I asked how great products are measured. The answer is retention. Products with high churn die.
Then I thought about my own story.
Trends.vc has retained me for six years. Writing reports, synthesizing trends, compressing signal. That work is aligned with how I think. I could do it indefinitely.
I built HeadsUp because I wanted it. Competitive intelligence for my own decisions. The product retains me because I use it. If every customer left tomorrow, I’d still run it for myself.
Will customers stay? Ask yourself first. Will I stay?
If the answer is no, you’re building because the market looks good. The opportunity seems big. The TAM is attractive. You’re on a countdown. Three months of enthusiasm. Five months if you’re disciplined. Then burnout. Then you stop iterating. Then the product stalls. Then customers leave.
Customer retention requires founder retention. The founder has to stay in the game long enough to iterate until it works. And “long enough” is usually measured in years.
The products that last are the ones where the founder and the work are in harmony. The work is the thing they’d do anyway. The product is a side effect of who they are.
That is the real retention metric. Not “will users come back?” but “will you come back?”
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What’s one thing you’d work on this week purely because you want to?
