Getting users is not the biggest challenge

“Getting users is not the biggest challenge you’ll face. Keeping users is the biggest challenge you’ll face.”

Des Traynor gives wonderful presentations. This one on how to acquire and retain customers is particularly great. Launching is easy. Distribution has gotten easier. Retention is hard.

When you’re done with the video above, read Brain Balfour’s great piece: Why Retention Is The Silent Killer.

As Des says, "There are many stages it could all go to shit."

Hear me out, but this is the most wonderfully plain speak explanation of Marketing that I’ve read in some time.

“People have a job that they need to get done and you convince them that your product does that job and then they adopt your product. And if it does that job, they stick with it.

“So the way you attract qualified traffic in that regard or attract people who actually wants to use your product is you tell them what I'll actually do for them.”

Having been in and around startups and incubators for years, what the team cares about internally — see below — the real world rarely thinks about, much less knows about.