Jason Cohen
Founder of WP Engine and Smart Bear; writes A Smart Bear, long essays on strategy, pricing and how startups actually fail.
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Where they publish
Blog A Smart Bear His essays on startup strategy and pricing. Has a feed.
Recent
- What is the value of one hour of a startup founder's time? 19 Jul 2026 Startup founders undervalue their time. Here's why you should act like it's $1000/hr, and how it changes the decisions you make.
- Lost confidence 21 Jun 2026 RICE and other confidence-based frameworks are mostly noise. Here's how to make decisions without pretending to know the unknowable.
- Worrying is self-fulfilling; what to do instead 24 May 2026 Worrying makes things worse. Replace worry with preparation and strategic planning.
Show 17 more
- How to hire people who are better than you 19 Apr 2026 If you don't hire people better than you, the organization gets bigger, not better. But how do you hire for something you don't understand?
- Maybe not so much with the "optimization" 22 Mar 2026 In the quest for optimization, A/B tests, metrics, and funnels, we're in danger of losing the fun and value of creative work.
- Strategic choices: When both options are good 22 Feb 2026 Real strategy means choosing between two good options and accepting all the consequences--even the painful ones you don't like.
- A compass is not a map 25 Jan 2026 A compass tells you which way is north, not whether you should be heading north. So what is the map to startup success?
- Creating space 4 Jan 2026 Do less, to create the space to be great.
- Scaling by "delegation" isn't good enough 7 Dec 2025 Delegation doesn't scale your business. What does: Creating a team that is better than the current team. Including you.
- Mission, Vision, poTAYto, poTAHto 9 Nov 2025 Mission, vision, purpose, BHAG. Are they useful north stars, or academic nonsense?
- When being an "expert" is harmful 28 Sept 2025 Expertise hinders learning. Learn from these examples, so that you leverage your expertise, but aren't blinded by it. Insights come from curiosity, not certainty.
- Your target market isn't demographic 7 Sept 2025 How to define your actual target market, which probably isn't traditional demographics and firmographics.
- Yes, but who said they'd actually BUY the damn thing? 17 Aug 2025 Have a great idea? Prove it by finding ten customers ready to hand over cash. Everything else is avoiding the truth.
- Max MRR: Your growth ceiling 27 Jul 2025 Your company will stop growing sooner than you think. The "Max MRR" metric predicts revenue plateaus based on churn and new revenue.
- Specificity: A weapon of mass effectiveness 13 Jul 2025 Want to write better? Swap generic words for specifics to make your text clear, powerful, engaging, and even funny.
- Ruthless prioritization while the dog pees on the floor 22 Jun 2025 Because time is zero-sum, prioritization is mandatory. This is an index of purpose-built prioritization frameworks, and an overarching one to optimize your life.
- Bootstrapped CPC rule of thumb: ARPU/25 8 Jun 2025 Bootstrapped and unsure about CPC? Use the rule of ARPU/25.
- More or less 1 Jun 2025 You must select between three pricing strategies, and fully commit to their implications.
- Rude Q&A: The constructive devil's advocate 25 May 2025 Nothing clarifies things quite like a hyperactive, all-knowing, all-seeing, real asshole of a devil's advocate beating the living crap out of you.
- When customers buy your competitor's product… and then buy yours 18 May 2025 Little, unknown companies with silly names can sell to enterprises who have already spent millions.
Link verified 20 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 24 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
Diagnosing stalled growth has a strict order, because fixing a later problem does nothing while an earlier one is still broken.
there's a there's a series of of questions that I ask to 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.
The surprising advice from a founder who built 2 unicorns | Jason Cohen (WP Engine) Said 25 Jan 2026
A cancelling customer already survived an improbable gauntlet to buy, which makes churn an emotional emergency before it is ever a metric.
They actually had the budget and bought the stupid thing. Then they went through onboarding and invested their time etc etc. That is a crazy gauntlet that almost no one gets through.
The surprising advice from a founder who built 2 unicorns | Jason Cohen (WP Engine) Said 25 Jan 2026
Cancellations always overtake marketing, because cancellations grow automatically with the company while marketing grows only as fast as you can improve it.
