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Conservation of Intent: The hidden reason why A/B tests aren’t as effective as they look

Andrew Chen

This is why you can’t add up your A/B test results. If you’re at a company that A/B tests everything and then announces the great results – that’s wonderful, of course, but just run the thought experiment of summing together all of those A/B tests. Rarely does it match.

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Consumer startups are awesome, and here’s what I’m looking for at a16z (70 slide deck)

Andrew Chen

The future of work (Bottoms up SaaS, full-stack autonomy, etc). And you get credits in your account when they accept it too – it’s a reciprocal give/get program. It has tracking codes so you can see how well it circulates, and you A/B test the whole thing to make sure it’s highly optimized to be viral and spread.

Media 100
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Consumer startups are awesome, and here’s what I’m looking for at a16z (70 slide deck)

Andrew Chen

The future of work (Bottoms up SaaS, full-stack autonomy, etc). And you get credits in your account when they accept it too – it’s a reciprocal give/get program. It has tracking codes so you can see how well it circulates, and you A/B test the whole thing to make sure it’s highly optimized to be viral and spread.

Media 40
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a16z Podcast: Why paid marketing sucks, Network effects, Viral Growth, and more

Andrew Chen

One growth accounting equation that’s often thrown around is that you know your incremental — your net — MAUs, right? And you can start to draw conclusions, sort of a natural A/B test in order to do that. Is a tricky one in some cases like subscription Hulu, Netflix, and then also in the SaaS world.

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The red flags and magic numbers that investors look for in your startup’s metrics – 80 slide deck included!

Andrew Chen

Of course, as an investor you can’t run A/B tests or analyze results directly, but you can form hypotheses, ideate, and apply the same type of thinking. Dozens of angel investments and advisory roles in SaaS, marketplaces, etc. The problem is that the Growth Accounting Framework provides for lagging metrics.

Metrics 111
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What to do when product growth stalls

Andrew Chen

An enterprise SaaS product would have its own set of metrics. And even surface areas like the lost password flow, which for larger products, often block engaged users from getting back into their accounts. I use tons of A/B testing and experiments in messaging to make this happen.