Research List
URLs, notes, and ideas to investigate. Quick-adds live in your browser until added to the YAML file.
Lenny Rachitsky — How consumer apps got their first 1,000 users. The landscape overview.
Andrew Chen — The Cold Start Problem (book). Definitive work on network effects. Chapters on dating/marketplace/social most relevant.
Casey Winters blog — 14/14 credibility. Grew Grubhub + Pinterest. Content loops framework. Advises Tinder/Reddit/Canva.
Andy Johns — Magic Moment framework. Grew Facebook 100M→500M, Twitter 40M→140M.
Ravi Mehta — Tinder CPO. 'Time to First Match' as activation metric. $200M incremental revenue.
Nikita Bier — TBH + Gas zero-budget viral launches. Geographic seeding for social apps.
Noam Bardin — Waze 2K→140M users. Community data model (1% create, 9% contribute, 90% consume). Geo-based growth.
Jorge Mazal — Duolingo CPO. 14/14 credibility. CURR metric, 4.5x DAU growth, retention-first approach.
Phil Carter — Elemental Growth Substack. Subscription Value Loop framework. Faire/Quizlet/Ibotta.
Adam Fishman newsletter. First growth hire at Lyft, VP Growth Patreon. Marketplace + consumer subscription.
Jeff Chang — Growth engineering blog. Pinterest + Whatnot growth. Experiment velocity + growth funnels.
Math Academy's prerequisite inference approach — how they auto-build knowledge graphs
Reference implementation for prerequisite-gated learning