Mobile Dev Memo Podcast

Season 5, Episode 19: The power of cohort compounding (with Nilay Patel)

11 snips
May 6, 2025
Nilay Patel, head of product at Kohort and an expert in mobile gaming and user acquisition optimization, dives deep into the transformative power of cohort analysis. He addresses common pitfalls in lifetime value estimation and discusses why cohorts are crucial for evaluating product economics. Nilay also explores how companies can effectively incorporate cohort monetization into user acquisition models and the importance of handling outliers in data. His insights reveal how adapting to cohort performance can drive improved monetization and user retention strategies.
Ask episode
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
ANECDOTE

Nilay Patel's Gaming Journey

  • Nilay Patel shares his experience scaling mobile games across studios like Triple Dot and Quali.
  • His transition to ad tech aims to solve $6 billion annual UA inefficiencies in gaming.
INSIGHT

Collaboration is Key in Gaming

  • Gaming demands tight collaboration among product, UA, and finance teams for success.
  • Isolating these disciplines is a recipe for failure in mobile gaming studios.
INSIGHT

Fragile LTV Models Limit Growth

  • A fragile LTV model overfits to early campaign data and fails when scaling or diversifying.
  • Studios often discard valuable high-CPI users due to inaccurate early LTV estimations.
Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode
Get the app