| Great inspiring article, but I think there’s much more nuance in reality that it doesn’t address. My company (we’re multi-product) has been working on a new product that ticks a lot of the boxes that are proposed here, but that is still nowhere near PMF. There are > 100 paying customers who pay ~$30k for the product. There is a small set of these customers who absolutely love the product. That’s steps 1-3 done. But…
Overall retention is low (varies between 55-60%). Sales are pretty flat and seem like a real struggle. Customer acquisition cost is 130-150%. Just because you got these first 3 milestones doesn’t mean that the rest naturally follow. My view on this product stalling is that it doesn’t really get the results that the customers think it’s going to and they cool on the idea and stop using it, but… you have companies like Snowflake that went to market claiming to be the one data platform to rule them all, which was also a large over-promise (it’s more expensive, slower, complicated than what they promised) but it grew explosively and IPOed. Even towards the end of the journey that this article describes there’s still major rolls of the dice that affect the outcome. |
Assuming you have a yearly terms (which you should, if at all possible), try to identify customers who might churn (using the product less, etc.) and spend some time with them -- literally, just send them an email to hop on a call. Try to understand why they are using the product less. Do the same with the ones who love you. Figure out what is different.
Usually, this will grow into a "customer success" role, but it has to start somewhere.