Tech Advisor & Investor
The great Andrew Chen of a16z joins us to discuss his new book: The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects. This an indispensable guide to get that "rocket-ship" action going for whatever product or company you're working with. Sponsors: RadPowerBikes.com AltoIra.com/techmeme Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Andrew Chen is a General Partner at Venture Capital Firm Andreessen Horowitz, an author and Board Member at Maven, Substack and Clubhouse. Andrew has worked with some of the fastest growing companies on the planet. He was head of Global Driver Acquisitions at Uber and an early investor in Clubhouse, plus he's spent 3 years researching companies like Tinder and Substack to deconstruct how they use network effects to supercharge their growth. Expect to learn how running college parties can help launch a dating app, Andrew's biggest lessons from his time at Uber, the strategic differences between launching and growing an audience, the most pointless metrics that businesses focus on, the most common mistakes companies make when launching and much more... Sponsors: Join the Modern Wisdom Community to connect with me & other listeners - https://modernwisdom.locals.com/ Get a $5 discount on Magic Spoon’s amazing cereal at https://magicspoon.com/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM) Get 20% discount on the highest quality CBD Products from Pure Sport at https://bit.ly/cbdwisdom (use code: MW20) Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours at https://www.drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Extra Stuff: Buy The Cold Start Problem - https://amzn.to/3lPTs7M Check out Andrew's blog - https://andrewchen.com/ Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Andrew Chen — Metaverse, Metrics, and Meerkats | Brought to you by 80,000 Hours free career advice for high impact and doing good in the world, Wealthfront automated investing, and Helix Sleep premium mattresses. More on all three below. Andrew Chen (@andrewchen) is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where he invests in consumer technology, including social, marketplace, entertainment, and gaming experiences. Today, Andrew serves on the boards of All Day Kitchens, Clubhouse, Envoy, Hipcamp, Maven, Reforge, Sandbox VR, Singularity 6, Sleeper, Snackpass, and Substack. Andrew is a prolific writer and leading voice on mobile, metrics, and user growth. For the past decade, he’s covered the topic on AndrewChen.com. He is the author of The Cold Start Problem, a book exploring how new startups are launched. He is also a board member and instructor at Reforge, which offers selective, growth-focused programs for experienced professionals in marketing, product, data, and engineering. Please enjoy! This episode is brought to you by 80,000 Hours! You have roughly 80,000 hours in your career. That’s 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year for 40 years. They add up and are one of your biggest opportunities, if not the biggest opportunity, to make a positive impact on the world. Some of the best strategies, best research, and best tactical advice I’ve seen and heard come from 80,000 Hours, a nonprofit co-founded by Will MacAskill, an Oxford philosopher and a popular past guest on this podcast. If you’re looking to make a big change to your direction, address pressing global problems from your current job, or if you’re just starting out or maybe starting a new chapter and not sure which path to pursue, 80,000 Hours can help. Join their free newsletter, and they’ll send you an in-depth guide for free that will help you identify which global problems are most pressing and where you can have the biggest impact personally. It will also help you get new ideas for high impact careers or directions that help tackle these issues. * This episode is also brought to you by Wealthfront! Wealthfront pioneered the automated investing movement, sometimes referred to as ‘robo-advising,’ and they currently oversee $20 billion of assets for their clients. It takes about three minutes to sign up, and then Wealthfront will build you a globally diversified portfolio of ETFs based on your risk appetite and manage it for you at an incredibly low cost. Smart investing should not feel like a rollercoaster ride. Let the professionals do the work for you. Go to Wealthfront.com/Tim and open a Wealthfront account today, and you’ll get your first $5,000 managed for free, for life. Wealthfront will automate your investments for the long term. Get started today at Wealthfront.com/Tim. * This episode is also brought to you by Helix Sleep! Helix was selected as the #1 overall mattress of 2020 by GQ magazine, Wired, Apartment Therapy, and many others. With Helix, there’s a specific mattress to meet each and every body’s unique comfort needs. Just take their quiz—only two minutes to complete—that matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress for you. They have a 10-year warranty, and you get to try it out for a hundred nights, risk free. They’ll even pick it up from you if you don’t love it. And now, to my dear listeners, Helix is offering up to 200 dollars off all mattress orders plus two free pillows at HelixSleep.com/Tim. * For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast. Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday. For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts. Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books. Follow Tim: Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferriss Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Today on Product Hunt Radio, I make the trek from San Francisco down to Sandhill Road to talk to Andrew Chen and Ada Chen at Andreessen Horowitz. Their matching last name is not a coincidence — yes, they are siblings. Andrew Chen is a relatively recent addition to Andreessen Horowitz team, where he's a General Partner focused on consumer and SaaS. Prior to joining the illustrious firm, he led growth teams at Uber. He's also a prolific writer with more than 650 essays over the past decade covering startups, growth, and more. Fun fact: he coined the term “mullet business” which we touch on during the podcast. (Where's a mullet emoji when you need it!?) Ada Chen has a unique background, operating at companies with massive scale, including Mochi Media, LinkedIn, and SurveyMonkey, as well as startups at the earliest stage. Today she advises several startups and is the COO of Notejoy, a collaborative notes app for teams, which she co-founded with her husband. In this episode we talk about: The uniqueness of the Silicon Valley tech ecosystem, how network effects conspire to create a “rich get richer” situation for cities, and why new communication tools enabling distributed teams to work together across continents could mean that there will be no “next Silicon Valley.” Ada shares her insights on the contrasting skill sets needed when working at a big company versus a small startup, after having herself gone from a small startup to a huge organization like LinkedIn back to a two-person startup with her husband. How to port the concept of OKRs — objectives and key results, a personnel management framework originated by legendary Intel CEO Andy Grove — to your personal life from your business (and why you would want to). We talk about you can use them to help manage your exercise, social life and relationship with your SO. Of course, we also chat about some of their favorite products, including an app that lets you pop in to a luxury hotel for a few hours to shower or have a nap, a super cool way to greet visitors to your office, and a new app for emailing yourself. