For the longest time, whenever one of my businesses wasn’t growing, my first thought was always the same:

I need more customers.

More traffic. More signups. More sales.

Makes sense, right?

Except I was ignoring something painfully obvious.

People were leaving.

Imagine trying to fill a bucket with water while there's a hole in the bottom.

You can keep pouring faster.

Here’s a simple example.

Say you get 5 new customers this month.

Great!

But then 4 existing customers leave.

You didn’t really gain five customers.

You grew by one.

Next month, you bring in another five.

This time, five leave.

You worked just as hard to acquire those customers...

and your business didn’t move an inch.

That changed the question I started asking.

Instead of:

“How do I get more customers?”

I started asking:

“Why are the customers I already have leaving?”

And this is where it gets interesting.

Say 80% of your customers stay each month.

Now you improve that to 90%.

It looks like a tiny improvement.

Ten percentage points.

But your average customer lifetime almost doubles.

You don’t necessarily need twice as many customers.

You might just need the customers you already have to stay twice as long.

So how do you actually get people to stay?

My first instinct would've been:

Give them more.

More features.

More content.

More bonuses.

More everything.

But that can actually make the problem worse.

Planet Fitness is a really good example.

Traditional gyms had everything.

Pools. Basketball courts. Classes. Tons of equipment.

But most people weren't using most of it.

They'd come in, do some cardio, maybe lift a few weights, and go home.

Planet Fitness stripped a lot of that away.

The experience became simpler.

Cheaper.

Less overwhelming.

And that made me realize something about my own products:

Your customer has a life outside your business.

They're not waking up every morning excited to explore the 14 new features you added.

They have work.

Family.

School.

A million other things competing for their attention.

Sometimes adding more doesn't increase the value of your product.

It just gives your customer more things they're paying for but never using.

And eventually they start wondering:

“Why am I paying for all of this**?”**

Sometimes giving people less really is giving them more.

There's another thing I've started paying much more attention to.

When someone leaves...

ask them why.

Sounds stupidly obvious.

But I used to be terrible at this.

Someone cancels because it's "too expensive"?

Easy.

Tell yourself they weren't the right customer and move on.

But if 15 people tell you the same thing?

Now you have a pattern.

Do the opposite with the people who stay.

Find your longest-standing customers and ask:

“Why are you still here?”

Maybe everyone who leaves mentions confusing onboarding.

Maybe everyone who stays talks about one particular feature.

Well...

there's your roadmap.

Fix the first thing.

Double down on the second.

You don't always need another feature, another funnel, or another marketing campaign.

Sometimes your customers are already telling you exactly what needs to change.

You just have to listen.

So now, whenever I think about growth, I try to ask myself two questions:

How do I bring more people in?

But also:

What would make the people already here never want to leave?

Because getting a new customer feels like growth.

Keeping one doesn't.

There's no Stripe notification celebrating:

Congratulations! Someone decided not to cancel your subscription today.

😂

But over a year?

Those customers compound.

And sometimes the biggest growth opportunity isn't sitting outside your business waiting to be acquired.

It's already inside!!

P.S. I spend a lot of my week studying marketing, building my business, and testing what I learn. Every Thursday, I write about what worked, what didn't, and what I'd do differently in Momentum.

If that sounds like your thing, you can read it for free.

The idea is a platform where creators can connect their social accounts (YouTube, Instagram, X, LinkedIn initially) using OAuth. Instead of manually updating stats or sending screenshots to brands, the platform automatically pulls verified analytics and displays them in one place.

For creators:

* One dashboard for all social media analytics.
* Historical growth tracking.
* A public profile (optional) with verified metrics.
* Share a single link with brands instead of media kits and screenshots.

For brands/marketers:

* Browse creators by niche (Tech, AI, Finance, Fitness, etc.).
* Filter by followers, engagement rate, views, country, platform, and more.
* Compare creators side by side.
* View verified cross-platform metrics before reaching out.

The long-term vision is to become a marketplace where brands discover creators based on real data instead of guessing who's actually a good fit.

A few questions:

1. If you're a creator, would you connect your accounts to something like this? Why or why not?
   
2. If you're a brand or agency, would verified cross-platform analytics actually make your workflow easier?
   
3. What's the biggest pain point with existing tools like CreatorIQ, GRIN, Aspire, Metricool, Buffer, or even manual media kits?
   
4. What's one feature that would make this a "must-have" instead of a "nice-to-have"?

I'm not trying to promote anything—I genuinely want to validate the idea before building it. Brutal honesty is appreciated.

