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Jason Cohen

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2026-01-25
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2026-01-25
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  1. “And that's the reason you're making this fallacy. You got to go into, well, they wanted this stuff, but it didn't work with linear, which is what they use. It only works with Jira. And so there's a lack of integration. Now, maybe we should write that integration. Maybe we shouldn't. Of course, it depends on how much we hear about it. And of course, it's going to depend on other things. But that's the reason. It was expensive, right? And so this idea of getting into not even the root cause, but let's say root er causes the root cause. More root. I think some people probably say five Y's and just paper over what I just said with that. Maybe so, but I just, you know, let's not be so simplistic about that because, again, five Ys sometimes implies that there's some root cause at the bottom of the Y's.”

    2026-01-25 · Lenny's Podcast · 5 questions to ask when your product stops growing | Jason Cohen (2x unicorn founder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “We're getting somewhere. It still isn't just one root cause, another as a sidebar. I hate the idea of a root cause. Complex systems do not have one root cause. They often have many interlocking things that could be done to detect earlier or to change it or to reduce and not one root cause. So the root cause analysis to me is, by the way, an incorrect thing. I'm explaining why right now with the healthcare, right? Because, well, what about the second diagnose? Well, maybe part of the problem is we have a healthcare system that isn't preventative and part of it is that, but they didn't go to the doctor anyway. Okay, so there's all kinds of things that could be useful and interesting to prevent this or make it better. That's the point. That's what analysis should be, is this array of things, not the root cause. Anyway, something along the lines of undiagnosed diabetes is much more of a cause than stopped breathing. So when we say it's too...”

    2026-01-25 · Lenny's Podcast · 5 questions to ask when your product stops growing | Jason Cohen (2x unicorn founder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Because they ran their cover to a telephone pole and were injured so much that eventually they stopped breathing. Why did they run their car into a telephone pole? Because they passed out at the wheel. They pass it at the wheel because they had undiagnosed diabetes.”

    2026-01-25 · Lenny's Podcast · 5 questions to ask when your product stops growing | Jason Cohen (2x unicorn founder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Something else happened, like, but you didn't fulfill the promise that at least they thought you made, or something else didn't work. Or, you know, now it is possible they lost budget, but that doesn't mean you're too expensive. That means they lost budget. That's a very different reason, right? That's not that you're, so it's sort of like this happens in healthcare, for example. So when someone dies, the doctor has to write what's called approximate cause, which is why do they actually die? But then you try to also write down the real reason. So let's say someone comes in and the proximate cause of death is they stop breathing. You could stop there, and that's like listening to it's expensive and going, That's it. Well, why did they stop breathing?”

    2026-01-25 · Lenny's Podcast · 5 questions to ask when your product stops growing | Jason Cohen (2x unicorn founder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Too expensive is often the number one, or at least like top three reason in one form or another. And that is never, ever, ever the reason. How do I know? Because they already looked at your homepage, read all the stuff, saw what you promised, looked at the pricing page, and decided to buy it. Means it, whatever's in their mind of what it is is not too expensive. It was, they already decided with their actions. It was not too expensive.”

    2026-01-25 · Lenny's Podcast · 5 questions to ask when your product stops growing | Jason Cohen (2x unicorn founder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “In other words, what about the product or situation or whatever caused the cancellation? Just phrasing it that way, you get much better results. And I stole this from a company called Groove, who has this great case study online about this very thing. They had an email that they sent out, which is a great email. And they started by asking, why did you cancel? They got 10% usable responses. They changed it, same email to what made you cancel and it's 20% usable responses. So there's like, I guess maybe some anecdota that this is a good idea. But the point is you really want them thinking about the product and not just coming up with an excuse. The next thing is when you can, the few times you do talk to them, so you want to like go into delve as far as you can into their because most people won't talk, the temptation is to hear what they generate at first and say, that's the answer. So like a really common one is it's too expensive. I think anyone who's looked at cancellation data at any company will agree.”

    2026-01-25 · Lenny's Podcast · 5 questions to ask when your product stops growing | Jason Cohen (2x unicorn founder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Hard, right? First thing is what you want to ask open ended questions. I know it's you want to just get a list, but this is the problem, at least with open-ended questions, most people won't answer, but at least you might be able to get some kind of thing that they generated. And when you do this, the wrong way is to ask why did you cancel? Because again, this allows them to say something really simple like budget, which may or may not be true. I'll get to that in a second. What you want to do is say what made you cancel.”

