Flamel for heads of product: why users stay

Flamel for heads of product comes down to one question a product team rarely gets to answer: what the users who stay did that the others did not. Flamel is the growth partner for the creative industries. With a head of product, it works inside the product and marketing teams, so that each release ships with a question about who stays and the answer is read from real customers.

The head of product this is written for runs a product with paying users and a roadmap that ships. What nobody owns is the reading: which release changed who stays, and why marketing keeps bringing in users the product loses within weeks. The four answers below are the same ones Flamel gives everywhere, told from that chair.

Flamel is the growth partner for the creative industries. For a head of product, it works inside the product and marketing teams so that every release ships with a question about who stays, and the answer is read from real customers before the next release. The first step is a map: five business days, $500.

Key takeaways

• Flamel is the growth partner for the creative industries and works inside marketing and product teams.
• For a head of product, every release ships with a question about who stays and a number read before the next one.
• Flamel is judged by answers about the users who stay, not by the features shipped.
• The treadmill: new paying customers a month minus customers lost. On the example product, 44 − 44 = 0.
• The first step is a map: five business days, $500, and it stays with you.

What Flamel is: a growth partner

Flamel is the growth partner for the creative industries. It works with founders, CMOs and heads of product at companies that want to scale digitally, so that what makes each company unique is also what makes it grow.

For a head of product, partner has a precise meaning. A supplier receives a list of features and returns them built. A partner takes a seat for the part of the work between a release and its result: deciding what the release should prove, reading who it kept, and writing down what changes next.

Marty Cagan draws the same line inside product teams. Feature teams, he writes, "are all about output." Empowered product teams are "focused on and measured by outcomes (rather than output)" (SVPG). Users who stay are the outcome a subscription product lives on, and most roadmaps never measure it release by release.

Flamel for heads of product: inside the team

It works inside the client's marketing and product teams: first it understands the challenge (a map in five business days, $500), then it experiments with real customers, then it runs one growth cycle per launch, season or release. From the head of product's chair, the three steps look like this:

• Understand. A map of where activation breaks: signup, first session, time to first value and week two.
• Experiment. The system the product is missing gets set up, and the first experiment runs with real customers on the stop that costs the most.
• Transform. One growth cycle per release. Each release ships with a question, one number read from the product's own data, and a written decision before the next one.

Most of what decides whether a user stays happens before marketing sees any of it. Product-led growth makes that explicit: when the product does the selling, the cost of activating a user moves inside the product. The first session is where that cost gets paid, or not, and time to value counts the days a user waits for the outcome they signed up for.

For a product team, that first map is The Activation Audit: where users stop between signup and week two, in five business days, for $500.

What makes Flamel different from a product agency

It works inside both teams, not next to them. It tests with real customers instead of offering opinions. It aims for what makes the business unique to be what makes it grow. The map stays with the client whether or not they hire anyone. And it buys traffic only to learn something by a date.

A product agency is usually measured by what it builds: screens designed, features delivered, sprints closed. Flamel is measured by answers about who stays, and an answer needs marketing as much as the product. The users a campaign brings are the users the onboarding has to keep, so the two cannot be read apart.

The last line matters more to a head of product than it looks. Paid traffic often lands on a product as a flood of signups the onboarding was never designed for. Bought to learn something by a date, it becomes a test instead: one cohort, one question, one release.

Who Flamel is for: three chairs

Founders, CMOs and heads of product at companies in the creative industries that want to scale digitally, grouped by how their own customers buy: drops, catalog, subscription, season or commission.

Each chair arrives with its own need:

• Founders. The company already sells and has grown on the founders' own effort. They need someone to think about growth with them, without the fixed cost of a team of their own.
• CMOs. The team produces campaigns and content, but nobody tests what works or connects marketing with the website and the product. The version for CMOs tells it from that chair.
• Heads of product. The product has users, but nobody knows what makes them stay, or how to get product and marketing pushing the same way.

The way customers buy sets the rhythm of the work. A subscription product gets one cycle per release, so the head of product does not have to invent a calendar for testing. The release calendar is already there.

For a head of product, the fit shows in three signs: releases are reported by what shipped, nobody can say what the users who stay did in their first week, and marketing's signups and product's usage are discussed in different meetings.

What Flamel does not do

• Own the roadmap. The product team decides what ships. Flamel adds the question before a release and the reading after it.
• Promise a number before reading the data. It promises the map and the cycles that test it.
• Do the fieldwork. Anything on site, from events to shoots, stays with the company's own team.
• Run campaigns that never end. Paid traffic answers one question, then stops.
• Keep the record. It lives in the company's own tools and stays there.

The treadmill: the number to take

The treadmill = new paying customers a month − customers lost a month.

Take the example product this blog uses for SaaS: a subscription tool for small creative businesses, such as studios, academies and photographers, with 1,100 paying customers at €60 a month. Each month 220 people sign up and 20 of every 100 of them pay, so 44 new customers arrive. Each month 4 of every 100 customers leave, so 44 go.

Treadmill  = 44 new − 44 lost = 0
Spend      = 44 × €400 of acquisition cost = €17,600 a month
Year       = €17,600 × 12 = €211,200, to stay at 1,100 customers

Everything marketing spends goes into standing still. That is the gap between the two teams in one line: marketing reports 44 new customers as a good month, product reports usage, and the number that joins them is zero.

Count your own last month. If new paying customers minus customers lost is zero or below, the next release is the place to start: one question about who stays, one number read from the product's own data, and one decision before the release after it. Each customer kept who would otherwise have left is one that marketing does not have to buy again, at €400 each on the example product.

Work through this with your own numbers

I am the head of product of a [type of product] for [type of customer] in the creative industries. Last month the product had [SIGNUPS] signups, [NEW PAYING CUSTOMERS] new paying customers and [LOST CUSTOMERS] paying customers who cancelled, out of [TOTAL PAYING CUSTOMERS], with a monthly price of [ARPU] and an acquisition cost of [CAC] per customer. My last three releases were [RELEASES]. Calculate my treadmill: new paying customers minus customers lost. Then calculate what marketing spends a month and a year just to replace the customers who leave (customers lost × CAC). Then tell me which of my last three releases could have carried a question about who stays, and write that question, the single number to read from my product data and the decision rule for the next release. Show every step of the arithmetic.

FAQ

What is Flamel?

Flamel is the growth partner for the creative industries. It works with founders, CMOs and heads of product at companies that want to scale digitally, inside their marketing and product teams, so that what makes each company unique is also what makes it grow.

What does Flamel do for a head of product?

It works inside the product and marketing teams: first a map of where activation breaks (five business days, $500), then experiments with real customers, then one growth cycle per release, each closed with a number from the product's own data and a written decision.

How is Flamel different from a product agency?

A product agency is usually measured by what it builds. Flamel works inside the product and marketing teams, tests with real customers instead of offering opinions, buys traffic only to learn something by a date, and leaves the map with the client whether or not they hire anyone.

Who does Flamel work with?

Founders, CMOs and heads of product at companies in the creative industries that want to scale digitally, grouped by how their own customers buy: drops, catalog, subscription, season or commission.

How much does Flamel cost?

The first step, the map, costs $500 and takes five business days. It is the only published price. What comes after depends on what the map finds.

If your product has users and nobody knows what makes them stay, The Activation Audit maps where they stop, from signup to week two. Five business days, $500, and the map stays with you whether or not you hire anyone next.