The surprising advice from a founder who built 2 unicorns | Jason Cohen (WP Engine)
Executive Summary
Lenny's Podcast episode in which Lenny Rachitsky talks with Jason Cohen, a four-time founder whose companies include the unicorn WP Engine, an investor in over 60 startups and the writer behind A Smart Bear. Jason shares a five step framework for diagnosing stalled growth: logo retention, pricing, net revenue retention, marketing channels and target market. He says cancellation survey drop-downs mostly capture noise, since randomizing the list made every option equally popular, and recommends asking open-ended questions such as what made you cancel. He describes the elephant curve of growth, where a channel surges and then sags, and a pricing story in which repositioning a product to double leads for the same cost led to 8 times the revenue. He also covers when to reconsider if growth is even the right goal. Sponsors named in the description: 10Web, Strella and Brex. PARTIAL COVERAGE: the captions cover the full conversation, but this summary highlights only the framework, the cancellation survey, the elephant curve and the repositioning story, so other segments are not summarized. All views are the speakers' own and are not independently checked. Nothing here is financial, legal or investment advice.
Key Takeaways
A five step diagnosis
Jason lists logo retention, pricing, net revenue retention, marketing channels and target market as the sequence.
Retention first
Lenny sums step one as logo retention, essentially whether you have product market fit.
Pricing and positioning
Step two is whether you are going after the right market and charging the right amount, roughly.
Survey lists are noise
Jason says that when they randomized the cancellation drop-down, every item was picked equally.
Ask what made you cancel
He says to avoid asking why they cancelled and instead ask what made them cancel.
The elephant curve
He says growth often starts as an S-curve and then sags, as channels saturate or decline.
Reposition for 8x
He says pitching double the leads for 40k instead of half the cost let a vendor get 8 times the money.
The Conversation Breakdown
A five step diagnosis
⏱ Untimed topicJason lists logo retention, pricing, net revenue retention, marketing channels and target market as the sequence.
Retention first
⏱ Untimed topicLenny sums step one as logo retention, essentially whether you have product market fit.
Pricing and positioning
⏱ Untimed topicStep two is whether you are going after the right market and charging the right amount, roughly.
Survey lists are noise
⏱ Untimed topicJason says that when they randomized the cancellation drop-down, every item was picked equally.
Ask what made you cancel
⏱ Untimed topicHe says to avoid asking why they cancelled and instead ask what made them cancel.
The elephant curve
⏱ Untimed topicHe says growth often starts as an S-curve and then sags, as channels saturate or decline.
Reposition for 8x
⏱ Untimed topicHe says pitching double the leads for 40k instead of half the cost let a vendor get 8 times the money.
Core Frameworks & Ideas
Five step growth diagnosis - Jason's order
Check retention, pricing, NRR, channels, then target market.
Open-ended cancellation question - Jason's tweak
Ask what made you cancel, not why.
Elephant curve - Jason's growth lens
Expect a channel to surge and then sag.
Actionable Next Steps
- ✓Check logo retention before changing marketing.
- ✓Replace your cancellation drop-down with an open-ended question.
- ✓Randomize any survey option list to test for noise.
- ✓Treat Jason's examples as his own, not financial or investment advice.
Notable Quotes
“the first thing is you want to ask open-ended questions”
“What you want to do is say what made you cancel?”
“it's complete noise”
The One Thing to Remember
Jason Cohen says stalled growth should be diagnosed in order, starting with logo retention, and that cancellation survey lists are mostly noise, so ask open-ended questions instead.