Product-led models create deep loyalty and organic demand, providing a stable business foundation. Marketing-led models can scale faster but risk high customer churn and rising acquisition costs if the product doesn't resonate, leading to business volatility. An ideal approach blends both strategies for sustainable scale.

The 'MQL death cycle' is over. Forward-thinking marketing organizations should align around Net Annual Recurring Revenue (Net ARR) as their ultimate measure of success. This metric, which combines new customer acquisition with retention, forces a focus on the entire customer lifecycle and proves marketing's contribution to sustainable business growth.

The current AI hype cycle can create misleading top-of-funnel metrics. The only companies that will survive are those demonstrating strong, above-benchmark user and revenue retention. It has become the ultimate litmus test for whether a product provides real, lasting value beyond the initial curiosity.

A key viability metric for consumer subscription apps is achieving 30-40% Day 1 retention. Anything lower suggests a fundamental product-value mismatch, making it mathematically difficult to acquire enough users to build a sustainable active user base.

While individual AI companies see slightly lower retention than SaaS, Stripe's data reveals customers often churn from one provider directly to a competitor, and sometimes switch back. This indicates the problem being solved is highly valued, and the churn reflects a rapidly evolving, competitive market, not a lack of product-market fit for the category itself.

Escape the trap of chasing top-line revenue. Instead, make contribution margin (revenue minus COGS, ad spend, and discounts) your primary success metric. This provides a truer picture of business health and aligns the entire organization around profitable, sustainable growth rather than vanity metrics.

Use gross margin as a quick filter for a new business idea. A low margin often indicates a lack of differentiation or true value-add. If a customer won't pay a premium, it suggests they have alternatives and you're competing in a commoditized space, facing inevitable margin compression.

Unlike SaaS, where high gross margins are key, an AI company with very high margins likely isn't seeing significant use of its core AI features. Low margins signal that customers are actively using compute-intensive products, a positive early indicator.

The most durable growth comes from seeing your job as connecting users to the product's value. This reframes the work away from short-term, transactional metric hacking toward holistically improving the user journey, which builds a healthier business.