Consumer / B2C
Strategic framework for products serving individual consumers.
Consumer products compete for the scarcest resource in the world: human attention. Every minute a user spends in your app is a minute they're not spending in TikTok, Instagram, or a messaging app. You're not competing on features — you're competing for habit slots.
This template captures beliefs about retention, habit formation, monetisation timing, and viral growth that are common across consumer products. The central insight is that retention is the only metric that matters in year one — everything else follows from it.
The themes focus on the two strategic priorities for consumer products: designing a core habit loop that brings users back daily, and engineering specific viral mechanics that drive organic growth.
Beliefs (5)
Retention is the only metric that matters in year one.
Consumer products with strong retention grow through word of mouth and compounding engagement. Products that acquire users but don't retain them are paying for the same user over and over.
The habit loop matters more than the feature set.
The trigger-action-reward cycle that brings users back daily is more important than the total number of features. Instagram won with one feature and a strong habit loop. Products with ten features and no habit loop die.
Our users will not pay until they are addicted.
Consumer willingness to pay follows habitual usage. Monetisation too early breaks the habit formation. Monetisation too late means you trained users to expect free.
Virality is engineered, not organic.
Products that grow virally almost always have a specific mechanic designed to create sharing moments. "Build a great product and they'll tell their friends" is a hope, not a strategy.
Our biggest competitor is the phone's home screen.
Consumer attention is zero-sum. Every minute in your app is a minute not spent in TikTok, Instagram, or a messaging app. You're competing for habit slots, not for feature comparisons.
Themes (2)
Habit formation
Design and optimise the core loop that brings users back daily.
D7 and D30 retention curves flatten rather than declining, DAU/MAU ratio exceeds 40%.
Usage is spiky (users come for new features then leave) rather than habitual.
Engineered virality
Build specific sharing mechanics into the core experience.
Organic K-factor exceeds 0.5, measurable percentage of new users arrive through in-product sharing.
Sharing features are built but unused, suggesting the core experience isn't share-worthy.