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Albert Cheng: Why amplifying users beats forcing virality

Through Chess.com losses and Grammarly sampled paid features for free users: retention is gold for subscriptions, explore-exploit picks the right mountain.

Albert ChengguestLenny Rachitskyhost
Oct 4, 20251h 25mWatch on YouTube ↗

At a glance

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Albert Cheng reveals hidden growth engines behind beloved subscription products

  1. Albert Cheng, a leading consumer growth leader from Duolingo, Grammarly, and Chess.com, shares his mental models and tactics for uncovering and scaling growth opportunities in subscription products.
  2. He frames growth as the job of connecting users to product value, using an explore–exploit approach, heavy experimentation, and deep attention to user psychology, motivation, and retention.
  3. Cheng illustrates these ideas with concrete wins: reframing loss experiences at Chess.com, sampling paid features to free Grammarly users, and amplifying organic virality at Duolingo.
  4. He also explains how AI is reshaping both product experiences and growth workflows, the power of brand and community, and what kind of people and team cultures make growth organizations thrive.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Treat growth as connecting users to value across the full journey.

Cheng defines growth not as metrics hacking but as systematically removing friction between users and product value at every stage, from acquisition and activation to long-term engagement and monetization.

Use an explore–exploit loop: find the ‘right mountain,’ then mine it hard.

Run exploratory experiments to surface surprising insights, then aggressively ‘exploit’ the best ones by applying them across adjacent features, teams, and surfaces until results plateau—then return to exploration.

User retention is the foundation of viable consumer subscriptions.

Without strong retention (e.g., new-user D1 in the ~30–40% range and solid current-user retention), you’re forced to over-monetize early and pay heavily for acquisition, which is rarely sustainable.

Let free users experience the full shape of your paid value.

At Grammarly, interspersing a limited number of premium suggestions into the free experience dramatically shifted brand perception and nearly doubled upgrade rates—show that your product does more than the ‘baseline.’

Amplify what users already do instead of forcing virality.

Duolingo tracked where users organically took screenshots and then heavily invested in those moments (streaks, funny challenges, leaderboards) with better visuals and animations, multiplying organic sharing instead of trying to manufacture it.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

Growth is the job to connect users to the value of your product.

— Albert Cheng

User retention is gold for consumer subscription companies.

— Albert Cheng

All of a sudden, people were seeing Grammarly as a much more powerful tool than they were before.

— Albert Cheng

Sometimes experience could be a crutch, especially in this world where the grounds are shifting so fast with AI.

— Albert Cheng

The fastest speed of learning is what I want to bet on.

— Albert Cheng

Explore–exploit framework for finding and scaling growth opportunitiesDesigning and growing successful consumer subscription and freemium productsExperimentation culture: systems, volume, and cross-company learningsCase studies from Duolingo, Grammarly, and Chess.com (retention, monetization, virality)Using AI to accelerate analysis, prototyping, and data accessMotivation, habit formation, and user psychology in product designBuilding high-agency teams and shifting organizations toward experimentation

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