Albert Cheng has led growth at three of the world’s most successful consumer subscription companies: Duolingo, Grammarly, and Chess.com. A former Google product manager (and serious pianist!), Albert developed a unique approach to finding and scaling growth opportunities through rapid experimentation and deep user psychology. His teams run 1,000 experiments a year, discovering counterintuitive insights that have driven tens of millions in revenue. What you’ll learn: 1. How to use the explore-exploit framework to find new growth opportunities 2. How showing premium features to free users doubled Grammarly’s upgrades to paid plans 3. What good retention looks like for a consumer subscription app 4. Why resurrected users drive 80% of mature product growth 5. Why “reverse trials” work better than time-based trials 6. The three pillars of successful gamification: core loop, metagame, and profile — Brought to you by: Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security. Jira Product Discovery—Confidence to build the right thing Miro—A collaborative visual platform where your best work comes to life — Where to find Albert Cheng: • X: x.com/albertc248 • LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/albertcheng1 • Chess.com: chess.com/member/Goniners — Where to find Lenny: • Newsletter: lennysnewsletter.com • X: twitter.com/lennysan • LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky — Referenced: • How Duolingo reignited user growth: • Inside ChatGPT: The fastest-growing product in history | Nick Turley (Head of ChatGPT at OpenAI): • Explore vs. Exploit: • Grammarly: • Reforge: • Chess.com: • Everyone’s an engineer now: Inside v0’s mission to create a hundred million builders | Guillermo Rauch (founder & CEO of Vercel, creators of v0 and Next.js): • Building Lovable: $10M ARR in 60 days with 15 people | Anton Osika (CEO and co-founder): • Figma: • Cursor: • The rise of Cursor: The $300M ARR AI tool that engineers can’t stop using | Michael Truell (co-founder and CEO): • Claude Code: • GitHub Copilot: • Noam Lovinsky on LinkedIn: • The happiness and pain of product management | Noam Lovinsky (Grammarly, Facebook, YouTube, Thumbtack): • Kyla Siedband on LinkedIn: • The Duolingo handbook: • Lenny’s post on X about the Duolingo handbook: • The rituals of great teams | Shishir Mehrotra of Coda, YouTube, Microsoft: • Duolingo on TikTok: • Kasparov vs. Deep Blue | The Match That Changed History: • Magnus Carlsen: • Elo rating system: • Stockfish: • AlphaGo on Prime Video: • Statsig: • The State of Product in 2026: Navigating Change, Challenge, and Opportunity: • Erik Allebest on LinkedIn: • Daniel Rensch on X: • Chariot: • San Francisco 49ers: • Breville Barista Express: — Recommended books: • Snuggle Puppy!: A Little Love Song: • Ogilvy on Advertising: • Dark Squares: How Chess Saved My Life: — Production and marketing by . For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com. Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.