5 questions to ask when your product stops growing | Jason Cohen (2x unicorn founder)
Jason Cohen is a four-time founder (including two unicorns, one being WP Engine) and an investor in over 60 startups, and has been sharing his lessons on company building at A Smart Bear for nearly 20 years. In this episode, Jason shares his methodical five-step framework for diagnosing stalled growth—a problem that faces almost every team.
We discuss:
- Jason’s five-step framework: logo retention, pricing, NRR, marketing channels, target market
- A small tweak that’ll double response rates on your cancellation surveys
- Why “it’s too expensive” is almost never the real reason customers cancel
- The “elephant curve” of growth
- How repositioning the same product can increase revenue 8x
- When to reconsider if growth is even the right goal for your business
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Episode transcript: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/why-your-product-stopped-growing
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Archive of all Lenny's Podcast transcripts: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/yxi4s2w998p1gvtpu4193/AMdNPR8AOw0lMklwtnC0TrQ?rlkey=j06x0nipoti519e0xgm23zsn9&st=ahz0fj11&dl=0
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Where to find Jason Cohen:
- Preorder Jason’s book: https://preorder.hiddenmultipliers.com/
- X: https://x.com/asmartbear
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncohen
- Blog: https://longform.asmartbear.com
- Website: https://wpengine.com
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Where to find Lenny:
- Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
- X: https://twitter.com/lennysan
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/
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In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Introduction to Jason Cohen
(05:19) Jason’s writing journey
(08:25) Questions to ask when your product stops growing
(18:17) Getting real customer feedback
(20:27) Analyzing cancellation reasons
(26:54) Onboarding and activation
(29:35) Quick summary
(35:46) Revisiting pricing strategies
(41:46) Positioning strategies
(47:52) Why pricing is inseparable from your strategy
(52:06) The importance of net revenue retention (NRR)
(01:00:25) Asking whether or not this is good for the customer
(01:04:34) Leveraging existing customers
(01:06:42) Are your acquisition channels saturated? The “elephant curve”
(1:09:41) Why all marketing channels eventually decline
(01:12:04) Direct vs. indirect marketing channels
(1:13:36) Getting creative with new channels
(01:19:04) Do you actually need to grow?
(01:25:57) Deciding when to quit
(01:29:27) Book announcement
(01:33:21) AI corner
(01:34:35) Contrarian corner
(01:37:43) Lightning round and final thoughts
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Referenced:
- Tyler Cowen’s website: https://tylercowen.com
- How to Perform a Customer Churn Analysis (and Why You Should): https://www.groovehq.com/blog/learn-from-customer-churn
- Linear: https://linear.app
- Jira: https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira
- Patrick Campbell’s post on X about pricing: https://x.com/Patticus/status/1702313260547006942
- The art and science of pricing | Madhavan Ramanujam (Monetizing Innovation, Simon-Kucher): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-art-and-science-of-pricing-madhavan
- Pricing your AI product: Lessons from 400+ companies and 50 unicorns | Madhavan Ramanujam: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/pricing-and-scaling-your-ai-product-madhavan-ramanujam
- Pricing your SaaS product: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/saas-pricing-strategy
- M&A, competition, pricing, and investing | Julia Schottenstein (dbt Labs): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/m-and-a-competition-pricing-and-investing
- “Sell the alpha, not the feature”: The enterprise sales playbook for $1M to $10M ARR | Jen Abel: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-enterprise-sales-playbook-1m-to-10m-arr
- Buffer: https://buffer.
