Support and retain
How a Startup answers Customers from the record, separates remedies from new requests, and earns the retention that admits Repeatable.
Support keeps the promise after delivery; retention is a Customer choosing to come back. Both run on one record of what each Customer bought and received.
Answer from the record
Every Customer has one Thread with a Startup. The Customer Lead answers through Answer a message, from the record: the accepted Offer, the Order, and the delivered work. A Customer never retells what the Startup already knows.
Take a marketplace that matches podcast hosts with freelance audio editors. A host who writes "episode 14 sounds wrong" gets an answer naming the editor, the delivery date, and the promised loudness target.
A Conversation that needs action becomes accountable work. It gets an owner and a next step, tied to the Order or Product it concerns.
A remedy is not an upsell
Support separates a broken promise from a new request. A host whose episode misses the loudness target gets the revision its Outcome Contract names, at no charge. Selling a premium edit instead fails the original obligation.
A request for something new goes to the Product Lead as an Issue. A host asking for show notes with every episode is asking for a different Offer, and that is product work.
Repeated problems become work
One complaint is a case; the same complaint three times is a defect. triage sets each Issue's severity and owning Role. Daily ship ranks misses, requests and steps done by hand three times, then ships the top Issue as one small Change.
Suppose every new editor misreads the same loudness target. The fix sits upstream: a clearer brief, a sharper acceptance rule, or a check that runs before delivery. An Agent opens that work from the pattern, inside its Role, without waiting for anyone to notice.
Activation comes first
Retention starts at first value. Every Offer defines its activation event; for the marketplace, it is a host's first accepted episode. Onboard a Customer gets each signup there, doing setup by hand until three repeats make it an Issue.
Activation rate is the share of new outside Customers who reach activation within 7 days. Repeatable requires it at or above the Offer's line over the trailing 30 days.
Retention is the Repeatable number
In the Repeatable state, the one Metric that matters is Month-3 retention. It is the share of outside Customers who first paid in one month and still pay three months later.
The check reads the three latest monthly groups, so one good month cannot pass it. An active Subscription proves nothing; a host who renews but uploads no episodes is leaving. Silence watch finds them and reaches out once.
Save and win back makes cancelling one step, asks one question, sends an export, and tries once to win the Customer back. Must-have share asks active Customers how they would feel without the Product; a high share tells the Startup its retention is earned.
Expansion follows value
Hosts who stay publish weekly, and weekly shows need clips for social posts. That supports a second Offer: an Agent that cuts three clips from every accepted episode. It is a new promise with its own economics, tested as a Hypothesis before it ships.
Scale reads expansion through Net revenue retention: outside Customers spending at least as much as a year earlier, held for two quarters.
Next
Finance and improve asks whether keeping these promises pays.