Does your product have a built-in growth engine?

Relying solely on paid traffic is the business equivalent of being stuck on a treadmill - you have to keep paying just to stay in place. If you stop, it all goes downhill. Want to grow? You need to double your spend. But why double?

Firstly, users naturally churn over time, which means you need to constantly acquire new users just to maintain your current level. The bigger your user base, the more people you lose in absolute terms - so your acquisition costs keep rising.

Secondly, growth itself is costly. Maintaining the same growth rate month after month means acquiring a larger absolute number of users each time, which requires even more spending.

This cycle can quickly drain resources, and for many companies it does.

One way to survive is to keep convincing investors to fund this never-ending customer acquisition race - at least until you can sell the company.

A better way? Build a mechanism into your product that allows existing users to bring in new users, either directly or indirectly, for free. That way, even with the same advertising budget, your user base will continue to grow.

A classic example is Hotmail, which added a little line at the end of every email: "Get your free email from Hotmail". Within six months they had one million users. Within a year, they had 12 million - all with minimal paid advertising.

Does your product have a built-in way for users to drive new subscriptions?

If not, it's time to think about it.