I often wonder what the average lifetime value of these marginal users is.
When services are dumbed down in ways that chase off power users, they're explicitly optimizing for users that churn rapidly. After all, today's new user is either a customer and tomorrow's power user, or they've stopped using the the product.
If you're trying to raise a round, and the VC blindly looks at user count, then I guess this makes sense, but I'd bet VC funds that use onboarding rates (to the exclusion of churn and sustainability of the offering) have lower average returns than ones that apply basic common sense when vetting their investments.
When services are dumbed down in ways that chase off power users, they're explicitly optimizing for users that churn rapidly. After all, today's new user is either a customer and tomorrow's power user, or they've stopped using the the product.
If you're trying to raise a round, and the VC blindly looks at user count, then I guess this makes sense, but I'd bet VC funds that use onboarding rates (to the exclusion of churn and sustainability of the offering) have lower average returns than ones that apply basic common sense when vetting their investments.