Day 7 - Guesstimate Question 1
Practice guesstimate questions with us...
Hello learners!
Welcome to the 7th day of the series 30 Days of PM Interview by Crework! Yesterday, we talked about how to approach guesstimate questions in a PM interview. Now, we need to practice the questions, so we will do it today.
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Guess the numbers 💯
Your practice question for today is:
Estimate the number of videos watched on YouTube per day. (Asked in Google interview)
Now, before we move on to “how should we approach it” part, I want you to try it. Come on, pause here for a while, bring a notebook and pen and try this question.
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Okay, now let’s talk about how we can approach this.
Step 1: Ask Clarifying Questions
Is this for a specific location or worldwide?
Are we focusing specifically on mobile, web or any watched video counts?
How are we defining a video to be watched? Are video plays = videos watched?
Are we only considering long form videos or YouTube shorts too? (It’s a new feature, and frequency of watching shorts is more, so very important question)
For this estimate, I will be considering the location to be India only. We are not focusing on any specific device, so every video watched counts. Every time a user plays a video is being counted as a video watched. For this estimate, let’s not count YT shorts and only consider long form videos.
Step 2: Coming up with an equation
So, I am gonna take this approach:
Total number of videos watched in a day = Daily Active Users (people who watch at least 1 video) * Number of videos watched per user per day
India’s population = 1.5 Billion
Population with internet access = 50% of the population = 0.5 * 1.5 Billion = 750 Million
People who are YouTube users = Assuming 60% of population with internet access = 0.6 * 750 Million = 450 Million
Not all users will use YouTube daily, so assuming 50% of users as daily active users i.e. people who watch at least 1 video
DAU = 0.5 * 450 Million = 225 Million
We have the first component of the equation.
Now, even this DAU can be divided into sections based on their frequency of usage.
A) Consider, power users i.e. who watch on average 10 videos a day = 30% of users = 0.3 * 225 Million = 67.5 Million
B) Average users i.e. who watch on average 5 videos per day = 50% of users = 0.5 * 225 Million = 112.5 Million
C) Less frequent users i.e. who watch on average 2 videos per day = 20% of the users = 0.2*225 Million = 45 Million
Total videos watched per day = (A * 10) + (B * 5) + (C * 2)
= (67.5 * 10) + (112.5 * 5) + (45 * 2)
= 675 + 562.5 + 90
= 1327.5 Million = 1.3275 Billion videos watched per day
This was an example of how you can approach a guesstimate question asked in a PM interview. There can be multiple ways of approaching the same problem, and there is no “right” answer. The interviewer wants to assess your ability to think and come up with a solution. The real answer is the process you use to come up with your solution.
I would love to see the solution you came up with. Please share it with us on twitter or reply to this mail.
Day 7 - Completed ✅
Congratulations on completing the 7th lesson of the series 30 Day of PM Interview. 🥳
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