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Albert Cheng

Head of Growth (formerly at Duolingo & Grammarly)

Chess.com

📈 Growth & Metrics (1)🔍 User Research (1)👥 Team & Culture (1)

Methodologies(3)

📈 Growth & Metrics

A cyclical approach to growth that alternates between discovering new opportunities (finding the right mountain) and maximizing their value (climbing the mountain) to prevent stagnation.

Core Principles

  • 1.Explore: Divergent thinking to find new levers or insights (e.g., user psychology).
  • 2.Exploit: Convergent focus to scale and optimize the proven insight across the product.
  • 3.Oscillate: Recognize when returns diminish (saturation) and return to exploration.

"When done right, you can oscillate between the two until you saturate out of exploitation mode and then you encourage the teams to brainstorm and get more creative again."

#explore#exploit#growth
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The Gamification Triad

by Albert Cheng

🔍 User Research

A structural model for gamification derived from Jorge Mazal's work, consisting of three essential pillars that must work together to drive long-term retention.

Core Principles

  • 1.Core Loop: The tight, daily action (e.g., a lesson or game) providing immediate feedback.
  • 2.Metagame: The long-term progression layer (e.g., leaderboards, paths) that provides direction.
  • 3.Profile: The representation of user identity and investment (e.g., stats, history) that builds commitment.

"You have the core loop... the metagame... and then you have the profile. When you nail those three things, you can end up with a long-term learning journey."

#gamification#triad#research
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👥 Team & Culture

A hiring philosophy that prioritizes innate traits like agency and learning speed over deep domain experience, particularly in rapidly shifting industries like AI.

Core Principles

  • 1.Agency over Experience: Experience can be a crutch that prevents unlearning old habits.
  • 2.Clock Speed: The rate at which a candidate learns and iterates is the primary predictor of success.
  • 3.Beginner's Mind: The ability to intentionally discard learned habits to adapt to new paradigms.
  • +1 more...

"I saw some of the highest performers just being people that had very high agency, had that clock speed... experience could be a crutch."

#agency#'clock#speed'
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