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Also, big thanks to our sponsors, Airtable, GE Ventures, Intercom and Stripe for their support. 😸 Quotes from This Episode “When you’re executing at a small startup, or a small team, or just by yourself, it really comes down to ideating, picking and prioritizing, and then rolling up your sleeves and just getting things done as quickly as possible. It's a night and day difference from a big company.” — Ada “If you graph cities, there's a power law: the biggest cities are really big and there's this long tail of all these little tiny cities, and the reason for that is that there's a network effect within cities. These ecosystems emerge because the designers are here, because the engineers are here, because the capital is here, because the marketing people are here, and on and on and on.” — Andrew “When it comes to working at a large company, it's much more cerebral and much more about the heart. You’re thinking about how to collaborate and communicate across a cross-functional team to get the initiative done: can you communicate what it's about; can you motivate people to get it done; can you manage all the working pieces?” — Ada “Either these network effects will continue to hold and the Bay Area will continue to be strong, or we make big structural shifts in how we organize teams and workforces and the network effects become less strong. But that doesn’t mean some other city becomes the next Silicon Valley, there won’t actually be a “next” Silicon Valley — it either continues or will just be distributed.” — Andrew “The irony of it is that sometimes when you are working on projects with such large scale, because the skill set is so different, it actually feels like you're not doing anything at all — you’re merely managing the appendages of the other groups and trying to make sure everyone is staying on track and executing.” — Ada On joining a venture capital firm: “The idea that I would do the thing I want to do for fun as my full-time job feels like I’ve won an ice cream eating competition, and the prize is more ice cream.” — Andrew Companies and Products Mentioned in This Episode Bose — Noise-cancelling earbuds. Breather — Peace and quiet, on-demand. Reserve a private space on the go. Captio — Email yourself with one tap. Envoy — Elegantly greet visitors to your office. HabitShare — The only habit-tracking app that is social to its core. NotaBene — Shortcuts for quickly emailing notes to yourself and others. Notejoy — Collaborative notes for your entire team. Recharge — Take a nap or shower in a luxury hotel. Reddit — r/InternetIsBeautiful, r/bestof and r/firstworldanarchists Spacious — Flexible, drop-in workspace. VIPKID — Teach Chinese children from your home. We Are The Nerds: The Birth and Tumultuous Life of Reddit, the Internet's Culture Laboratory by Christine Lagorio-Chafkin
He knew how to code, but when he graduated school, Andrew Chen decided to go into venture capital. Since then, he’s used his technical background to become an advisor and investor in many tech startups, including Dropbox, Product Hunt, and AngelList. He talks with us about how he leveraged his coding skills to being a tech advisor, how he’s maintained a solid blog for over eight years, and why you don’t have to be a great coder to build something great. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) Mohr Davidow Ventures Product Hunt Ryan Hoover Y Combinator Front CodeNewbie Slack Community K Cups Eric Reis WordPress AngelList Wanelo Dropbox Drew Houston Mark Zuckerberg Linode Discourse Joshua Porter Randi Komisar The Monk and the Riddle Archie search engine Veronica search engine Gopher Minimum Viable Product BASIC SquareSpace Growth Hacking Is The New VP Marketing Codeland Conf Codeland 2019 Andrew Chen Andrew Chen is a writer and entrepreneur focused on mobile products, metrics, and user growth. He is an advisor/investor for tech startups including AngelList, AppSumo, Barkbox, Cardpool (acq. by Safeway), Dropbox, Frankly (TSX.V:TLK), Gravity (acq. by AOL), Grovo, Kiva, Product Hunt, Qualaroo, Qik (acq. by Skype), Secret, Wanelo, and ZenPayroll.
This week, friends Andrew Chen (Entrepreneur, Investor. Ex-Adtech and VC) and Nir Eyal (Author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, Blogger at NirAndFar.com), join me, Ryan Hoover, to chat about products. We discuss an unusual app called Ethan, habit-forming products, and the rise of pet products. Enjoy. Products mentioned: - Ethan (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/ethan) - A messaging app for messaging Ethan - TD4W (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/td4w) - A party in your pants - Ping (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/ping-2) - You're going to like me (new app by Secret) - Weave (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/weave) - Tinder for professionals nearby - Path Talk (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/talk-by-path) - Smart, Private Messaging - Mailbox (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/mailbox-2-0) - Fly through your email. - SaneBox (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/sanebox) - Prioritization for your inbox - Spritz (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/sprintz) - Reading reimagined. Technology for faster communication. - Readtime (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/readtime) - Helps me get through my pocket - Quibb (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/quibb) - Professional network to share industry news and analysis - Link Bubble (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/link-bubble) - Mobile browsing done right - Kloof (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/klooff) - Show the world how much you love your pet - BarkBox (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/bark-box) - - BarkShop (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/barkshop) - Find The Perfect Pawduct For Your Pooch, from Bark & Co - BarkCam (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/barkcam) - The first camera app designed to make your pup a star - Sesame (https://sincerely.com/sesame) - Themed gift sets delivered in a beautiful box
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