The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
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Chen: Low-frequency platforms should track upstream engagement signals, not transactions
“One of the things that companies can often do is to measure upstream signal. So for example, Zillow, you're probably not going to buy a house very often, right? Maybe, you know, a couple times in your life. However, what's really interesting is they can say, w…”
Chen: Exponential growth curves are usually combinations of multiple linear initiatives
“A lot of times when you're looking at what seemingly is an exponential growth curve, in fact, it's really something like, oh, you're opening in a bunch of new markets, right? So there's sort of a linear line there, but then you're also introducing products at …”
Instagram and YouTube Adoption Curves Are Nearly Vertical
“If we were to add Instagram, if we were to add YouTube onto here, you would just see straight lines straight up because of how fast these things get adopted.”
Technology Changes, But Human Motivations Stay the Same
“Technology changes, but people stay the same.”
In-Car Experiences Will Shift From Driving to Entertainment
“And of course, we're going to have to completely redesign our in-car experience in the coming years to be less about driving and more about all the things that you'd want to do while you're going from point A to point B.”
Auto-Generated Shareable Videos Enable Organic Acquisition Without Paid Ads
“The nice thing is that what happens is every time you use the product, you're going with a group of friends. It's fun to take photos. You generate a video at the end of your experience that then you share to social media. And that means that this type of compa…”
Visible Offline Experiences Act as Triggers for App Acquisition
“Any kind of product that has this highly visible offline experience, and I'll give you a couple examples coming up, but these offline experiences, these physical real life experiences that then remind you like, hey, I should go, you know, open up the app that …”
Chen: Average MLB viewer is late 50s; NBA average is 42
“Baseball, it's like you have the audience that is, you know, now in their kind of like late fifties you know, NFL, you know, NBA is, I think, like, you know, really young at, you know, 42 or something like that.”
Chen: Mobile games require high monetization to sustain paid user acquisition
“Mobile games, you know, all the iOS games have been about, well, it's always going to be sort of, you know, paid install driven, so the monetization needs to be incredible, right? Needs to be free, and then monetization needs to, you know, you sort of are tryi…”
Chen: Major gaming genres like Battle Royale originated as mods
“League of Legends was, you know, sort of a derivative of you know, Dota originally, like more polished, which was a mod on top of Warcraft III, and, you know, and there's many, many games that sort of have this, you know, flavor. To it and also all, now all th…”
Chen: Early B2B Monetization Unlocks Paid Acquisition and Sales Channels
“You contrast that to these B to B products, where you can actually monetize from early on, and in fact, when you monetize, it actually unlocks a bunch of paid acquisition channels, and it unlocks sales, and it unlocks a bunch of stuff.”
Chen: Scaling startups shift focus from acquisition to retention, then resurrection
“The evolution of most of these companies, as they're getting bigger, tends to start with acquisition, Then focus much more on, you know, churn and retention, and then ultimately also to layer in resurrection as well.”
Chen: Geographic cohort segmentation acts as a natural A/B test
“For a bunch of hyperlocal type businesses, the reason why segmenting it based on market geography, why that's so valuable, is because then you can compare markets against each other. You can say, well, you know, this market, which has much more density in term…”
Chen: Products must move users up an engagement ladder to daily habits
“One of the first things that you figure out is that each one of these products actually has this, like, ladder of engagement where oftentimes new users show up to do something that's valuable but, you know, potentially infrequent, and you need to actually leve…”
Chen: Dropbox maximizes user value through workplace folder sharing
“For example, when you first install Dropbox, the easiest thing that you can do is you can use it to just sync your Home and your work computers, right? And that's great, but really the way to get those users to become really valuable is for them to start shari…”
Chen: Facebook historically maintained a 60% DAU/MAU engagement ratio
“Their products have historically been 60% plus daily actives over monthly actives, and that's very high.”
Chen: Weather apps have low usage frequency but high retention
“So weather is low frequency, but high retention. Because, like, you're actually gonna need to know what the weather is.”
Chen: E-books and games drive high engagement but poor retention
“Versus if you look at something like games or ebooks or, you know, those kinds of products, like really high engagement because you're like, all right, I'm going to get to, I'm going to finish this like trashy science fiction novel that I've been reading. I'm …”
Google Arts & Culture Surpassed Messenger and YouTube in Downloads
“And this was so successful that ultimately the app became the most downloaded free app on both the app store iOS and also Google play for Android. And it was actually bigger than both messenger and YouTube, right?”
Instacart Launched by Fulfilling Orders Without Formal Grocer Partnerships
“And the modern example of this, of course, is is one of our portfolio companies, Instacart, where You know, today the company has awesome deep relationships with the nation's top grocers. But when the company first started they built an app. They had an amazin…”
Despacito Reached 3 Billion YouTube Views Five Times Faster Than Gangnam Style
“Gangnam Style took five years to hit three billion views and Despacito's done it in under a year.”