What's the difference between repurchase rate and retention rate, and which should I report to investors?
The short answer
Repurchase rate measures whether a customer bought again at all in a period; retention rate tracks whether they're still active in a cohort-defined sense over time - they answer different questions and conflating them makes your deck look worse or better than reality depending on which one you picked. Report both, but lead with cohort retention curves for investors, because that's what actually predicts LTV and payback, not a single-period repurchase snapshot. 'LTV is the new CAC' isn't a slogan - retention-led brands are the ones clearing 4:1+ LTV:CAC.
A quick summary to orient you. The real value is below: the resources worth your time, from people who've actually done it, not us.
Here are the resources
Hand-picked from around the web, each with a note on why it earns your time. India-specific ones carry a badge.
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Why we picked it
Directly resolves a confusion most founders don't realise they have - repurchase and retention sound interchangeable but measure different things and get reported inconsistently across decks.
Why we picked it
Frames cohort analysis explicitly around profitable growth rather than vanity retention metrics - useful for tying the analysis back to whether growth is actually making money.
