Growth and distribution

Executive summary

Retention is the growth primitive. Do not hire a growth team or run growth tactics until cohort retention asymptotes. Set a North Star, drive users to a magic moment, then work channels one at a time.

When to use this page

• After early users exist and you are asking “why aren’t we growing?”
• Designing referral, SEO, email/push or paid acquisition.

Retention before tactics

Plot % retained vs days since acquisition (cohort). Viable businesses flatten parallel to the x-axis. Curves that slide to zero mean no product–market fit — growth hacking will not save you.

Ballpark “good” terminal retention by vertical (social often needs ~80%+ early; e-commerce can work lower). Compare to category leaders with dimensional reasoning, not vanity.

Startups should not have a separate growth team early — the whole company (CEO as head of growth) owns it.

Operating for growth

1. North Star metric — MAU (Facebook), nights booked (Airbnb), GMV (eBay), messages sent (WhatsApp). Publish it externally and internally.
2. Magic moment — first friends on Facebook (10 friends / 14 days); first paid listing; first night booked. Optimise time-to-magic-moment.
3. Marginal user — optimise for the user about to churn, not power users drowning in notifications.
4. Growth accounting: new + resurrected − churned; friend/connection depth often drives resurrection.

Channel discipline (Adora Cheung / Homejoy lessons)

• Immerse in the industry; storyboard the full experience before code.
• MVP + one-line positioning (“clean for $20/hour”).
• Manual before automation; temporary brokenness over paralysis; avoid Frankensteining every feature request.
• One channel per week until it caps; revisit failed channels later when unit economics improve.
• Sticky / viral / paid growth — all need sustainability (CLV > CAC; watch payback, e.g. ~3 months safe).

Virality lenses

• Payload × frequency × conversion (Hotmail signature, PayPal send-money).
• Funnel to K-factor (import → send → click → signup → import again). K > 1 without retention is a leaky bucket.

SEO / email / SMS / push

• Keyword research (supply, demand, value); links and internal link equity; basics (sitemaps).
• Deliverability first; notifications over newsletters; trigger campaigns for magic moments; respect opt-out forever.

PR (Justin.tv / Twitch lessons)

Press is not magic meritocracy. Define a business goal (customers in SF, industry awareness). Story types: launch, fundraise, milestones, stunts. Warm intros to reporters; pitch with structure; collateral follow-up. Do PR yourself before a firm; heartbeats of news; relationships for later crises. Good for first hundreds of users — not a scalable acquisition engine.

Key takeaways

• Flatten retention before virality or paid.
• One North Star, one magic moment, marginal user focus.
• One channel at a time; CLV/CAC honesty.

What to do next

1. Do things that don't scale for zero-to-one users.
2. Sales for high-touch B2B motion.