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About the Book

This book is the best of Andrew Chen's blog, curated and formatted into a 984-page PDF that you can keep with you at all times.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Best of 2006
    1. Early nerd memories ;)
    2. Random notes on early adopters
    3. YouTube and Monetizing Social Networking
    4. Do hardcore Microsofties suck at startups?
    5. 5 ways I screwed up my first website
    6. Potential consumer business models
    7. The myth of (business) prodigy
    8. Taking a vacation is productive too!
    9. Cultural perspectives on failure and innovation
    10. Yelp: An example of a high-value advertising model
    11. Inventory glut in social media
    12. Winners don't quit, and quitters don't win...
    13. Geniuses versus very smart people
    14. Designing for other people versus designing for yourself
    15. Flash will dominate the media-sharing web
    16. Autmated models versus human experts
    17. Product versus Experience
    18. Simplicity and choices for users
    19. Splitting equity between partners
    20. Why BitTorrent Inc. is no sure bet!
  3. Best of 2007 Q1
    1. Only nerds ask: "Is the Web 2.0 bubble collapsing?"
    2. Why build a vertical ad network?
    3. Meeting people in Silicon Valley
    4. 10 tips for meeting people at industry events
    5. Eyeball companies versus revenue companies
    6. My second bad website :)
    7. 3 lessons from a web idea that didn't go anywhere
    8. 10 ways to verify assumptions
    9. Why do people avoid checking their assumptions?
    10. How to do market research via LinkedIn :)
    11. Dolt versus DoIt
    12. Verifying startup assumptions, Part 2
    13. How to tell the difference between eyeball companies
    14. Web + Games = ?
    15. Game design tutorial at the GDC
    16. What's broken about online dating?
    17. What's broken with online travel?
    18. How do you find a badass co-founder?
  4. Best of 2007 Q2
    1. Eyeballs versus dollars: What should startups focus on?
    2. Quick thought on eyeballs versus dollars...
    3. 24 hours into Twitter
    4. How to build a product in 7 days
    5. The myth of the 7 day product
    6. What's the \#1 opportunity in online advertising?
    7. 10 obvious strategies to ruthlessly acquire users
    8. Where to find startup ideas for the "Average Joe"
    9. 7 ways to define an emotionally engaging product
    10. Entrepreneur-in-Residence in 3 flavors
    11. Is Google the next Wal-Mart?
    12. Widgets = ad networks
    13. Google: A tale of two graphs
    14. How to fool VCs into thinking you have traction, Part 1
    15. How to fool VCs into thinking you have traction, Part 2
    16. Level up for features instead of freemium?
    17. How to fool VCs into thinking you have traction, Part 3
    18. How do you find a badass co-founder, Part 2
    19. Rule of thumb: Is 1-9-90 really correct?
    20. Is Facebook killing dating sites?
    21. Adwords is not enough for success on the consumer web
    22. Cracking the code: Analyzing viral strategies
    23. Need a solid Web 2.0 business idea? Go upstream from a proven model
    24. Forget advertising - is virtual goods the killer revenue model for Web 2.0?
    25. How does the online ad gold rush impact your Web 2.0 site?
    26. How do you apply math to Web 2.0 websites?
    27. Stop asking: "Does the world need another social network?"
    28. Your site will succeed or fail in the first 10 seconds
    29. Is your site really viral? Viral Branding versus Viral Action
    30. Is a Facebook user the same as a regular user?
    31. How to fool VCs into thinking you have traction, Part 4
    32. What is your W2SAT* score? (*Web 2.0 Startup Aptitude Test)
    33. How much is a Facebook user worth, anyway?
    34. What every Web 2.0 entrepreneur should know about virtual goods
  5. Best of 2007 Q3
    1. Oh "SNAP" = Social Network Application
    2. What's your viral loop? Understanding the engine of adoption
    3. Are people like lab rats? Using reward schedules to drive engagement
    4. Reward schedules in HotOrNot
    5. Viral marketing is not a marketing strategy
    6. Social network convergence and private/public networks
    7. Yahoo's Mash: Analysis of viral marketing technique
    8. Great article on different types of "Platforms"