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 like it it's hard. Whereas, cancellations grow automatically as you grow, right? So, cancellations always overtake marketing for this reason.
The surprising advice from a founder who built 2 unicorns | Jason Cohen (WP Engine) Said 25 Jan 2026
Show 21 more
Every subscription business has a hard ceiling on its size: new customers per month divided by the cancellation rate.
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.
The surprising advice from a founder who built 2 unicorns | Jason Cohen (WP Engine) Said 25 Jan 2026
Asking a leaving customer what made them cancel, rather than why they cancelled, gets materially better answers.
What you want to do is say what made you cancel? In other words, what about the product or situation or whatever caused the cancellation? Just phrasing it that way, you get much better results.
The surprising advice from a founder who built 2 unicorns | Jason Cohen (WP Engine) Said 25 Jan 2026
A cancellation-reason drop-down measures list order rather than reasons: randomise the options and every one of them gets picked equally.
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 then we randomized the list so everyone saw a different order of the list and now all the items were picked equally
The surprising advice from a founder who built 2 unicorns | Jason Cohen (WP Engine) Said 25 Jan 2026
"Too expensive" is never the real reason a customer cancels, because they already decided the price was acceptable when they bought.
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.
The surprising advice from a founder who built 2 unicorns | Jason Cohen (WP Engine) Said 25 Jan 2026
Complex systems do not have one root cause, so root-cause analysis is the wrong thing to be doing.
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 or and not one root cause.
The surprising advice from a founder who built 2 unicorns | Jason Cohen (WP Engine) Said 25 Jan 2026
Most cancellation happens in a customer's first days, so small onboarding changes have effects that later changes never have.
Um all almost all companies have a whole lot more uh cancellation in the first day, 30 days, 90 days, depends, right? But the first period than the whole rest of the customer's life. And also small changes in the onboarding can have large effects on cancellation.
The surprising advice from a founder who built 2 unicorns | Jason Cohen (WP Engine) Said 25 Jan 2026
An LLM is an averaging machine, so it is good at themes and bad at exactly the un-average details that make customer research actionable.
if you think about it, it sort of makes sense because the LLM is an averaging machine, right? It's predicting the most likely that's an averaging kind of a thing. And so when what you're looking for is a kind of average, it's usually pretty good. So, summarization, topics, themes. But when you're asking for like what is interesting and not average, it's actually pretty bad at it.
The surprising advice from a founder who built 2 unicorns | Jason Cohen (WP Engine) Said 25 Jan 2026
Raising prices usually leaves signups unchanged or increases them, which is not what the textbook demand curve predicts.
So what usually h what often happens is you raise prices and signups don't change. When I say signups, I mean the like signups per month, you know, the rate at sign or signups go up. This happens all the time.
The surprising advice from a founder who built 2 unicorns | Jason Cohen (WP Engine) Said 25 Jan 2026
Price selects the market: a serious buyer reads a low price as evidence that the product cannot possibly be good enough.
just think about a company with a thousand employees and 400 million in revenue or whatever. And um if they see a product that's, you know, $2 a month or even $100 a month, their thought is like, well, that can't be good enough. They're not mature enough. It's not going to do enough.
The surprising advice from a founder who built 2 unicorns | Jason Cohen (WP Engine) Said 25 Jan 2026
Price is not the number on the page; the structure and the positioning are as much a part of pricing as the number is.
the the largest point is pricing is not just the number on the page. It's positioning. It's how their budgets work. It's how it's structured.
The surprising advice from a founder who built 2 unicorns | Jason Cohen (WP Engine) Said 25 Jan 2026
Selling a saving caps what you can charge; selling more of what the buyer already values raises that cap by an order of magnitude.
It's just that it caps this price and this value that is they perceive that you do. Whereas if you deliver more of the value that they already value, it's I don't want to say uncapped completely, but like the cap is maybe an order of magnitude higher than saving.
