Kyle Poyar’s Growth Unhinged

Kyle Poyar’s Growth Unhinged

Here’s how to stop churn

Hint: It's not just a Customer Success problem

Kyle Poyar's avatar
Kyle Poyar
Oct 27, 2021
∙ Paid
12
3
Share

👋 Hi, I’m Kyle and welcome to my newsletter, Growth Unhinged. Every other week I take a closer look at what drives a SaaS company’s growth. Expect deep dive takes on SaaS pricing, product-led growth, public company benchmarks, and much more.

In an emerging PLG business, especially one that initially sells into a single user rather than a team or entire organization, churn can be one of the biggest inhibitors to long-term growth.

I’ve seen annualized retention rates in PLG businesses range considerably from 50% to upwards of 90%. When retention falls on the lower end of that range, it puts tremendous pressure on a company’s ability to keep accelerating new logo acquisition and to squeeze as much as possible out of the customers who stay.

It’s easy to dismiss churn as a Customer Success problem that just requires additional bodies. Here’s the thing: much of the churn happens within a user’s first 3-6 months (below is a real life example), which means SaaS companies need to get their cus…

Keep reading with a 7-day free trial

Subscribe to Kyle Poyar’s Growth Unhinged to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.

Already a paid subscriber? Sign in
© 2025 Kyle Poyar
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start writingGet the app
Substack is the home for great culture