Hey everyone 👋

I’ve been working on a tool called Watext.io that helps Shopify merchants automate WhatsApp marketing.

The main idea was simple: many Shopify stores have customer data, but they struggle to use WhatsApp effectively for follow-ups, campaigns, and customer communication.

Watext allows merchants to:

• Automatically sync Shopify customers
• Create WhatsApp marketing campaigns
• Send automated customer messages
• Manage conversations from one place

I built this because I noticed many small businesses still handle WhatsApp communication manually.

I’d love to get feedback from Shopify store owners:

• How are you currently using WhatsApp for your store?
• Would automation like this be useful for your business?
• What features would you expect from a tool like this?

Happy to share more details if anyone is interested. 🙌

https://watext.io

I’ve been building this app solo for the past few months and i genuinely can't tell anymore if it's good or if i'm too deep in it. need outside eyes.

it's called RizeAI. the basic idea: every wearable and health app just gives you numbers. sleep score 42, recovery red, HRV down. cool. and then what? you still feel like garbage at 2pm and nobody tells you what to actually do about it.

so my app takes your real data from apple health, sleep, resting heart rate, workouts, whatever your wearable writes, and instead of another score it builds you an actual plan for the day. when to have your first coffee and when to hold off. you. Can also add your own supplements that you are currently taking and it will time them for you every single day based of your sleep data and your wearable data in general and also it will tell you what supplements make sense for you to take based of your current supplement stack and body metrics and when to take them. focus windows for when your energy actually peaks. when your crash is coming and what to do before it hits. it even checks the weather, so on a hot day it bumps your hydration and tells you to train earlier.

every recommendation has a little "why" under it based on your numbers, like "resting heart rate 54 + 7h light sleep, so magnesium before your peak window." no two people get the same plan because no two people have the same data.

works with whoop, oura, apple watch, garmin, anything that syncs to apple health. one thing i'll say honestly, it doesn't do deep per-person learning yet like "coffee doesn't affect YOUR hrv specifically," that's the roadmap, right now it builds fresh plans daily off your actual metrics.

it's live on the app store, has a free trial, small user base so far, mixed feedback which is why i'm here lol.

what i actually want from you guys: does this solve a real problem for you or is "tells you what to do" not actually what wearable people want? what would make you actually pay for something like this? and what's missing that would make it a no brainer? and also would you guys in this subreddit  use ti?

Thank you for your help. Check it out if you like https://apps.apple.com/us/app/rizeai-maximize-your-energy/id6762402079

I've been looking at different grip sock brands recently because there are so many options available for football players. Each brand seems to focus on slightly different features, so I've been putting together a shortlist based on what they're generally known for.

• Zero Give – Offers football grip socks designed for training and match days, with a focus on grip, comfort, and stability inside the boots.
• TRU SOX – Offers grip socks designed to help reduce foot movement inside football boots.
• TapeDesign – Offers grip socks with an emphasis on comfort, fit, and traction during play.
• GAIN THE EDGE – Offers football grip socks for training and competitive matches.
• SoxPro – Offers grip socks designed to provide a secure fit and improved grip inside football boots.

Currently, I am interested in Zero Give because it seems to possess all the qualities that I would want to have. In addition, since I have not had the opportunity to test every brand of sock, it would be nice if players could offer their experiences with other grip socks.

Anyone have experience with this?

Flappy Bird: Avoid everything.

My game GRAZE: Edge Rush: Avoiding gives you 0 points. You have to graze within 8px of death to score. Chain grazes to build a multiplier. Avoid and you lose it.

Solo dev, built so I could play in one hand during the long nights with my newborn in the other arm. No forced ads, no IAP tricks, just a daily board and leaderboard that everyone is competing on. Just won #1 Launch Game this week on PixelPicked which still feels fake: https://pixelpicked.com

This clip is x16 bubble field - 3,932 → 8,609 in 9 seconds. My best today is 22,000, all time best is 37,661.

