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

Albert Cheng has led growth at three of the world’s most successful consumer subscription companies: Duolingo, Grammarly, and Chess.com. A former Google product manager (and serious pianist!), Albert developed a unique approach to finding and scaling growth opportunities through rapid experimentation and deep user psychology. His teams run 1,000 experiments a year, discovering counterintuitive insights that have driven tens of millions in revenue.

What you’ll learn:

1. How to use the explore-exploit framework to find new growth opportunities

2. How showing premium features to free users doubled Grammarly’s upgrades to paid plans

3. What good retention looks like for a consumer subscription app

4. Why resurrected users drive 80% of mature product growth

5. Why “reverse trials” work better than time-based trials

6. The three pillars of successful gamification: core loop, metagame, and profile

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Brought to you by:

Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security.

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Miro—A collaborative visual platform where your best work comes to life

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Where to find Albert Cheng:

• X: https://x.com/albertc248

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/albertcheng1/

• Chess.com: https://www.chess.com/member/Goniners

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Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

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Referenced:

• How Duolingo reignited user growth: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-duolingo-reignited-user-growth

• Inside ChatGPT: The fastest-growing product in history | Nick Turley (Head of ChatGPT at OpenAI): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-chatgpt-nick-turley

• Explore vs. Exploit: https://brianbalfour.com/quick-takes/explore-vs-exploit

• Grammarly: https://www.grammarly.com/

• Reforge: https://www.reforge.com/

• Chess.com: https://www.chess.com/

• Everyone’s an engineer now: Inside v0’s mission to create a hundred million builders | Guillermo Rauch (founder & CEO of Vercel, creators of v0 and Next.js): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/everyones-an-engineer-now-guillermo-rauch

• Building Lovable: $10M ARR in 60 days with 15 people | Anton Osika (CEO and co-founder): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/building-lovable-anton-osika

• Figma: https://www.figma.com/

• Cursor: https://cursor.com/

• The rise of Cursor: The $300M ARR AI tool that engineers can’t stop using | Michael Truell (co-founder and CEO): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-rise-of-cursor-michael-truell

• Claude Code: https://www.anthropic.com/claude-code

• GitHub Copilot: https://github.com/features/copilot

• Noam Lovinsky on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noaml/

• The happiness and pain of product management | Noam Lovinsky (Grammarly, Facebook, YouTube, Thumbtack): .css-j9qmi7{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:row;-ms-flex-direction:row;flex-direction:row;font-weight:700;margin-bottom:1rem;margin-top:2.8rem;width:100%;-webkit-box-pack:start;-ms-flex-pack:start;-webkit-justify-content:start;justify-content:start;padding-left:5rem;}@media only screen and (max-width: 599px){.css-j9qmi7{padding-left:0;-webkit-box-pack:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;justify-content:center;}}.css-j9qmi7 svg{fill:#27292D;}.css-j9qmi7 .eagfbvw0{-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;color:#27292D;}