for asking questions.

10. Accelerate Prototyping with AI

Utilize AI prototyping tools (e.g., V0, Figma Make) to quickly generate foundational screens and product flows, accelerating the ideation-to-test cycle and making bold ideas more discussable and testable.

11. AI for User Value, Not Hype

When integrating AI, prioritize customer value and apply the right technology for specific features, rather than blindly adopting the latest hyped AI trend without clear user benefit.

12. Start Experimenting Immediately

Begin experimentation without delay, even with simple A/B tests or third-party tools, to establish a practice of continuous learning and iteration, especially for consumer products with scale and frequency.

13. Set Ambitious Experiment Goals

Set ambitious experimentation goals (e.g., 1,000 experiments/year) not just to hit a number, but to drive conversations about necessary systemic changes (e.g., no-code tools, broader team involvement) to achieve such scale and impact.

14. Cultivate Experimentation Culture

To shift company culture towards experimentation, secure strong leadership buy-in and active advocacy from the top, and consistently celebrate experiment wins and learnings to energize and motivate teams.

15. Build a Robust Experiment System

Invest in a robust experimentation system, including a clear growth model and thorough product instrumentation, as the underlying system is more critical for long-term success than any single experiment.

16. Track Screenshots for Virality

Temporarily track in-app screenshots to identify organic ‘hotspots’ where users are already sharing content, then enhance those moments with delightful experiences (e.g., illustrators, animators) to amplify virality.

17. Gamification: Core Loop, Metagame, Profile

Design products for habit formation using a three-pillar gamification model: a tight ‘core loop’ (daily action, reward, streak), an engaging ‘metagame’ (leaderboards, long-term goals), and a meaningful ‘profile’ (reflection of user investment).

18. Support Learning Product Beginners

For learning-oriented products, intentionally design beginner experiences to mitigate self-doubt and negative reinforcement, guiding new users through initial challenges (e.g., hiding ratings, offering guided play).

19. Avoid Solution-Searching for Problems

When building new products or features, always start with a clear user problem to solve, rather than developing a solution and then searching for a problem it might fit.

20. Consider All Marketplace Users

In marketplace or multi-sided businesses, ensure product development considers the experience and needs of all user types (e.g., riders, drivers, operations) to avoid negative impacts on one group undermining the overall product.

21. Validate Before Public Relations

Avoid extensive public relations or marketing efforts for new features or products before validating strong customer demand, as premature PR can lead to sunk costs and pressure to continue with an unvalidated idea.

22. Cultivate a Strong Reputation

Cultivate a strong professional reputation by consistently making ethical decisions and treating people well, as these small actions compound over time to open doors and create opportunities.

23. Monitor Experiment Saturation

Monitor experiment results for declining statistical significance; if many experiments in an area yield insignificant results, it signals saturation and a need to shift back to exploratory, divergent thinking.

24. Target 30-40% D1 Retention

Aim for a Day 1 (D1) retention rate of 30-40% for consumer apps, as this indicates a solid foundation for growth and user acquisition.

25. Invest in Resurrection Experience

For mature products with a large base of dormant users, invest in crafting an excellent ‘resurrection’ experience and novel re-engagement strategies to bring them back, as reactivated users can be a significant growth component.