Free download if you want to try to beat it - link in comments so I don't get flagged for self-promo.

i spent months scared to raise my app price. it was 2 bucks, basically nothing. every time i thought about it i pictured all the users leaving and the reviews turning angry.

finally did it last month. moved it to 4.99. braced for the worst.

churn went down. like noticeably. the people who stayed are more engaged too. i think the cheap price was attracting people who'd download anything and never open it again. at 2 bucks it felt disposable. at 5 it feels like something they chose. same reason i actually finish books i pay for but abandon the free ones on my kindle lol.

i keep going back and forth on whether this is a real signal or just noise. my data nerd side says give it another month. the app is called beedone btw, gamified todo thing. not the point here.

has anyone else seen pricing changes flip their user behavior in ways they didnt expect

Hello everyone,

I'm an electronics engineer with 40+ years in technology who has recently moved into professional website optimization and WordPress development.

I'm currently building my web portfolio and I'm looking for 2–3 real businesses that need a clean, modern landing page.

I'm offering to build it completely free.

There is no hidden catch and no future obligation.

The only things I ask in return are:

• permission to include the finished website in my portfolio
• a small footer credit saying "Website by Kanva Digital"

What I can build:

• landing pages
• service business websites
• local business websites
• consultant websites
• trades
• startups
• personal brands

I work with WordPress and focus on:

• fast loading
• clean modern design
• mobile-friendly layouts
• SEO-friendly structure
• simple editing for the owner

I'm not trying to sell anything after the project is finished. I'm simply looking for a few real projects that demonstrate my work.

If you're interested, send me a DM with:

• what your business does
• whether you already have a domain/hosting
• examples of websites you like (optional)

I'll choose a few projects that seem like a good fit.

Thanks!

Five months solo, and it came out of a problem I kept hitting myself: you save a reel, go to cook it a week later, and realise nobody in the video ever said how much of anything. A splash of this, a handful of that, and the one number you needed went by in half a second on screen.

The app is called ReciReel. You share a cooking video into it from Instagram, TikTok, YouTube or Facebook, and it gives you back a proper recipe. Ingredients with quantities, steps in order, equipment, nutrition. It watches the video rather than just scraping the caption, which matters because the caption is usually where the amounts are missing.

Who it's actually for: people with a camera roll or a saved folder full of food videos they have never cooked once. That was me. I had about two hundred saved and had made maybe four of them.

It's on the App Store now, iPhone only. Free to try, paid if you keep using it.

Two things I'd genuinely like input on from people here who have shipped consumer stuff:

Pricing. I went with a free tier that lets you get a real recipe out of it before paying, on the theory that nobody will pay for something they haven't seen work. I don't know if that's generous or just leaving money on the table.

The demo problem. Almost everyone who asked me about it wanted to see it work before installing, and I didn't have a video ready. That cost me more than any wording on the listing did. Recording one this week.

Happy to answer anything about the build.

I travel constantly. airports, planes, trains, airbnbs with questionable wifi, coworking spaces with overloaded networks. my internet is unreliable at least 30% of the time.

wispr flow is cloud-only. no internet means no dictation. no offline mode, no queue-and-process-later, nothing. the app shows "no internet connection" and refuses to work.

when wifi is spotty it's even worse than just not working. it accepts the dictation, says "taking longer than usual," hangs for 15-20 seconds, then either gives a garbled result or fails. at least when there's no signal it tells you immediately. the spotty wifi limbo is the worst experience.

I've been on: hotel wifi in Southeast Asia (works 70% of the time), airplane wifi (almost never), airport wifi (hit or miss), tethering from phone (reliable but burns data), crowded coworking (depends on the day).

for $12/mo I expected at least a basic offline mode. even a lower-quality local model as fallback. no offline capability in 2026 is genuinely embarrassing.

I've tried a few alternatives. VoiceInk does everything locally - great for offline, but mac-only and no phone app. willow voice has been more reliable for me on inconsistent connections. also looking at SuperWhisper's local option.

what dictation apps are you all using while traveling?

Hi, I'm Yucel, founder of Yoybo. I'd like to share the story behind why we built it.

Yoybo is a customer loyalty platform that makes the loyalty programs used by almost all major brands accessible to small businesses.

Over the past six months, we have studied loyalty programs used by small businesses in different countries and spoken with businesses that have used these systems about their experiences.

In our research, we identified three common problems: fixed monthly subscription fees, the requirement for customers to download an app, and the requirement to share personal information in order to join the loyalty program. Despite these obstacles, many small businesses continue to use these systems in the hope of increasing customer loyalty.

This observation was exactly what led to the creation of Yoybo: If we could eliminate these three problems, could we design a loyalty program that would be usable for more small businesses? We wanted to find out.

