Andrew Chen

Updated 2026-04-10

Andrew Chen is an American investor and growth strategist. He was Head of Growth at Uber and is now a General Partner at a16z, focused on consumer technology and marketplaces.

Known For

Chen became well known for giving precise language to concepts around network effects, viral growth, and product growth. He writes regularly on andrewchen.com about topics such as power-user curves, the supply side of marketplaces, and the difficulty of evaluating new social products.

His book The Cold Start Problem from 2022 is the distilled version of that work: an attempt to create a shared vocabulary for network effects that goes beyond “products get more valuable when more people use them.”

Core Contributions

  • Network-effects vocabulary - five phases of network growth: Cold Start, Tipping Point, Escape Velocity, Ceiling, and Moat; plus three forces: Acquisition, Engagement, and Economic Effect
  • Atomic Network - the smallest self-sustaining network cluster as a strategic unit
  • Hard Side - the roughly 5% of users who do most of the work and are hardest to win
  • Growth practice - at Uber he helped define data-driven, experiment-heavy growth work

Connections

  • a16z - general partner investing in consumer products and marketplaces
  • The Cold Start Problem - his 2022 book on network effects
  • Network Effects - the central theme of his intellectual work
  • Eleanor Konik - reviewed The Cold Start Problem and applied its vocabulary beyond tech

Sources