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This is an excellent post. Have definitely learned some of these lessons the hard way recently. This line particularly resonated with me:

"If you have high retention and no virality you will sustainably grow your user-base over time. If you have high virality and no retention you will not."

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"Do not focus on improving virality unless your overall retention is stable, not continuing decrease after some reasonable period of time."

We definitely could have used this a few months ago

You can still make a lot of money off high virality and no retention. You just have to recognize it for what it is: a cash grab rather than a sustainable business.

My thoughts exactly as I read the article. Some purposefully push retention to the side, looking to make the money big and fast rather than sustainable customer group.

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