5 questions to ask when your product stops growing | Jason Cohen (2x unicorn founder)
episodePreviously titled “Why your product stopped growing (and the 5-step framework to restart it) | Jason Cohen” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 2, 2026
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Why do product growth stalls and how can I diagnose if customers are leaving?
A lot of product teams, a
lot of founders build something,
it starts to show some success and then all of a sudden it just stops growing.
There's a series of questions that I asked to diagnose why is growth slowing. The first question is, are customers leaving? Think about the gauntlet they went through to get to the product. How do they even find out about me? That was hard already and improbable. They didn't just bounce off the homepage, which is again improbable, and they got to the pricing page. That didn't scare them off. They actually had the budget and bought the stupid thing. And after all of that, which clearly means they wanted it to work, they're like, no, bye. What? Like like just on an emotional level, you gotta go, wait a minute, that's terrible. Step two is pricing, positioning. Your prices are way too low because you just guessed and you haven't changed them.
What often happens is you raise prices and signups don't change. Just think about a company with a thousand employees and four hundred million in revenue or whatever. If they see a product that's two dollars a month or even a hundred dollars a month, thought is like that can't be good enough.
We position this conversation as how to deal with stalled growth, but it's actually just as useful for how do I grow more.
Do you know right now which channels are saturated and which aren't? You can't just rely on marketing forever. Just adding one little feature and then hoping we can flog outwards is not going to work. What comes next? The last question is, do you need to grow? We all have heard the phrase, if you're not growing, you're dying. Is that true or is that the kind of thing that investors use to make founders try to grow even when they shouldn't?
Today, my guest is Jason Cohen. Jason is a four-time founder, including two unicorns, one being WP Engine. He's not just an incredible builder and entrepreneur, he's also an incredible writer and sharer of product wisdom. He's been sharing his advice online for over 20 years now. I've been a huge fan of Jason's from afar for so long, and it was such a treat to have him on the podcast. There are a million things we could have talked about, and I'm Definitely gonna have him back. In this conversation, we spent the entire time talking about his very actionable and a very helpful framework for what to do when your product's growth stalls. I found his way of looking at the problem incredibly practical and real and actionable.
Is my pricing too low or wrong, and how does price affect market positioning?
And if you're looking for ideas for how to rekindle your product's growth or just accelerate the growth of your product, you're gonna walk away from this conversation with your mind buzzing. Also, add that after 20 years of blogging online Jason is about to publish his very first real book. It's called Hidden Multipliers. You can now pre-order it online at hiddenmultipliers.com. I am gonna grab a bunch. I bet after listening to this conversation you will too. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. And if you become an insider subscriber of my newsletter, you get a year free Free of over 20 incredible products, including a year free of lovable, rep lid, bolt, gamma, and aiden, linear devon, post hoc, superhuman, descript, whisperflow, perplexity, warp, granola, magic pattern, drink catch strip your demobin and stripe atlas.
Head on over to Lenny's Newsletter.com and click Product Pass. With that, I bring you Jason Cohen, after a short word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by 10Web, the company that pioneered AI website building before ChatGPT. In the last three years, over 2 million websites have been generated with 10Web's vibe coding platform. 10Web's vibe coding platform is a powerful way to build websites. Think of it as lovable for WordPress, front-end and backend. Users can build any website at any complexity. E-commerce, portfolios, Information websites, blogs, and it comes with the WordPress admin panel and thousands of ready-to-use plugins. 10Web also offers website generation as an API as a service for SaaS companies, marketplaces, hosting providers, MSPs, and agencies.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why do product growth stalls and how can I diagnose if customers are leaving?
0:00–1:58
2
Is my pricing too low or wrong, and how does price affect market positioning?
1:58–3:53
3
How do cancellations outpace marketing and what’s the “leaky bucket” analogy?
3:53–9:41
4
What early signals in onboarding and activation can I improve to reduce churn?
9:41–54:38
5
Why does a 20% loss require a 25% gain to recover and how does that affect NRR?
54:38–1:06:43
6
When do marketing channels become saturated and what is the “elephant curve” of growth?
1:06:43–1:21:08
7
Do you really need to grow, or can a company thrive without continuous growth?
1:21:08–1:42:23
8
What are the final take‑aways, lightning‑round questions, and where can listeners find more of Jason’s work?
1:42:23–1:45:59
Speakers
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