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andrewchen

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  1. How to break into Silicon Valley
    Feb 26, 2024 · original
    (Above: No, it doesn’t really look like this — and yes it’s mostly office parks and tech billboards. But I like to pretend) You’ll never regret spending time in SF If you work in tech, you’ll never regret spending 3-5 years in the Bay Area. This is advice I’ve been giving to people for years, and it’s shaped by my own experience — after all, I moved to the Bay Area in 2007 and it completely changed my life. How? I met tons of incredible people, some of whom went on to create major products and found unicorn companies. Most are still building I was introduced to many investors who today run some of the major VC firms and investor networks learned so much! made life long friends formed fundamental aspects of my world view Because of the recent AI boom, I’ve been meeting a lot of folks who are new to SF. Many folks very intentionally want to build out their network and get rooted in the Bay
  2. The “Dinner Party Jerk” test — why founders need to pitch themselves harder and more futuristically
    Feb 12, 2024 · original
    The “ Dinner Party Jerk ” test is a solution to a common problem: Startups often struggle at pitching their team, even though for the earliest stage companies, it’s incredibly important to do it well to raise capital — as I’ve described it below: Pre-seed- Bet on the team ‍ Seed- Bet on the product Series A- Bet on the traction Series B- Bet on the revenue Series C- Bet on the unit economics To figure out if you are properly pitching yourself in your team, run the thought experiment of describing yourselves at a dinner party. If you are pitching yourself hard, then if you are a kind human, you will turn red and blush with wild embarrassment . The reason is that a proper pitch includes many of your credentials, your achievements, the ways in which you and your team are highly unique, and we simply don’t talk like this at dinner parties. And yet this is exactly what you should do when you
  3. Startups need dual theories on distribution and product/market fit. One is not enough
    Feb 6, 2024 · original
    It’s hard to be a product without a strong theory of distribution Here’s a common startup situation. A team busts their ass for months building the first version of their product. It’s almost done. Now a big question emerges — how do you get the first people to use your product? Hmm… If you find yourself at this moment, then you are already in a bad place. 99% of startups are not differentiated on their underlying technology, and there is very little engineering risk involved. (I’m ignoring deep tech and foundational AI research companies, for the sake of this conversation). Because technology differentiation is no longer a real factor today start ups, it turns out that most products are succeeding or failing due to core product/market fit followed by the distribution strategy. There are over 9 million mobile apps. There are a billion websites. Figuring out distribution is key. Dual insi
  4. Every time you ask the user to click you lose half
    Feb 5, 2024 · original
    Every time you ask the user click you lose half of them. (And this why tutorials, splash screens, and lengthy signup flows are a bad idea) If you’ve been building apps for a long time and have seen the results of a lot of A/B tests, you quickly realize that people are a flighty bunch. Ask them to download an app and 80% will bounce right on that page. Ask them to sign up and 90% will hit the back button to avoid putting in their email and password. Ask people who’ve arrived from Google to read an article, to subscribe and get more updates, and 99% will head back to find the next article. What happens when you ask for credit card and email In the early days of Uber the only way to sign up was to give your email address a bunch of other fields and also your credit card number. Some of the big early winds in acquiring customers was just to make it so that you could sign up with a phone numb
  5. Why the worst users come from referral programs, free trials, coupons, and gamification
    Jan 31, 2024 · original
    Above: Many small business figured out the hard way why coupon sites generate worse users Incentive programs often don’t perform The people you attract with referral programs, free trials, coupons, and gamification — folks who are “incentivized” as a broad umbrella category — are usually MUCH WORSE than organic ones. Worse LTVs, worse conversion, less engaged, and so on. In a previous life, I headed up Uber’s $300m+/year referral program (“give $5 and get $5”) and learned a ton. Much of the learnings apply to the next wave of gamified consumer apps, web3 games, etc. So why are these users worse? Let’s discuss. When CAC/LTV spreadsheets fail When a new product comes to market, usually the team will measure a baseline set of metrics around lifetime value, etc. if the numbers look good, they might say OK let’s roll out some incentives and get more users like this. Spreadsheets are built, bu
