Many voice AI products fail by tackling too broad a problem. April's success came from focusing intensely on a limited set of high-value use cases (email, calendar), which allowed them to build a product that "just works" and feels human-like, driving retention.

To manage an infinite stream of feature requests for their horizontal product, Missive's founders relied on a simple filter: "Would I use that myself?" This strict dogfooding approach allowed the bootstrapped team to stay focused, avoid feature bloat, and build a product they genuinely loved using.

Everyone obsesses over Net Revenue Retention (NRR), but Gross Revenue Retention (GRR) is the real indicator of product health. GRR tells you if customers like your product enough to stay, period. A low GRR signals a core problem that expansion revenue in NRR might be masking.

The highest predictor of customer retention is an early success. Use AI in your onboarding to ask new clients, "What's the fastest, smallest win we can create for you?" Then, use automation to build and deliver that specific solution, ensuring immediate progress and long-term loyalty.

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.

Instead of vanity usage metrics, Wiz focuses on a core customer outcome: helping customers resolve all critical risks. They gamified this by creating the 'Zero Criticals Club.' This metric proves the product is driving real organizational change, a key indicator of value and stickiness that is hard to replace.

Figma learned that removing issues preventing users from adopting the product was as important as adding new features. They systematically tackled these blockers—often table stakes features—and saw a direct, measurable improvement in retention and activation after fixing each one.

Dogfooding isn't enough. Founders should use every feature of their product weekly to develop a subjective feel for quality. Combine this with objective metrics like the percentage of unhappy customers and the engineering velocity for adding new features.

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.