"When benchmarking growth, you first need to define your core metric. For most consumer social apps, this is daily active users (DAUs), as you want to have people using your product every day. For apps with a less frequent use case, weekly active users (WAUs) is also acceptable as a starting metric. You’ll eventually need to upgrade to DAUs if you want a shot at securing a coveted slot on the home screen"

"here’s what OK, good, and great look like for monthly user growth in seed-stage consumer social companies:  OK – 20% Good – 35% Great – 50%"

"Ideally, all or almost all of this growth comes organically. There’s a practical reason for this. Social apps often can’t monetize until later, so they don’t have as much cash to burn on paid marketing. More intuitively, social apps should be inherently viral, with users wanting to invite their friends to make the experience even better."

"if more than 10-20% of your users are coming from paid sources at the early stages, you’ll likely want to rethink your acquisition strategy. No amount of marketing dollars can fix a product, so make sure that your growth is coming from the product itself."

"Here’s how we benchmark DAU / MAU:  OK – 25%  Good – 40% Great – 50%+"

"Best-in-class social apps have an L-ness curve that “smiles,” or even better, has a “crooked smile” that skews right. Similar to the DAU / MAU ratio, this means that users are making your product a regular part of their life."

"For a weekly L-ness curve, we often look at L5+, or how many users are in the app five, six, or seven days a week, as this indicates a near-daily use behavior."

"Here’s how we benchmark L5+ performance:  OK – 30% Good – 40% Great – 50%+"

"One primary metric matters with retention: – n-day retention, which is also known as bounded retention. This strict definition looks at what percentage of an original cohort enters the app on each specific day."

"For n-day retention, we focus on three primary points in time: d1, d7, and d30."

"Here’s how we benchmark n-day retention:  OK – d1 50%, d7 35%, d30 20% Good – d1 60%, d7 40%, d30 25% Great – d1 70%, d7 50%, d30 30%"

"In most cases, we see the “slope of the line” start to flatten between d7 – d14, and hit a plateau by d20."

"weekly retention can sometimes be relevant for companies that have built a tool that they’re transitioning into a network. To use Chris Dixon’s famous framework: Come for the tool, stay for the network."

"Here’s how we benchmark weekly retention:  OK – w1 40%, w4 20% Good – w1 55%, w4 30% Great – w1 75%, w4 50%"

"Point-in-time numbers are great, but cohorts are even better! When evaluating social apps, we ask for almost all metrics over time, so we can see what the trend looks like."

"What we’re looking for is metrics that are stable, or even improve cohort by cohort. A good social app has strong network effects, which means that the product should be getting more valuable as more users join!"

"This is especially tricky because most social apps don’t look like much in the early days."

"Facebook started as a way for Harvard students to rate their classmates as “hot or not,” and Snapchat was seen as just a sexting app in its early days. Success in the consumer social space can feel random."

"es, developing a truly great social product can feel like trying to catch lightning in a bottle."

"But once a product is “out in the wild,” assessing its performance—and potential—is a bit more scientific than people think."

"A few early data points tend to predict whether a social app will plateau at 10,000 active users or go mainstream with millions of users."

"When benchmarking growth, you first need to define your core metric. For most consumer social apps, this is daily active users (DAUs), as you want to have people using your product every day."

"You’ll want to see this core user metric growing—maybe not with perfect consistency, but when you look back at your graph the trend should be “up and to the right.”"

"but to truly unlock acquisition, you’ll want to see growth that lands around or above some baseline level almost every month. This sometimes “spiky” growth is also why it’s important to have excellent retention (more on this below), so you can capitalize on viral moments and retain those users."

"monthly user growth in seed-stage consumer social companies:  OK – 20% Good – 35% Great – 50%"

"Ideally, all or almost all of this growth comes organically."

"More intuitively, social apps should be inherently viral, with users wanting to invite their friends to make the experience even better. If this isn’t happening, there may be more to unlock in the product."

"if more than 10-20% of your users are coming from paid sources at the early stages, you’ll likely want to rethink your acquisition strategy."

"First, we look at engagement ratios, the most popular of which is DAU / MAU."

"Enter… the L-ness curve! This metric looks at the distribution of users by number of days active over a certain time period, and can be measured on either a weekly or monthly basis."

"Best-in-class social apps have an L-ness curve that “smiles,” or even better, has a “crooked smile” that skews right. Similar to the DAU / MAU ratio, this means that users are making your product a regular part of their life."

"One primary metric matters with retention: – n-day retention, which is also known as bounded retention."

"We find unbounded retention to be less valuable in short-term measurements, as it’s fairly idiosyncratic between companies."

"We also look at how quickly your retention curve flattens out."

"In most cases, we see the “slope of the line” start to flatten between d7 – d14, and hit a plateau by d20."

"If there is a significant degradation of retention between, for example, d7 and d30, and your cohorts haven’t yet flattened out by d30, this can be an area of concern as it implies that your longer-term retention may not hold up."

"Here’s how we benchmark weekly retention:  OK – w1 40%, w4 20% Good – w1 55%, w4 30% Great – w1 75%, w4 50%"

"The higher your n count is, the more valuable your metrics are."

"Why? Early users tend to be the highest engagement and the highest retention. This is either because they know the founding team (and want to support you!) or because they’re the best possible fit for your product (which is why they found you so early)."

"Similarly, the longer your time frame is, the more valuable your metrics are."

"However, social apps often take a few iterations to work, so it’s not surprising to see acquisition and engagement drop off sharply after this initial spike."