I worked on and with growth teams in established tech companies for a while (including Google) and am running an early stage startup right now and my experience is very different.
Mature products often focus on user retention and resurrection even more than attracting new users. Even VCs of early stage startups constantly keep asking about retention and stickiness as better metrics than new users.
As I am now working on a brand new product [1], I talk daily to potential and early users and observe the short attention spans all the time. These are smart people with college degrees. But the ever increasing amounts of information hitting every person on a daily basis leads to shorter and shorter attention spans of everybody, not just a “marginal” user. If anything, first users provide less attention to new products than later users for well-established brands.
Mature products often focus on user retention and resurrection even more than attracting new users. Even VCs of early stage startups constantly keep asking about retention and stickiness as better metrics than new users.
As I am now working on a brand new product [1], I talk daily to potential and early users and observe the short attention spans all the time. These are smart people with college degrees. But the ever increasing amounts of information hitting every person on a daily basis leads to shorter and shorter attention spans of everybody, not just a “marginal” user. If anything, first users provide less attention to new products than later users for well-established brands.
[1] https://motifanalytics.com