    2026-01-25 · Lenny's Podcast · 5 questions to ask when your product stops growing | Jason Cohen (2x unicorn founder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Yeah So, okay, so assuming you agree, like, yeah, I don't like customers leaving, that sucks. So obviously you got to find out why they're canceling and do something about it. And the kind of root issue here is they don't want to tell you, like they're already out the door, they've already stopped investing in you mentally. So the last thing you want to do is spend time with you or really think about it and diagnose it with you. And I have a funny story about this for myself. So at SmartBear, people would cancel me, we'd put up this form and a drop-down list, you know, too expensive, project ended, you know, there's a lot of stuff like we do so we could gather data. One of them did have more selection than the rest. And I realized it was the first one on the list. And I thought, huh, I wonder if people are just picking the first one. So then we randomized the list so everyone saw a different order of the list. And now all the items were picked equally. Like, oh, right. It's complete noise. And I know other companies have done similar things also with the similar results. This is a global phenomenon. So, okay. So what do you do? The point is.”

    2026-01-25 · Lenny's Podcast · 5 questions to ask when your product stops growing | Jason Cohen (2x unicorn founder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Marketing sales. PLG is nice, but that doesn't you still need marketing to bring the people in in the first place. PLG just means there's not a salesperson unless you're expanding or some other segment.”

    2026-01-25 · Lenny's Podcast · 5 questions to ask when your product stops growing | Jason Cohen (2x unicorn founder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “It is both LogoChern and RevenueChern. They do the same math. You could say dollars in divided by dollars cancellation rate or number of codes. I've been saying number of customers just to keep it simple because I think when you look at it and say, wow, we will never have more than 2,000 customers. It's just such a visceral, oh my God, we got to do something about that. Now, of course, one thing you could do is have more marketing, but you know that already. If growth is slowing, you're already thinking, how do I get more out of marketing? You knew that. The point is that cancellation is this hard limit pulling you down with these other really bad either implications or side effects, which is why it's so important.”

    2026-01-25 · Lenny's Podcast · 5 questions to ask when your product stops growing | Jason Cohen (2x unicorn founder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “That is the amount is the limit. So let's suppose you add 100 customers a month and you have 5% cancellation, so 100 divided by 5% is 2,000. So a company like that will never have more than 2,000 customers. And by the way, as you approach that number, growth is very slow because you bring in a bunch of customers in almost the same number leave. So growth is slowing. Ah, look, we diagnosed growth slows automatically at all SaaS companies. So that's why this is the first thing because it's such a hard cap limit and it means that people don't want your product. Like these are two reasons why it's the most important thing.”

    2026-01-25 · Lenny's Podcast · 5 questions to ask when your product stops growing | Jason Cohen (2x unicorn founder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Yes. See, we say when in marketing, we say things like, I'm adding 100 leads a month. But in cancellations, we say 5%. Why'd you say percent? Because it's based on your size. And it's exponential. That's what 5% is an exponential. And so there's this maximum size you could ever be. It's when churn equals growth, right? Like that's the maxim. So how would you compute that? It's actually quite simple because let's say you have this 5% per month just as take a number. So it's simply the amount of new customers you add divided by that cancellation rate.”

    2026-01-25 · Lenny's Podcast · 5 questions to ask when your product stops growing | Jason Cohen (2x unicorn founder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Marketing doesn't. Marketing grows only as fast as you can improve marketing. We all know that's quite hard actually. It's linear. It's hard to find new channels that aren't trivial. Like it's hard. Of course, we're going to do it, but it's hard, whereas cancellations grow automatically as you grow, right? So cancellations always overtake marketing for this reason.”

    2026-01-25 · Lenny's Podcast · 5 questions to ask when your product stops growing | Jason Cohen (2x unicorn founder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “So the next month, would marketing deliver more new customers than the month before? No, because marketing doesn't, none of your marketing efforts care how many customers you have. AdWords delivers the same number of leads and SEO delivers the same. It does not care how big you are these efforts. So you're still going to be growing at the same rate as you were the previous month. But cancellations in absolute terms, like the number of customers who leave, will triple. Because you have 5% cancellation and triple okay, so still.”

