Azamat K.

Counterintuitive truth I've learned from analyzing 100s of cancel flows: Making your cancel button easier makes retention climb. ↳ Friction breeds resentment ↳ Resentment compounds across cohorts ↳ Quiet rage churns louder than visible rage Stop hiding the door.

Every trap in your cancel flow is a loan you take out against your brand.

Retention is a product problem wearing a CS costume. If your product earned the renewal… Your CS team would have nothing to do. They are working overtime because something upstream is broken.

Two years of running a retention company taught me one uncomfortable thing. Some of your cancelling customers should leave. The hardest skill is knowing which.

A discount at the cancel screen is a confession. You either priced the product higher than the value you delivered... Or you sold someone who wasn't the right fit. Discounts work in the short run because money talks louder than logic. But you have now taught the customer that LOYALTY is the thing they get punished for paying full price. The ones who quietly stay never see the deal. The ones who threaten to leave do. See the problem with that? That information travels. FAST. It ends up in group chats and on Reddit and inside the next pricing meeting your prospect attends with their finance team. A real save looks different from a price drop: ↳ Pause the subscription til what they actually want comes back ↳ Solve their support ticket that's been sitting open for 6 weeks ↳ Switch them to a tier that fits how they use the product None of those cost you margin. All of them keep your pricing honest. The cancel screen is where your pricing strategy gets audited in real time. A discount is the audit failing.

One habit I'd put above any other for a subscription founder: Spend one hour a week reading your own cancel reasons. You will learn more in that hour than in any board meeting this quarter.

Every subscription company pays a churn tax. The average consumer subscription loses 5-7% of subscribers per month. On a $5M ARR base, that's $300K-$420K walking out the door every 30 days. You can try to outgrow it with acquisition spending. Or you can reduce the tax itself. One approach scales. The other gets more expensive every quarter.

I built my first company with zero funding. My second with $500K from a16z. The tightest budget always forced the best decisions. Money slows you down. Constraints speed you up.

a16z SR006 just wrapped, and it completely reframed how we’re building at @siriusai Now, the search is on for the @speedrun SR007 cohort in San Francisco I’m looking to intro ambitious founders to the @a16z team. Drop a comment below with what you’re building! The Deal: - Up to $1M investment - Direct help to launch and scale This is the FINAL week to get in. Applications officially close May 17th at 11:59 PM PST

@siriusai is hiring! We're looking for our next Engineers to help take Sirius to the next stage of growth. As a small and scrappy team of 5 (plus a dog!), we are looking for individuals who are customer-obsessed, fast and curious. If you want to build while we scale, let’s talk. link to apply in comment @tmhammer @nazzari @justmazer