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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). 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. Marketplaces (particularly the $10T service economy – more on that here ). Transportation and travel.

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). 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. Marketplaces (particularly the $10T service economy – more on that here ). Transportation and travel.

Media 40
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How to build a billion dollar digital marketplace – examples from Uber, eBay, Craigslist, and more

Andrew Chen

Optimization : A/B testing growth levers – from email/SMS/push copy – to when/how to reach out. This solution, coined in recent years by James Currier and the NFX crew, is to build a “ market network ” that’s part SaaS tooling and part marketplace.

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

Andrew Chen

And you can start to draw conclusions, sort of a natural A/B test in order to do that. One of the things that we covered very early on is that with SaaS, you always wanna try to take existing users and upsell them because it’s way more expensive to acquire a new customer in that context. (I Do you take your existing users?

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What to look for when you’re hiring a Head of Growth

Andrew Chen

SaaS products often grow inside of companies — landing and expanding — which also jumping between companies as employees share products with partner firms and consultants. There were projects to help with A/B testing (Morpheus!), This is when a market hits its Tipping Point.

Scaling 82
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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. 3) And finally, to prioritize and make decisions that impact the future.

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