The surprising advice from a founder who built 2 unicorns | Jason Cohen (WP Engine) Said 25 Jan 2026
No software company reaches real scale with net revenue retention below one hundred percent, because cancellation simply wins.
there should be no way to get a big company like a public SAS company Unless NR is greater than 100, like otherwise cancellation should just win. And that is in fact the case.
The surprising advice from a founder who built 2 unicorns | Jason Cohen (WP Engine) Said 25 Jan 2026
Net revenue retention flatters a business, because a percentage lost always needs a larger percentage gained to get back to even.
When you have a loss, a percentage loss, you have to have a greater percentage gain just to get back to where you were. In this case, a loss of 20% requires a gain of 25% to get back to where you were.
The surprising advice from a founder who built 2 unicorns | Jason Cohen (WP Engine) Said 25 Jan 2026
Marketing channels do not settle onto a plateau; after the S-curve they sag, which is why the shape is an elephant and not an S.
But that's not what happens. What happens is it starts with an S-curve and then it starts sagging. Its butt starts sagging down. So, I wrote an article about this called the elephant curve, which is what I named it, right?
The surprising advice from a founder who built 2 unicorns | Jason Cohen (WP Engine) Said 25 Jan 2026
Adding one more feature and asking marketing to push harder will not restart growth, even when the feature is great.
Just adding one little feature and then hoping we can flog Adwords is not going to work. Even if the feature is great, not going to work.
The surprising advice from a founder who built 2 unicorns | Jason Cohen (WP Engine) Said 25 Jan 2026
Growing forever is not automatically the goal; a company that has hit its limit can choose to maximise profit instead of revenue.
But what we could do is maximize profit instead of revenue now. We've been maximizing revenue, but maybe we maximize profit instead.
The surprising advice from a founder who built 2 unicorns | Jason Cohen (WP Engine) Said 25 Jan 2026
"If you're not growing, you're dying" is truer of the person than of the company.
And so the not growing part, what I like to say is maybe the you and if you are not growing, you're dying is you the person as opposed to you the company.
The surprising advice from a founder who built 2 unicorns | Jason Cohen (WP Engine) Said 25 Jan 2026
Expected value cannot decide the once-only decisions, because you know neither the probabilities nor the shape of their curves.
But the truth is we don't know what the probability is. We don't know what the probability curves look like. We actually can't use expected value.
The surprising advice from a founder who built 2 unicorns | Jason Cohen (WP Engine) Said 25 Jan 2026
Writing on a schedule is worth less than only publishing what is the best you can do, even if that means one post a year.
my attitude was was always I will only put out stuff if if it's the best that I can do. It's up to the reader to decide if it's good or useful. Um, and if so, if I don't have that, I'm just not going to publish.
The surprising advice from a founder who built 2 unicorns | Jason Cohen (WP Engine) Said 25 Jan 2026
A/B testing cannot touch anything that actually decides a company: not strategy, not vision, not insight.
AB testing doesn't work very well and it doesn't work on most things. It won't work on strategy or vision or insights like nothing actually important to the success of the company. You don't AB test whether Uber is a good idea.
The surprising advice from a founder who built 2 unicorns | Jason Cohen (WP Engine) Said 25 Jan 2026
Every question about stalled growth reduces to whether the customer is actually getting the value you promised.
I think if you if you tried to find a common thread throughout all this stuff about growth, it comes back to the customer getting value.
The surprising advice from a founder who built 2 unicorns | Jason Cohen (WP Engine) Said 25 Jan 2026
What is a korrent?
A korrent is a belief a person has stated in their own words: one sentence stating the claim, backed by a quote and a source, kept at korrents.com.
Under a name here, the quoted block is what they actually said. The korrent beneath it is the claim those words support, in korrents' wording — tap it to see the record, its source, and who else holds it.
Nobody here wrote their own korrents. They are compiled from public statements, and a person can change their mind, which is recorded too.
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25 January
From one piece The surprising advice from a founder who built 2 unicorns | Jason Cohen (WP Engine) 24 beliefs · youtube.com
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korrents.com
Every question about stalled growth reduces to whether the customer is actually getting the value you promised.Their words
I think if you if you tried to find a common thread throughout all this stuff about growth, it comes back to the customer getting value.