  6. The most expensive game cost over $1B, and how AI will transform it
    Jan 23, 2024 · original
    Grand Theft Auto 6 and the future of AI If you happened to miss it, a few weeks back, here is the game trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6 . It’s worth watching, and is amazing on multiple levels. But GTA 6 might be the peak of the open world category, untouched by the next wave of tech, particularly generative AI. Let’s start some facts: First, GTA has a reported budget of $1-2B, making it THE MOST EXPENSIVE GAME EVER Not only is this the most expensive game ever, but compare it to movies. The most expensive movies, modern installments of the Star Wars and Avengers and Pirates franchises, clock in at a mere $300-450M. So this is nearly 5X: I also think this is indicative of the pole position that gaming is taking in culture. The recent trailer is now the most viewed non-music video on YouTube following 24 hours after its release, beating any movie trailer, TV show premier, and it topped MrBe
  7. How to write more
    Jan 15, 2024 · original
    Dear readers, As we enter a new year, many of us are setting goals to write more and create more content. As someone who has been writing consistently for the past decade, I wanted to share some strategies that have helped me in my writing journey, particularly in a professional context. Collecting ideas First and foremost, I emphasize the importance of collecting ideas. These ideas can come from anywhere – opinions, statements of fact, interesting factoids, statistics, or even visual content such as charts and graphs. These are things from X or books or Reddit or whatever. I use an app called “ Email Me ” to quickly email myself these ideas and then compile them into a single note with a headline that inspires me to explore the topic further. So then my workflow is to open up this note with a bunch of bullets, each one a headline for a post, and then decide what to pick from Let yoursel
  8. How to write a business book — behind the scenes from THE COLD START PROBLEM
    Jan 15, 2024 · original
    (above: Me in Sep 2023, a happy author, finding the Japanese translated version of my book at the wonderful Daikanyama Tsutaya Books in Tokyo) Dear readers, As many of you know, 2 years ago I published my first book THE COLD START PROBLEM . It aims to tell the story of why some products — YouTube, Instagram, Uber, Slack, Dropbox, and others — end up with hundreds of millions (and sometimes billions!) of users, and to provide the definitive theory of network effects which are often referenced in the tech industry, but only superficially understood. It’s been a success, now in a dozen markets, translated into many languages (including Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, Russian, etc). Here’s a screenshot of some of the wonderful pictures that readers took during launch week: This was an awesome experience. Nevertheless, I swear I will never write another book again . (I guess never say never, ha)
  9. Fun graph from Peter Attia’s book Outlive
    Jan 10, 2024 · original
    Hey readers, This is a small deviation from my usual topics, but wanted to share. This is one of the most important graphs that I saw in 2023 that has led to behavioral change for me. This is in Peter Attia’s book Outlive . Here’s the graph: tldr: if you want to be able to briskly climb stairs when you are 75, you need to be in the top 95th percentile of cardiovascular fitness. Even at 95th percentile, it’ll be hard to jog up steep hills, etc — you’d have to be an elite athlete. But if you are average/low, you may not even be able to do any of that. And it seems unlikely you’ll be avg/low now (I’m in my early 40s) and then somehow go from 50th percentile to 95th. So basically it’s better to get started Thus, after reading his book, I reluctantly started running again even though I hate it. And am also doing some peloton / cycling outdoors when time/weather allows I enjoyed his book, and
  10. Reforge Podcast: 2024 predictions, AI apps, the future of PM, what we can learn from gaming, and more
    Jan 4, 2024 · original
    Dear readers, I was recently interviewed by the great Brian Balfour (CEO/cofounder of Reforge) and Fareed Mosavat (ex-Reforge/Slack/Zynga) which turned into a lively discussion — I think we could have gone longer! — which we just published in two parts. You can listen to both parts below, and the kind folks at Reforge also typed up some notes summarizing some of the major points made in the interview discussion. Hope you enjoy! Andrew Part 1 — 2024 Predictions: The Future of Product, Growth, and AI with Andrew Chen Part 2 — New Marketing Channels and Trends for 2024: The Power of Organic Traction and the Law of Shitty Clickthroughs Some thoughts and notes from the podcast: 2024 Predictions: the future of product, growth, and AI What’s in store for 2024? Andrew Chen, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, joined us on the Season Finale of Unsolicited Feedback to share his insights. High