    9. 5 things that make your social network monetize like crap
  6. Best of 2007 Q4
    1. Couple quotes on Facebook in Wired, Fortune, and NYT
    2. WSJ article describing the difficulty of monetizing UGC
    3. Ad networks: Winner-take-all or Everyone-wins?
    4. Technology always changes, but people always stay the same
    5. Why bloggers and press don't matter for user acquisition
    6. Do you ever say, "MySpace is sooo ugly?" This blog's for you...
    7. Why your friends list get polluted over time
    8. Is your website a leaky bucket? 4 scenarios for user retention
    9. 5 ways to break past the San Francisco echo-chamber
  7. Best of 2008 Q1
    1. Public and private spaces, and why YouTube comments are so awful
    2. Are your SEO efforts working, or failing?
    3. Quick professional update, and what an Entrepreneur-in-Residence actually does ;-)
    4. How will continued social media growth affect overall online ad CPMs in 2008?
    5. Does Facebook reflect your true friendships? How about e-mail?
    6. How does internet ad spend compare to other media?
    7. Take the driver's seat on web stats, don't be a passive observer
    8. 10 signs you're a product fanatic
    9. Not everything can be free!
    10. For-profit app developers versus For-attention app developers
    11. Quantitative approaches to consumer internet
    12. The design of social spaces
    13. Reader Question: Are there new opportunities in social networking?
    14. Reader question: About college...
    15. Facebook and Platforms conference: Graphing Social Patterns (San Diego) recap
    16. Facebook viral marketing: When and why do apps "jump the shark?"
    17. Reader question: Does Facebook + performance ad network = awesome?
    18. Rethinking Facebook's "Daily Active Users"
    19. Google's second click versus Facebook's second click
    20. Reader question: What's the difference between "Viral Marketing" and "Word of Mouth?"
    21. Bridging your traffic engine with your revenue engine
  8. Best of 2008 Q2
    1. Faceoff between Facebook app analytics startups
    2. How NOT to calculate ad revenue
    3. Your ad-supported Web 2.0 site is actually a B2B enterprise in disguise
    4. 5 factors that determine your advertising CPM rates
    5. Viral coefficient: What it does and does NOT measure
    6. iGoogle start pages: Vertical integration of the first, second, and Nth click
    7. Moving to SF and joining the tech community - Lessons from my first year
    8. Viral marketing, activation, and retention metrics - commentary on Dave McClure's Web 2.0 presentation
    9. Vertical ad networks: What are they, and why did Cox just buy Adify for \$300MM?
    10. Facebook Apps: Why they're focused on fun instead of utility
    11. Lessons from the casino industry on engagement metrics and lifetime value
    12. Social network marketing: Getting from zero to critical mass
    13. Social network death spiral: How Metcalfe's Law can work against you
    14. What's the value of a user on your site? Why it's hard to calculate lifetime value for social network audiences
    15. User retention: Why depending on notification-driven retention sucks
    16. Users, customers, or audience - what do you call the people that visit your site?
    17. 5 steps towards building a metrics-driven business
    18. Social Gaming Summit: Recap and observations
    19. Social gaming design - Bartle types versus Web 2.0 participation pyramid
    20. Where are all the video startups? Maybe Content=King, online and offline
    21. MySpace versus Facebook: Analysis of both traffic and ad revenue, using Google Trends
    22. 25 reasons users STOP using your product: An analysis of customer lifecycle
  9. Best of 2008 Q3
    1. Obama and McCain: How political marketing has evolved from offline to online
    2. What are you really trying to measure?
    3. From analog dollars to digital pennies: The crisis in traditional media
    4. Yahoo's BOSS program doesn't go far enough: Why not open up Yahoo search traffic?
    5. Online advertising during a recession: 5 key trends for ad-based startups
    6. Are Web 2.0 startups wasting their time with Web 2.0 early adopters?
    7. Recency Frequency and Monetization (RFM): Optimizing your notifications strategy
    8. Virtual economy for notification "credits" on Facebook apps
    9. omg I'm just a startup, I can't do those fancy analytics!
