fund the teams users come back to
back the team with a few hundred loyal users over the one with a spike of attention. amplification without retention just speeds up churn.
what to do
When you decide who to back or feature, weight retention over reach. A few hundred users who keep coming back beats a burst of attention with nothing underneath. Amplify a product that does not retain and you only make people churn faster.
for example
Across 2026 I kept seeing the same split. One team had a viral moment and a flat retention curve. Another had a small base that came back every week. The second is the one worth backing. Pour amplification onto the first and you just accelerate the leak.
the failure it prevents
Spending reputation and budget boosting a product that cannot hold the users it already has, which burns the audience and the goodwill at once.
when this doesn’t apply
A genuinely new launch has no retention history yet. Judge it on whether its first real cohort keeps coming back.