  11. Heading into 2024 – Life update, books, links, and more
    Jan 3, 2024 · original
    Hi readers, Doing a short round up on various links, books, a quick life update, and other stuff going on. First, I did not write much in 2023 (I was busy!!) but am proud of what I published… Blog posts from 2023 How to design a referral program . I headed up Uber’s driver and rider referral programs at various points of my time there — I provide a framework to think about referrals as an ask/target/incentive/payback, and break down the components of each one. Maybe most importantly, there’s a question of how often you ask for the referral — this is what people sometimes forget. I also discuss the weaknesses of referral programs rather than products that are intrinsically viral. The pitch deck for a16z GAMES FUND ONE . My main thing these days is starting up and leading the new Games fund at Andreessen Horowitz. It’s what I’ll blame for not writing as often as I’d like :) But I was able
  12. When AI is too verbose, full of repetition and says sorry for being an AI…
    Sep 30, 2023 · original
    Dear readers, I was triggered to write this post because ChatGPT apologies way too much, takes too long to get into the meat of an answer, and I wanted to fix that. This came up because like many of you, I’ve been trying to incorporate ChatGPT into my workflows — both at my job, and also for writing, which I’ve posted about here . This post will have a mishmash of topics, but wanted to share my thoughts: Making responses from ChatGPT more punchy/helpful via custom instructions Integrating ChatGPT into the action button for my Apple watch as a Shortcut Some thoughts on the high growth, but high churn nature of a lot of the AI-driven utilities I’m seeing These are all a bit random but just wanted to share as we’re all learning! Custom instructions for ChatGPT First, on the use of custom instructions — I am sick of chatGPT’s standard responses which are way too verbose, full of repetition a
  13. How I use AI when blogging and writing
    Aug 23, 2023 · original
    Hi readers, Over the years, I’ve shared lessons and tips from writing a professional blog — previously 10 years of professional blogging – what I’ve learned . Recently, I’ve had some major changes in my workflow, and wanted to share more. Pre-AI blogging workflow My pre-AI workflow for blogging — what I’ve been doing for over years — looks something like this: Have interesting conversations at work or with friends/colleagues Randomly grab my phone, and email myself the title of a blog post These have punchy opinions/titles that expand easily to blog posts – some examples: “what needs to happen for web3 gaming to work” “lessons learned from launching games that apply to web and mobile apps” “why startups should ignore social media haterade” etc Recently, I’ve been using this app, Email Me, which is opens to a text box and it’s a one-button send (also nice for articles to read later, todo
  14. Creator Economy 2.0: What we’ve learned, why it’s hard, and what’s next
    Aug 21, 2023 · original
    There’s been a big wave of Creator Economy startups over the past few years, as the rise of social media platforms has empowered content creators to become a focal point for consumer engagement. This wave of startups promised creators that they could help them better monetize their audience on social media if they only promoted their products. We’ve all seen these — creators promote a startup’s new offering via a link in bio, or mentions in video or via links — and drive their followers to a landing page that enables some new interaction or functionality involving the creator. Initially, these started almost as “tip jars” but over the years, many, many creative products have been tried, spanning e-commerce to newsletters to Q&A, and more. These products all promised a win/win with creators so that when their fans spent money, the company would only take a % of earnings, usually something
  15. The Next Next Job, a framework for making big career decisions
    Aug 14, 2023 · original
    A simple question The last few years have been crazy, and no wonder there’s a ton of folks thinking about making job changes right now. I know this since I’ve been getting the calls. Often the conversations open with a laundry list of different companies, roles, and compensation packages. Every opportunity is completely different and hard to compare. There’s got to be a better way to organize your thinking about these opportunities. Here’s my favorite question to ask: “What do you want to be your next next job? And why can’t you get it right now?” And then, of course, you work backward from that. This is the “Next Next Job” framework for thinking about career moves, particularly in the highly chaotic situations that we find ourselves in today where there are many many opportunities across different industries and company stages. This reflects the very natural flow of the recruiting proce

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