    10. 7 ideas for billion dollar companies in the online ads
    11. How to start a professional blog: 10 tips for new bloggers
    12. Virtual goods: Who will be the Amazon.com of virtual item sales?
    13. Early adopters vs the Mainstream: Google Insights points out websites only used by Silicon Valley nerds
    14. Counting your big pile of Benjamins: 5 startup tips for maximizing ad revenue
    15. Prosper.com and peer-to-peer lending in the economic downturn
    16. Remnant ads and the advertisers who love them
    17. Gaming versus gambling ARPUs
    18. How to measure if users love your product using cohorts and revisit rates
    19. Open mobile platforms and Facebook developer refugees
    20. The first 6 steps to homegrowing basic startup analytics
  10. Best of 2008 Q4
    1. Go-to-market strategies for vertical social products
    2. 4 major cultural differences between Games people and Web people
    3. Virtual items design: Build it yourself or use UGC?
    4. How to generate awesome test candidates for A/B testing
    5. Slate on split testing in the McCain and Obama campaign (robo-calling versus text messaging)
    6. Ad-based versus direct monetization: Which one is better for you?
    7. What would Facebook look like if it sold out to ads? Click here to see…
    8. How to calculate cost-per-acquisition for startups relying on freemium, subscription, or virtual items biz models
    9. Freemium business model case study: AdultFriendFinder ARPU, churn, and conversion rates
  11. Best of 2009 H1
    1. How to create a profitable Freemium startup (spreadsheet model included!)
    2. Warren Buffett’s bio “The Snowball” and lessons for startups
    3. Which startup’s collapse will end the Web 2.0 era?
    4. Twitter’s public/private space design, aka “How to find girls on Twitter”
    5. 5 warning signs: Does A/B testing lead to crappy products?
    6. \textbf {Free to Freemium: 5 Lessons Learned by Ranjith Kumaran
    7. App monetization: Gambit launches, funnel metrics, and ARPU vs “CPM”
    8. Friends versus Followers: Twitter’s elegant design for grouping contacts
    9. “Stealing MySpace” and my personal experience monetizing MySpace ads
    10. 3 key ideas from a recent Freemium dinner conversation
    11. Talk to your target customer in 4 easy steps
    12. I want more tools to reach my readers, not monetize them!
    13. How do you do concrete interviews for non-technical people?
    14. Creating value versus optimizing revenue
    15. Benefit-Driven Metrics: Measure the lives you save, not the life preservers you sell
    16. Why you should make it easy for users to quit your product
    17. Why metrics-driven startups overlook brand value
    18. Matt Humphrey of Bumba Labs on User Retention Curves
  12. Best of 2009 H2
    1. Built to Fail: How companies like Google, IDEO, and 37signals build failure-tolerant systems for anything!
    2. Social design explosion: Polls, quizzes, reviews, forums, chat, blogs, videos, comments, oh my!
    3. Does Silicon Valley noise detract from long-term value creation?
    4. What if interviews poorly predict job performance? What if dating poorly predicts marital happiness?
    5. iLike, Lookery, Google Voice: Recent platform lessons from app developers
    6. How desktop apps beat websites at building large active userbases
    7. BBS door games: Social Gaming innovation from the 1980s
    8. Building the initial team for seed stage startups
    9. Why low-fidelity prototyping kicks butt for customer-driven design
    10. How to keep visual design consistent while A/B testing like crazy
    11. Whenever ad networks talk about their “targeting” remember the Netflix prize
    12. 5 crucial stages in designing your viral loop
    13. How helpful is venture capital experience to building startups?
    14. Building lifestyle companies versus VC-backable startups: Is it walk before you run?
    15. How social gaming offers create value for everyone (not just Facebook, Zynga, and Offerpal)
    16. How Facebook could clean up the offers industry
    17. Are social gaming offers scamming users? A detailed analysis of Techcrunch’s Scamville article
    18. What I’m reading: Viral Loop by Adam Penenberg
    19. The question that got me to leave Seattle for greener startup pastures
    20. Adding design to an agile development process
    21. Product design debt versus Technical debt
    22. Does every startup need a Steve Jobs?
    23. Update on the Steve Jobs post from an Apple alum (Updated again!)
    24. Minimum Desirable Product
  13. Best of 2010
    1. What I’m reading: Interaction design, Riddles, and more
    2. Notes on customer acquisition and viral marketing from First Round Capital CEO Summit
    3. Minimum Desirable Product and Lean Startups (slides included!)
  14. Best of 2011
    1. Retention metrics roundup of articles and links
    2. Quora stats: 150\% growth in January, 160k monthly actives, 18k daily actives (lower bound estimate via Facebook app data)
    3. Bonus stats: Instagram up 40\% in Jan, 300k MAU, 35k DAU (lower bound estimate based on Facebook app activity)
    4. Stanford CS major seeks sales/marketing monkey
    5. Quora: What is considered a significant number of users for a free consumer internet product?
    6. Quora: What are the best metrics for measuring user engagement?
    7. Quora: How did MySpace, with a smart team of people, do such a bad UI/UX job with the new design?
    8. 2011 Blogging Roadmap: “Zero to product/market fit”
    9. Designing for distribution with Eric+Eric (YC 2011, Mochi Media)
    10. When has a consumer startup hit product/market fit?
    11. Why it’s smart for consumer startups to grow first and make money later
    12. When Does Paid Acquisition Work for SaaS Startups?
    13. \textbf {When Does Paid Acquisition Work for SaaS Startups?
    14. “Anyone can start a Groupon!” and other startup myths
    15. How to use A/B testing for better product design
    16. Simple is Marketable
    17. Don’t compete on features