    2026-01-25 · Lenny's Podcast · 5 questions to ask when your product stops growing | Jason Cohen (2x unicorn founder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “This idea that I think, again, people don't appreciate, which is cancellations grow faster than marketing. And so cancellations overpower the growth of the company and slow it to a halt, i.e. growth slows, to where you literally cannot grow anymore. There's a maximum ceiling of how big you could ever be thanks to cancellations. And when you know what that number is, it's much more real and visceral and scary. And so just to kind of justify what I just said, just imagine any company and imagine you just triple the number of customers that are there and paying. And the same kind, the same age, you know, just the same kind of stuff, just tripled, right? Overnight.”

    2026-01-25 · Lenny's Podcast · 5 questions to ask when your product stops growing | Jason Cohen (2x unicorn founder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “So, what I want to do is make a product that other people want to buy and use. And if they don't, no matter what the metrics say, we're failing our mission, our customers, whatever. So there's just even that non-mathematical reason to go, oh my God, right. So to me, that's already enough reason. But the math is very interesting. And what I find is when I talk to people, especially on Twitter or something where people are just, you know, yapping around whatever they're doing, you say things. I say things like, you know, anything above 3% per month cancellation is terrible. And people are like, oh no, it's okay. Five is fine. Seven is everyone's yapping about what they. And it's very abstract. Like who is four much worse than five? I don't know. And I heard someone else and blah, blah, blah. So it's very, I don't know, like generic and rough. So there's a different metric that I like to use, which is which keys off.”

    2026-01-25 · Lenny's Podcast · 5 questions to ask when your product stops growing | Jason Cohen (2x unicorn founder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “And when I think about the gauntlet they got they went through to get to the product, how do they even find out about me? That was hard already and improbable that they see an ad or hear it. And then they clicked, which is improbable. And then they didn't just bounce off the homepage, which is again improbable. They actually were like, oh, yeah, this sounds pretty good. And then they got to the pricing page, and that didn't scare them off. They actually had the budget and bought the stupid thing. Then they went through onboarding, invested their time, et cetera, et cetera. That is a crazy gauntlet that almost no one gets through. And after all of that, which clearly means they wanted it to work, they're like, no, bye. Just on an emotional level, you got to go wait a minute. That's terrible. I'm fundamentally not fulfilling whatever promise I made or they thought I made, which is whether that's a product issue or a communication issue. Okay, like there's lots of, but one way or another, like something is really fundamentally broken just in terms of like, I'm a product person.”

    2026-01-25 · Lenny's Podcast · 5 questions to ask when your product stops growing | Jason Cohen (2x unicorn founder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “So, the first question is are customers leaving, i.e. logo churn, right? Churn with N. You can do churn with MRR2, but just for simplicity, let's say with customers. And it's the worst problem for a couple reasons. One is there's nothing you can do about it once it happens. Like they're gone. There's no saving them, increasing their revenue. There's nothing in the future you can do. Also, it's often correlated with things like negative reviews or other things on social media, which is another kind of preventing growth. So it's kind of the two-punched thing of like, they're not here and they may be actively hurting your growth. So that sucks. The math is undeniable, which I want to talk about because this is something where either there's a metric I like that is unusual and people find useful. But before I get to the metric, there's also this kind of visceral thing, which is the customer saying this product, I don't want it.”

    2026-01-25 · Lenny's Podcast · 5 questions to ask when your product stops growing | Jason Cohen (2x unicorn founder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “And there's a step where everything falls apart. And you're like, well, I'll just tune the bottom of it a little. It's like, that's not going to work. It's not going to help enough. You got to go where the biggest issue is. So this is in that sort of order.”

    2026-01-25 · Lenny's Podcast · 5 questions to ask when your product stops growing | Jason Cohen (2x unicorn founder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “A little bit more gradual, right? You just feel more like you're running through mud. Like, ah, God, we're just still doing so much work and it's not having as much of an impact. And so that's what I see. And when I say that's what I see, so I've built four companies. The last one is a unicorn. The one for that is also a unicorn. The previous one was Bootstrap. This one was VC funded and I've invested in about 60 startups. Some of them failed completely. Some of them were very successful. Some of them in the middle because, of course, when I say that's why I've seen this, that's the context of what I mean by what I've seen. So there's, I wouldn't say a checklist, but there's a series of questions that I ask to diagnose, why is growth slowing in this order? Because it's one of these things where the first one that's a problem, if you don't fix that, it doesn't matter if you fix one of the ones below. Just like if I don't know, maybe if you had a marketing funnel.”

