How I keep my customers forever

Do not index

Most founders keep chasing new customers.

More ads, more content, more SEO.

And while all of that is important, acquisition is a sprint you repeat forever. Find someone, convince them, close them, repeat next month. It's expensive and it's the lowest margin part of the business.

Retention is different.

It's a system you build once. High margin, compounds instead of resetting every month, and it's what actually stacks MRR and builds enterprise value over time.

Most founders spend all their energy on acquisition because it's visible and urgent. Retention gets ignored because it's quiet.

Here are 5 things that will help you retain customers for long 👇🏼

btw, I’m launching again 🚀 super proud to announce my partnership with squad.so after being a power user for a long time, we finally decided to partner up. Squad gives you AI teammates to do your work We’re taking on Elon Musk:

Now back to retention…

1. Stop complying with every request

This is the mistake almost everyone makes, and it's getting worse as AI makes building easier.

A user complains, you want to make them happy, so you build exactly what they asked for.

But when you add every single request, your app ends up doing too many things, and every new user gets confused about what the core function.

Your job as a founder isn't to comply. It's to filter.

Get the feedback, then check if what the user wants actually aligns with what you're building.

Keep this in mind:

You want to protect your margin, some value should stay reserved for higher tiers.

The workflow you built is specifically meant to be different from what's already out there, and if giving in erases that difference, don’t do it.

This is exactly what happened with Revid.ai

Most AI video tools give you micro control, Revid made a different bet: AI models keep getting better, people want to save time, not micromanage a timeline.

So instead of manual scene-by-scene editing, Revid tries to generate a full 2-minute video out of the box that does what you actually wanted.

We get a lot of requests asking for more manual control. If we said yes to all of them, we'd become exactly like every other AI video tool out there. We're not.

Saying no to that request is the reason people choose Revid.

2. Build systems

When you solve a user's problem, ask if you just patched one instance or built something that prevents the whole category of problems.

Systems compound.

And your revenue compounds with it

3. Increase pricing

This might sound counterintuitive but it works:

At Tweet Hunter, we started at $9/month. Then we raised it, eventually landing at $49/month.

The expected outcome was more churn. The actual outcome was the opposite.

Higher prices meant lower churn.

Here's why:

At $9/month, people sign up on a whim and cancel the moment something feels slightly off, there's no real commitment

At $49/month, people are already convinced this needs to work for them, they have skin in the game, so they stick around and actually try to make it work

Higher pricing doesn't just increase revenue per customer.

It changes who your customer is.

4. Customization as a moat

The more a user configures a product around their exact workflow, the harder it becomes for them to leave.

Customization isn't just a feature, it's also a retention mechanism.

5. Tie customer success to the product

When a user's own success is built on top of what you made - they are way more likely to stay.

Take outrank.so for example.

Every great SEO case study we have has used Outrank extensively - 30 articles a month, backlink matching with a partner website, DR increase.

Now if they wanted to churn, they would have to do ALL of this, and more, themselves. And they are already getting results - so they stay.

Retention isn't glamorous. There are no screenshots to post on X and get likes.

But this will make you rich.

Reply and tell me 👇🏼

How many months does your average customer stay?

I read every response, and often write back :)

A small favour, friends:

Squad.so is a product I truly believe in - and I think it will be a generational company.

I’m launching it today.

Would love your support on the launch tweet.

Watch it, like it if you love the product, comment if you have some thoughts.

No pressure. I really appreciate all of you 🙏🏼

Tweet of the week

🤣

Until next week,

Keep building

Tibo 💻

PS - I truly believe in AI agents. Would love it if you could check out squad.so and give me feedback by replying 👇🏼