Essay · ~12 min read

Retention is King

Jamie Quint · andrewchen.com Free Intermediate

This is the clearest essay on why a flattening cohort retention curve is the thing that actually matters, and it lives on Andrew Chen's blog where the flattening-curve idea got popularized. It walks you from week-to-week churn to why the curve should stop dropping and level off, and makes the honest case that virality is worthless until retention is stable. A good starting point if you are staring at a retention chart and trying to figure out whether it is bottoming out or still bleeding.

  • A healthy curve drops fast in the first few weeks, then flattens into a plateau. The plateau, not the starting number, is the signal you are looking for.
  • If your curve never flattens and keeps sliding toward zero, you do not have retention yet, and chasing more users just fills a leaky bucket faster.
  • Fix retention before you spend on growth or virality: users who churn cannot invite anyone, so retention compounds where top-line growth alone does not.
Open on andrewchen.com ↗

The question it answers

  1. What is a good retention curve and how do I know if mine is flattening?

Read with it

  1. Once you know your curve should flatten, the next question is where it should flatten, and this piece answers it with concrete... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~10 min read What is good retention? Lenny Rachitsky
  2. Benchmarks are useless until you can actually plot your own cohort curve, and Mixpanel's free tier lets you build a real... Mixpanel Docs Tool · Docs guide, ~15 min to set up Track user retention with Mixpanel Mixpanel
eChai Partner Brands The partnership →