“Retention is the ultimate indicator of product-market fit. If people don’t stick around, you don’t have it.” — Brian Balfour (Reforge)

Mac and I, sometimes we exclusively think of retention as: "How can we notify or contact people about what happened on our product" because our frame is that people visit Kiwi and immediately forget that it existed.

But actually, for example, although it is an outlier, Chatgpt didn't have an elaborate notification system that reminded its users of its existence. Yes, OK, they spent millions to train this model, OK. But still, they didn't need all these bells and whistles because the value they provided was so incredible and people loved the product so much that they kept coming back.

I think this is a wise consideration, that while the ability to contact users at a later point in time is important, it actually isn't the only way to create retention. Other methods are:

- Users loving/needing the product (Chatgpt, Pirate Wires, iOS)

- People taking a stance against other products (Linux, Android, Bluesky)

- The only game in town (Polymarket)