-
korrents.com
A/B testing cannot touch anything that actually decides a company: not strategy, not vision, not insight.Their words
AB testing doesn't work very well and it doesn't work on most things. It won't work on strategy or vision or insights like nothing actually important to the success of the company. You don't AB test whether Uber is a good idea.
-
Their words
my attitude was was always I will only put out stuff if if it's the best that I can do. It's up to the reader to decide if it's good or useful. Um, and if so, if I don't have that, I'm just not going to publish.
+ 21 more
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Their words
But the truth is we don't know what the probability is. We don't know what the probability curves look like. We actually can't use expected value.
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Their words
And so the not growing part, what I like to say is maybe the you and if you are not growing, you're dying is you the person as opposed to you the company.
-
Their words
But what we could do is maximize profit instead of revenue now. We've been maximizing revenue, but maybe we maximize profit instead.
-
korrents.com
Adding one more feature and asking marketing to push harder will not restart growth, even when the feature is great.Their words
Just adding one little feature and then hoping we can flog Adwords is not going to work. Even if the feature is great, not going to work.
-
Their words
But that's not what happens. What happens is it starts with an S-curve and then it starts sagging. Its butt starts sagging down. So, I wrote an article about this called the elephant curve, which is what I named it, right?
-
Their words
When you have a loss, a percentage loss, you have to have a greater percentage gain just to get back to where you were. In this case, a loss of 20% requires a gain of 25% to get back to where you were.
-
Their words
there should be no way to get a big company like a public SAS company Unless NR is greater than 100, like otherwise cancellation should just win. And that is in fact the case.
-
Their words
It's just that it caps this price and this value that is they perceive that you do. Whereas if you deliver more of the value that they already value, it's I don't want to say uncapped completely, but like the cap is maybe an order of magnitude higher than saving.
-
Their words
the the largest point is pricing is not just the number on the page. It's positioning. It's how their budgets work. It's how it's structured.
-
Their words
just think about a company with a thousand employees and 400 million in revenue or whatever. And um if they see a product that's, you know, $2 a month or even $100 a month, their thought is like, well, that can't be good enough. They're not mature enough. It's not going to do enough.
-
Their words
So what usually h what often happens is you raise prices and signups don't change. When I say signups, I mean the like signups per month, you know, the rate at sign or signups go up. This happens all the time.
-
Their words
if you think about it, it sort of makes sense because the LLM is an averaging machine, right? It's predicting the most likely that's an averaging kind of a thing. And so when what you're looking for is a kind of average, it's usually pretty good. So, summarization, topics, themes. But when you're asking for like what is interesting and not average, it's actually pretty bad at it.
-
Their words
Um all almost all companies have a whole lot more uh cancellation in the first day, 30 days, 90 days, depends, right? But the first period than the whole rest of the customer's life. And also small changes in the onboarding can have large effects on cancellation.
-
korrents.com
Complex systems do not have one root cause, so root-cause analysis is the wrong thing to be doing.Their words
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 or and not one root cause.
-
Their words
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.
-
Their words
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 then we randomized the list so everyone saw a different order of the list and now all the items were picked equally
-
korrents.com
Asking a leaving customer what made them cancel, rather than why they cancelled, gets materially better answers.Their words
What you want to do is say what made you cancel? In other words, what about the product or situation or whatever caused the cancellation? Just phrasing it that way, you get much better results.
-
korrents.com
Every subscription business has a hard ceiling on its size: new customers per month divided by the cancellation rate.Their words
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.
-
Their words
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 like it it's hard. Whereas, cancellations grow automatically as you grow, right? So, cancellations always overtake marketing for this reason.
-
Their words
They actually had the budget and bought the stupid thing. Then they went through onboarding and invested their time etc etc. That is a crazy gauntlet that almost no one gets through.
-
Their words
there's a there's a series of of questions that I ask to 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.
4 January
7 December 2025
9 November 2025
28 September 2025
7 September 2025
17 August 2025
27 July 2025
13 July 2025
22 June 2025
8 June 2025
1 June 2025
25 May 2025
18 May 2025
Nothing matches.
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