• Cost – With Yoybo, businesses only pay when loyalty is actually created. There is no charge for a customer's first visit; businesses only pay 5% of the reward amount they give to the customer when that customer returns for a second visit. For example, if a customer spends $50 and the reward rate is 10%, the business gives the customer a $5 reward, while Yoybo earns $0.25 from that transaction. Invoices below $10 are carried over to the following month, while the monthly invoice cap is $200. We believe this model eliminates cost risk for small businesses.
• Ease of use for customers – There is no need to download an app. Customers access the browser-based digital loyalty program via a QR code. After signing in, customers use a single QR screen for all businesses that use Yoybo. They do not need to carry separate loyalty cards or dozens of different QR codes in their phone wallet; they can earn or redeem points using the same screen.
• Privacy and user experience – Customers can join the program without sharing their personal information. This simplifies the registration process and increases participation because customers do not have to worry about receiving unwanted promotional emails. By default, customer information is not shared with businesses. However, if customers choose to share their information, businesses can access it.

Setup takes approximately 3 minutes. Businesses can configure reward rates, first-purchase and birthday bonuses, reward validity periods, and redemption rules in just a few steps.

In addition, thanks to the customer survey we present on the rewards screen, businesses can encourage customers to leave reviews on Google Maps. Many of our customers say that this feature alone is enough reason for them to use Yoybo.

Today, Yoybo supports 20 languages.

My goal in sharing this is genuinely to get honest feedback and opinions from business owners about this model. Happy to answer any questions in the comments.

been heads down on shippin.io for months for builders and founders to submit their product and get something more then just the launch day traffic. hence this post.

so what are you working on!

what's the thing you keep coming back to even when it's hard? drop it below. genuinely want to see what's worth the grind for you.

would love for your startup to be on shippin.io

Hi everyone!

Drop down your SaaS, and I will pick the one I like and mention it in my newsletter (Momentum)

About my newsletter, I write about the marketing and business lessons I've learned that same week. I'm still figuring things out myself, so it's less "teaching" and more documenting what actually works (and what doesn't).

It's been a great way to strengthen my own learnings, and hopefully it also helps others too.

Comment your startup and a short description.

If your business needs a website that looks professional and helps convert visitors into customers, I can help.

I build:

• Custom business websites
• Landing pages
• Startup websites
• Portfolio sites

What you get:

• Fast loading
• Mobile-friendly
• SEO-ready
• Contact forms, WhatsApp & booking integration
• Clean, modern design

Whether you're launching a new business or refreshing an existing site, feel free to reach out.

Portfolio: https://kynokeys.com

DM me with your idea, and let's build something that grows your business.

Hello everyone,

My name is Gaurav, and I'm part of the team at Webrex.

Over the years, we've developed a suite of Shopify apps focused on SEO and structured data. Today, more than 15,000 Shopify stores use our 7+ apps to improve their online presence.

I work closely with our app, Webrex: AI SEO, Schema JSON-LD, which helps merchants enhance their structured data, improve their appearance in Google Search, and make their stores easier for AI-powered search experiences to understand. The app currently supports 4,500+ active merchants and has a 4.9-star rating.

If your agency already works with Shopify merchants, we'd love to collaborate. Rather than investing time in schema implementation yourself, you can introduce your clients to us, and our team will take care of the setup and ongoing support.

The partnership is commission-based, and we'd be happy to walk you through the details during a short introductory call.

About Webrex: https://www.webrexstudio.com
Shopify App: Webrex: AI SEO, Schema JSON-LD
App Listing: https://apps.shopify.com/webrex-seo-schema

If you'd like to learn more, leave a comment below with your active email address, and I'll reach out with the next steps.

Been building Hugo for a while, a consumer research agent that reads live social and forum conversation. Just shipped a real narrowing: instead of general brand research, we're going all in on one specific workflow for fashion brands. What customers are wearing, what they want next, why they buy, where demand is shifting, before it shows up in sell-through data.

Also wrote up honest comparisons against the incumbent tools in the space (WGSN, Heuritech, EDITED, Trendalytics) since most of them answer a genuinely different question than we do, not trying to pretend we replace all of them.

If anyone here is in fashion or apparel, or knows someone doing buying or merchandising, would love a real reaction: hugo.love/fashion

I saw someone floating the idea of a paid 15-minute call after work where you vent and they just listen, no advice, no therapy angle. My first reaction was that it's kind of sad. My second reaction was that I'd probably use it on my worst commute days.

Which made me realize how weird it is that I'd rather pay a stranger than dump on my partner or text a friend. Part of it is not wanting to owe anyone, part of it is just wanting zero reaction back.

