My SaaS Hit $6K MRR Then Immediately Stalled. The Problem Wasn't My Product.
June 2025: $6,100 MRR. I'm pumped. Growth is happening.
July: $6,050 MRR. Weird.
August: $5,900 MRR. Concerning.
September: $5,600 MRR. Panic.
New signups were fine. Churn was killing me. People would use the product for 2-3 weeks then ghost.
Here's what I learned about the "silent churn" problem:
Users weren't leaving because the product sucked. Exit interviews revealed: "It works great but we forgot to use it." They'd sign up excited, integrate it into one workflow, then default back to their old habits after two weeks.
I was treating activation like a one-time event. Get them to the "aha moment" once and they're hooked, right? Wrong. Behavioral change requires repetition. One success doesn't build a habit.
My product existed in isolation. They had to remember to open a separate tool. The moment they got busy, we became invisible.
What I changed:
Built a 21-day onboarding sequence (not emails in-product prompts). Day 1: Do X. Day 3: Try Y. Day 7: Here's a shortcut. Sounds annoying but retention after Day 21 went from 34% to 61%.
Added Slack integration. Critical updates now ping them where they already are. Removed the "remember to check" friction. Engagement doubled in 3 weeks.
Moved from project management spreadsheets to teamcamp.app. This one's personal, but relevant: I was drowning tracking who was in what stage of onboarding. Couldn't see patterns.
Switched to Tteamcamp.app because it had this timeline view where I could see all user journeys at once. Spotted that users who didn't complete Action #3 churned 80% of the time. Fixed the UX for that action specifically.
Started weekly "momentum emails." Not feature announcements. Just "Here's what you accomplished this week with [Product]." Reminded them of value they'd already gotten. Replies went through the roof.
The painful truth:
Your product isn't competing with competitors. It's competing with inertia. The default behavior. The old way of doing things. Most founders (including me) obsess over features when the real battle is making your product impossible to forget.
Churn isn't always a product problem. Sometimes it's a habit-formation problem disguised as a product problem.
For founders fighting churn: What's your retention rate after 30 days? And what's the ONE thing you did that actually moved that number?
This hits home - the inertia insight is brilliant. I've watched tools I genuinely liked fall out of my routine simply because they weren't woven into my daily workflow. Really appreciate you sharing the specific tactics that moved the needle on retention.
Totally agree ! integration into daily flow makes all the difference.
This really struck a chord — especially the idea that our products are competing with inertia, not competitors.
I’ve also seen how users love a tool in the first week, then quietly drift away even when the product “works.” It’s not dissatisfaction — it’s the pull of old habits.
The insight about treating activation as a process rather than a moment really reframed how I think about retention. I hadn’t thought much about how repetition builds behavior, but your 21-day onboarding idea makes perfect sense in that light.
And the Slack integration example nails something bigger: it’s not enough for a product to be valuable; it has to live where users already are. That shift from “remember to use this” to “it’s already part of my workflow” might be the real unlock.
Thanks for sharing this.
Glad this resonated! Totally agree, real retention starts when your product becomes part of the user’s natural workflow, not just a tool they have to remember to use.
Been there. I built a small AI tool that got early traction, then flatlined. It’s weird — sometimes people like it but don’t need it. Curious what helped you spot the real bottleneck?
That’s a familiar story. Early traction can be deceiving. For us, the real shift came when we stopped optimizing features and started watching where users dropped off in their daily workflow that’s where the true bottleneck showed up.
"Your product isn't competing with competitors. It's competing with inertia" I love this take and how you used Slack to remind them
Glad you liked it! Inertia kills more products than competition ever does.
I love the honesty! A lot of websites and apps utilize entertainment and addictive elements to instill themselves into people's lives through habitual use. For utility base applications I can definitely see the difficulty, but keeping your customer base up to date with consistent contact even after they've come onboard.. that's a solid solution.
Exactly! Consistent engagement builds habit without needing gimmicks that’s where real retention comes from.
You’re not alone — this pattern is so common it’s almost predictable.
Most churn isn’t about dissatisfaction; it’s about disconnection.
Once users stop feeling momentum, they emotionally check out.
In our audits, we see 70%+ of SaaS teams lack a habit loop post-onboarding. Fixing that is usually the growth unlock.
So true ! momentum is everything. Without a clear habit loop, even satisfied users drift away.