    2026-01-25 · Lenny's Podcast · 5 questions to ask when your product stops growing | Jason Cohen (2x unicorn founder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “That's funny. So, first of all, I think a lot of people are experiencing this right now. You have a lot of companies that have reasonable products and they've their growth has slowed. Why? Could be the economy because it's not as good as a lot of indicators say. We all know that, for example, jobs are not as good as the indicators say. It could be because AI or the threat of AI or the expectation of AI, blah, blah, blah. Who knows? It also can just be size. As you get bigger, growth slows because you're not going to grow 2x a year forever. So it slows. There's like just mechanical things. So there's many reasons why things slow. And sometimes it's all of a sudden, although then maybe there's some event like an algorithm changes or, you know, something happens. But actually, I think what's really common is it just slowly gets slower. In other words, it decelerates. But just it kind of, I don't, I wouldn't say sneaks up on you because most people are looking at growth all the time. So it's not sneaky. But it is sort of...”

    2026-01-25 · Lenny's Podcast · 5 questions to ask when your product stops growing | Jason Cohen (2x unicorn founder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “It is a lot of pressure And then I tell myself that will just prevent you from writing anything, and that's not good. So yeah, you tend to want everything you make to be the best thing you've ever made. And on the one hand, I want to hold on to that because its motivation to be good and not to let the bar slip. On the other hand, you can go into a paralysis, which is obviously bad. So yeah, I still struggle with that, but I think that is the tension.”

    2026-01-25 · Lenny's Podcast · 5 questions to ask when your product stops growing | Jason Cohen (2x unicorn founder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “I've always had a rule, even though you're supposed to write really regularly, and not just for algorithms, but they used to say, again, back in the aughts where I started, oh, yeah, it needs to be like really regular so people know when to expect your thing. And they plug it into their day and all this. So it's always been true that you should be regular. And I never was because my attitude was always, I will only put out stuff if it's the best that I can do. It's up to the reader to decide if it's good or useful. So if I don't have that, I'm just not going to publish. That's the way it is. And so there's years where I've published once or twice only the whole year. Maybe I was busy or didn't have the energy. Other years where, yeah, I posted, you know, 40 times or something. But even then, it's only that because I can't, it can't do something of that magnitude. And also found unicorns, which I did during that same time and run them. You know, I can't do that all at the same time and produce a lot. So it's fewer and hopefully better.”

    2026-01-25 · Lenny's Podcast · 5 questions to ask when your product stops growing | Jason Cohen (2x unicorn founder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Yeah, it's not that many. It's something like maybe 100 and well, I would say between 150 and 200 that I'm proud of and probably about 300, 350. And that's it over, you know, about 18 years. And that's because I only write in depth somewhere long, not all are long, but none are short, I guess.”

    2026-01-25 · Lenny's Podcast · 5 questions to ask when your product stops growing | Jason Cohen (2x unicorn founder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Almost twenty years, I started even logging, was cool, and I'm still waiting for blogging to come back and be cool again, but it's not yet. I think it's.”

    2026-01-25 · Lenny's Podcast · 5 questions to ask when your product stops growing | Jason Cohen (2x unicorn founder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “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?”

    2026-01-25 · Lenny's Podcast · 5 questions to ask when your product stops growing | Jason Cohen (2x unicorn founder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “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 AdWords is not going to work.”

    2026-01-25 · Lenny's Podcast · 5 questions to ask when your product stops growing | Jason Cohen (2x unicorn founder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “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 400 million in revenue or whatever. If they see a product that's $2 a month or even $100 a month, thought is like, that can't be good enough.”

    2026-01-25 · Lenny's Podcast · 5 questions to ask when your product stops growing | Jason Cohen (2x unicorn founder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “A series of questions that I ask 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 did 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 just on a motional level, you got to go. Wait a minute. That's terrible.”

    2026-01-25 · Lenny's Podcast · 5 questions to ask when your product stops growing | Jason Cohen (2x unicorn founder) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source