Lifecycle & Retention

Keep and grow the customers you already have — the highest-leverage, most overlooked part of early-stage growth. Because lifetime value is proportional to 1 / churn, retention usually moves LTV more than pricing or acquisition. Measure NRR, GRR, churn and the quick ratio, diagnose where the base leaks, then design the onboarding, lifecycle, and expansion motions that make the base compound.

When to use

The user needs to cut churn, lift net revenue retention, design onboarding/activation, build an expansion (upsell) motion, or answer "why are customers leaving and how do we keep them?" Run this after unit-economics — retention is the biggest lever inside that LTV.

Before you start

1. Read the brand/product context first (.agents/product-marketing.md / .agents/aaj-brand.md) for model, pricing, and ICP, if present.
2. Gather inputs:
   • Movement for one period (monthly for month-to-month or usage products; annual for annual contracts): starting recurring revenue, and the period's new, expansion, contraction, and churned revenue.
   • Customer counts at start and lost in the period (for logo churn and lifetime).
   • Where available: the top churn reasons, the product's activation milestone ("aha" / first value), and the current onboarding steps. These turn the numbers into a plan.

The math