To amplify word-of-mouth, Duolingo identified existing sharing behavior by temporarily tracking user screenshots. They found hotspots like streak milestones and funny challenges, then invested in designers to make these moments even more shareable.
Grammarly's free version only showed spelling fixes, hiding its advanced AI capabilities. By interspersing paid suggestions (like tone and clarity) into the free experience, they demonstrated the product's full power and dramatically increased conversions.
After reaching scale, a product's dormant user base is a massive growth opportunity. Activating these users requires designing specific return experiences, like Duolingo’s proficiency tests, which can be a bigger lever than new user acquisition.
In rapidly evolving fields like AI, pre-existing experience can be a liability. The highest performers often possess high agency, energy, and learning speed, allowing them to adapt without needing to unlearn outdated habits.
The most durable growth comes from seeing your job as connecting users to the product's value. This reframes the work away from short-term, transactional metric hacking toward holistically improving the user journey, which builds a healthier business.
A key viability metric for consumer subscription apps is achieving 30-40% Day 1 retention. Anything lower suggests a fundamental product-value mismatch, making it mathematically difficult to acquire enough users to build a sustainable active user base.
When an experiment succeeds (e.g., positive framing after a loss), don't just iterate. Exploit the core psychological insight by applying it across adjacent product areas, turning one team's discovery into a company-wide growth strategy.
Contrary to fears, AI surpassing human ability has fueled chess's popularity. AI engines are used as personalized coaches in products like Chess.com, analyzing games and helping millions of users learn and improve, making the game more accessible.
Chess.com's goal of 1,000 experiments isn't about the number. It’s a forcing function to expose systemic blockers and drive conversations about what's truly needed to increase velocity, like no-code tools and empowering non-product teams to test ideas.