Oliver Grant

Celebrating 100 new signups feels great on social media, but losing 5 paying customers quietly in the background kills your business. When we switched from free to paid, our metrics completely inverted acquisition became secondary, and retention became our entire survival story.

A missed signup is just a lost opportunity, but a cancelled subscription is a leak in a boat you worked months to build.

Should founders completely ignore top-of-funnel acquisition until they've solved customer retention?

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, especially working on AINA.

Even a few years ago, job hunting meant tailoring your resume manually and preparing for interviews mostly alone (or with a friend, or sometimes a coach if you were ready to invest).

Now AI is everywhere in the process. Candidates use it to rewrite resumes, practice interviews, and figure out why their applications aren't landing. Recruiters use it to screen resumes, write job descriptions, and even run first-round interviews.

Scrolling the leaderboard this morning, I realized I could barely tell any of the products apart. Every tool follows the exact same formula, using generic keywords and audience tags jammed together. It gets to the point where my brain just glazes over after reading five identical titles in a row.

I get why makers do it since it clearly states what the product is, but it makes everything feel forgettable. Do you think this kind of predictable naming actually hurts a launch, or do people just click based on the logo and upvote count anyway?