Head of growth at Chess.com, previously growth and monetization lead at Grammarly and Duolingo and a product manager at Google.
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Their wordsI've worked a lot of companies right but I'm wrong all the time and I think consumer behavior can be very fickle and especially when you work at a company you become a power user naturally. So sometimes you you may forget like what the actual user experience is for a brand new user.
Their wordsI saw some of the highest performers just being people that had very high agency, had that clock speed, had that energy. Um, yes, they they cared about the mission, but they didn't necessarily need to have deep experience on that matter. And in fact, sometimes that experience could be a crutch in certain ways. Especially in this world where the grounds are shifting so fast with AI, a lot of your like learn habits actually need to be intentionally discarded. You know, you need to have a beginner's mind on this type of stuff.
Their wordsI think especially if you have a product that has daily frequency like that's actually the retention that matters the most is that like of your existing user base that has developed a habitual pattern how sticky is your product and it's that retention rate that really compounds and build that builds that daily habit.
Albert ChengHead of growth at Chess.comI think if you have especially a B2B feature where you may have some lock in reverse trials can be super powerful. You just want to get people in there. You don't need to ask for their credit card because they're using your CRM or they're investing quite a lot of time in like building out, you know, material and content. And so by the time that window drops, you actually like feel, oh man, I probably should keep this and and start paying. I think for a lot of consumer products, it's a little bit harder for that to work. And so I've typically seen more just normal free trials be be the norm.↗Finding hidden growth opportunities in your product | Albert Cheng (Duolingo, Grammarly, Chess.com)youtube.com · 5 Oct 2025 · 0:27:30 into the videoAll korrents from this video
Their wordsI think if you have especially a B2B feature where you may have some lock in reverse trials can be super powerful. You just want to get people in there. You don't need to ask for their credit card because they're using your CRM or they're investing quite a lot of time in like building out, you know, material and content. And so by the time that window drops, you actually like feel, oh man, I probably should keep this and and start paying. I think for a lot of consumer products, it's a little bit harder for that to work. And so I've typically seen more just normal free trials be be the norm.
Their wordsAnd if I'm starting to see like more and more experiments that are not statistically significant, that may be a signal to me to say, okay, we might have kind of tried to exploit a little bit too far. Like there might not be as much juice to squeeze.
Their wordsAnd the third one is like we did a lot of actually PR uh prior to the service going out just to get the word out. Um and you know PR has has its time and place. Uh but I think doing it before you have validation that customers definitely want the thing is quite risky. It can lead to a lot of sunk cost uh once you get it out because you're you're just you know you need to see it through.
Their wordsI've worked a lot of companies right but I'm wrong all the time and I think consumer behavior can be very fickle and especially when you work at a company you become a power user naturally. So sometimes you you may forget like what the actual user experience is for a brand new user.