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The current value of such a company will still be in future cash flows. Any realistic financial model will project flattening growth at some point. This means that retention dominates the long term -> dominates future cash flows -> dominates present value.

A good financial model captures the scenario you describe. The examples in the article should be seen as illustrative, not exhaustive.

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To clarify, the problem is that most people are only talking about "organic retention" when they say "retention", and ignore any "paid retention".

So in my example, I can get a very high percentage of people to return if I continue to spend money. But if I stop spending money to acquire users, they mostly stop coming back.

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