The surprising advice from a founder who built 2 unicorns | Jason Cohen (WP Engine)

Diagnosing Stalled Growth: First Question - Are Customers Leaving?00:00

A lot of product teams and founders build something that starts showing success, then growth stops. Series of questions to diagnose why growth is slowing, in order of priority.

First question: Are customers leaving? (logo churn). Think about the gauntlet customers went through: finding out about the product (hard and improbable), not bouncing off homepage, reaching pricing page without being scared off, having budget and buying it. After all that, clearly wanting it to work, they leave. Emotionally, that's terrible - fundamentally not fulfilling the promise made (product or communication issue).

Churn is worst problem: nothing can be done once it happens (no saving them, no increasing revenue). Correlated with negative reviews hurting growth.

Math: Cancellations grow faster than marketing, creating hard ceiling on company size. Triple customers overnight: marketing delivers same new customers (AdWords, SEO don't care about size), but cancellations triple (e.g., 5% of tripled base). Cancellations grow automatically with size; marketing only grows as fast as you improve it (hard, linear).

Maximum size formula: New customers per month / monthly churn rate = maximum customers. Example: 100 new customers/month at 5% churn = max 2,000 customers (100 / 0.05). As you approach, growth slows (in ≈ out). Applies to logo churn or revenue churn (dollars in / churn rate).

Marketing includes all growth work: PLG, marketing, sales (PLG still needs initial marketing).