“The best founders I see define the beginning of onboarding (i.e. the first impression) at the very top of their marketing funnel. The end of onboarding (i.e. activation) is the moment you’ve provided enough value that you are likely to have gained a returning user. Analyze your usage data and find out what it takes to get there—that’s the end of y... See more

Be sure to figure out how you’re defining retention for your product, and stick with it. To measure retention, you need to have a strong understanding of your product’s “value metric”. Gustaf Alstromer, Partner at Y Combinator, outlines the following steps:

1. Identify the metric that represents the value users get from your product.


2. Measure the repeat

... See more

“Retention rate is the best measure of product-market fit , because it is a behavioral measure of repeat usage. Specifically, you want to focus on the “terminal value” of your retention curve. If your retention curve drops to zero, then you don’t have product-market fit. To achieve product-market fit, you want your retention curve to flatten out to... See more