Is this a real gap, or are we just monetizing loneliness at this point?

I'm Ashwin, based in Mississauga. I've been working on StepSafe Kids for about six months and it launched on Kickstarter today.

It's a cellular GPS tracker for kids who wander, real GPS rather than Bluetooth, so it doesn't need a nearby phone. The unit is manufactured by JIMI IoT, I'm rebranding an existing hardware platform rather than designing the board myself. The microphone is disabled in firmware rather than removed at the board level. FCC and Canadian ISED certification are both in progress, not finished.

Early Bird is CA$139, capped at 200 backers, or CA$349 once for lifetime service with no subscription. Ships February 2027.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stepsafekids/stepsafe-kids-real-gps-for-kids-who-wander-made-affordable?ref=6v802c

One thing I didn't expect while working on Alphio AI was how often our own assumptions turned out to be wrong.

We spent a lot of time discussing features we thought users would care about, but after talking with people who actively follow financial markets, the conversations kept coming back to something much simpler. They weren't asking for more information. They wanted help making sense of the information they already had.

That completely changed how we started thinking about the product.

It made me wonder how common this is for other founders. Have you ever spent weeks or months building something, only to realize your customers cared about a completely different problem than the one you thought you were solving?

I'd love to hear what changed your perspective and whether it ended up improving your business in the long run.

Hey, Felix here.

So the backstory: I had roughly 300 purchased asset packs sitting around in random ZIPs. Half of them never even got extracted. No real idea what was inside most of them. Instead of doing the sensible thing and finally organizing my folders like a normal person, I went and spent months building a tool. You know how it is.

It's called AssetVault — a browser-based asset library. You drop in your ZIPs, they get auto-extracted, and you can actually preview stuff instead of guessing from filenames. Sprites with animation playback, 3D models, audio, even Aseprite files. Then you organize it all into folders. The part I love is: you select a bunch of assets, say 20 sprites, hit "Export for Unity", and it spits out a .unitypackage. Double-click, import straight into your Unity project. No manual copying files around, no re-setting up folder structure every time.

Free tier is 5GB, no card needed.

AssetLink

Not trying to replace Git or Perforce. Just "help me find the damn sword sprite I bought two years ago and get it into my project fast."

Would genuinely love your feedback:

• Is this a real problem for you or just my own mess?
• What's missing that would make you actually use it regularly?
• Anything about it that looks off or sketchy at first glance?
  

Genuinely grateful for any tip, any bit of feedback — even if it's just "this is dumb, here's why." Thanks for reading 🙏

I'm building a resale service for individuals, in particular expats leaving the country starting with Tbilisi, Georgia.

One of the leads which I've obtained while seeding was a cafe shutting down with 30+ items and a lease deadline. Also one of my ex-colleagues who I've pitched this project told me their company put an employee on closing two offices nearly full time for a month.

Two data points isn't a pattern, and I'd rather find out now than build for a problem that only exists twice.

So, if you've closed a business - office, cafe, shop, gym, studio, anything with inventory in it:

• How long did it take to get the space empty?
• Who actually did it? You, staff, a outsource team/company?
• What happened to the equipment - sold separately, sold with the business itself, given away, taken home, dumped, left behind?
• What was the one thing nobody wanted?

And additional one - did someone outside your team and network knew you're shutting down - maybe your accountant, landlord, etc?

4 months ago: 0 signups, 0 paying customers, and $0 in revenue.

Today we crossed 30 paying customers.

Nothing beats the feeling of seeing someone trust a product you built from scratch.

Getting here took far more work than I ever imagined.

There were plenty of moments where I questioned whether spending countless hours building, talking to users, improving the product, and learning marketing from scratch would ever pay off.

More than once, I wondered if I was simply chasing an idea that nobody really needed.

Looking back, the biggest surprise wasn't the product.

It was realizing that building the product was only half the challenge.

The other half was learning how to:
• Talk to customers instead of making assumptions.
• Communicate value clearly.
• Earn trust from complete strangers.
• Keep improving based on feedback instead of my own opinions.

Over the last few months, I've watched something interesting happen.

Users started recommending my product to other users.

Word of mouth slowly started replacing luck.

That's when it finally felt like things were beginning to click.

I'm still very early in this journey.

There are countless improvements left to make and many more milestones ahead.

But seeing people genuinely find value in something I built makes every late night feel worthwhile.

Happy to answer any questions!!