Patrick Campbell

Freemium creates a 'pool' of leads in the middle of the funnel who convert on their own timeline, leading to higher satisfaction and better long-term retention.

"Customers who convert from freemium and become paid customers, their retention is typically about 10 to 20% higher than those who converted from a free trial or converted from a traditional sales proc..."

The 'value metric' is the most critical pricing lever because it aligns revenue with customer success, reduces churn, and automates expansion revenue.

"The number one thing to figure out when you're thinking about the different pricing pieces, pound for pound, it's the pricing metric or the value metric. That's how you charge per user, per thousand v..."

A significant portion of churn is 'tactical' (e.g., credit card failures) and can be solved with simple marketing funnels rather than complex product changes.

"There is strategic retention and then there's tactical retention... tactical retention, it's typically about 25 to 40% of your churn problem, which is a significant amount, but you don't really look a..."

Being radically transparent about company culture and trade-offs during interviews prevents costly hiring mismatches by allowing candidates to opt out early.

"We would pull all of this forward into the interview process and talk about it and basically say like, 'Hey, if this is not how you think, that's okay. We're not better than you, you're not better tha..."

Authentic company values require making explicit trade-offs where the company is willing to sacrifice one positive outcome for a more important core principle.

"Values aren't values unless there's an actual trade-off. And so we had things like optimize for the long-term. There's a clear trade-off when we optimize for the long-term, you probably give up short-..."

First principles thinking can be operationalized by breaking a symptom (the problem) into its root causes and ranking them by magnitude before designing solutions.

"I found the model that people who aren't great at first principal thinking... is this thing called problem, cause, solution. So I learned this in debate in college and high school, and it basically is..."

In modern, dense markets with high CAC, competitive intelligence is necessary for strategic positioning, even if it shouldn't dictate the product roadmap.

"Don't focus on your competitors is terrible advice. It's amazing advice for product teams... But as an overall missive, don't focus on your competitors is terrible advice. And if I'm being charitable,..."

Regular customer research is a massive competitive advantage that correlates with higher NPS, better retention, and more efficient growth funnels.

"Only one out of 10 companies actually do customer research or development on a quarterly basis. This should be a continuous thing, it should be a monthly, weekly type thing."

A team's shipping 'tempo'—the frequency and consistency of releases—is a better predictor of success than their organizational structure.

"In my opinion, your tempo framework is more important than your org design. And so if you've ever had a team that seems really, really smart, but they're always planning or they don't really ship a lo..."