Most B2B companies treat activation and retention as metrics to track. We treat them as the entire point.
Look at our GTM roadmap from the previous chapter - Priority #1 is Product, Priority #2 is Activation, Priority #3 is Retention. Everything else comes after.
Why? Because if users don't activate quickly and stay long, no amount of marketing will save you. You'll just burn money acquiring users who churn.
Making users happy isn't a nice-to-have. It's the foundation everything else builds on.
Here's how all the pieces work together:
Reduce information asymmetry → Interactive demos show product before signup
Activate in minutes → 60-second onboarding + simple 5-tab UI
Support without interrupting → 4 non-invasive layers when users need help
Listen to feedback → Public roadmap, users vote on features
Ship what they need → We build based on actual requests, not guessing
Users are impressed → They see we listen, they recommend us
New users enter → More users = more feedback = faster shipping
Cycle speeds up → Each loop moves faster than the last
This isn't linear. It's a flywheel that compounds.
Early users give feedback. We ship it. They tell colleagues. Colleagues sign up, give more feedback. We ship faster. They're impressed we shipped so fast. They tell more people. More people means more feedback. We get better at prioritizing. Shipping gets faster. Users notice. Engagement increases.
Each cycle reinforces the others. Speed compounds happiness.
Before users even sign up, they can explore the product.
Not a video. Not a slide deck. Actual clickable product experience.