I Didn’t Know AARRR… But I Lived It

When I started building my dance education platform,

I wasn’t thinking about frameworks.

I wasn’t thinking about funnels.

I wasn’t thinking about product growth stages.

I was thinking about one thing:

How do I get more people to subscribe?

1. Acquisition - Getting the First 16 Users

In November 2020, we got our first 16 subscriptions.

At that time, every user felt personal.

• friends

• referrals

• small marketing efforts

Nothing scalable.

But people were discovering the product because of the collaborations which we did reputed influencers from the community.

That’s what acquisition really is.

Not ads.

Not campaigns.

Just:

“Did someone find you?”

2. Activation - The First Real Signal

Not everyone who came stayed.

Some explored.

Some left.

But a few subscribed.

That moment when someone pays is when everything changes.

For me, activation was a user becoming a paying learner.

Because that meant:

• they saw value

• they trusted the product

• they were willing to commit

That’s real activation.

3. Engagement - The Invisible Layer

This is something I didn’t track well at that time.

But I saw it later in the data.

Some users came back.

Again.

And again.

Out of 1,401 users, only 306 returned.

But those users behaved differently.

They weren’t just customers.

They were engaged learners.

Engagement is not:

• Clicks

• Sessions

• Time spent

It is:

“Do users come back without being forced?”

4. Monetisation - Where Value Meets Revenue

Over time, the platform generated:

₹17.54 lakhs from 2,016 subscriptions

But what surprised me is that not all users contributed equally.

A small group of users drove a large portion of revenue.

And pricing played an interesting role.

We tried:

• discounts

• offers

• promotions

But the data showed that most users were comfortable paying the full price (₹840).

Which means:

Revenue didn’t grow because of discounts.

It grew because:

Users believed the product was worth it.

That’s monetisation.

Not pricing tricks.

Value → Trust → Payment

5. Product Decay - When You Know What to Fix, But Can’t

There was also a phase that was harder to accept.

Growth slowed down.

Subscriptions started fluctuating.

Some months dropped.

The problem wasn’t just demand.

It was my ability to evolve the product.

As a founder, I was dealing with:

• financial pressure

• limited resources

• operational challenges

I knew what needed improvement.

• better experience

• stronger engagement

• more structured learning paths

But I couldn’t execute it the way I wanted to.

That’s when I understood that products don’t decay only because users lose interest.

Sometimes, they decay because the product cannot evolve fast enough.

If I had to define it today, I wouldn’t just call it product decay.

I would call it:

“unrealized product potential due to execution constraints.”

The Realisation

Looking back, I realise that I didn’t know:

• AARRR

• growth funnels

• product frameworks

But I lived through:

• acquisition

• activation

• engagement

• monetisation

• decay

  
  

Not in theory.

In reality.

Product growth is not a framework.

It’s a sequence of moments:

When someone finds you.

When someone trusts you.

When someone comes back.

When someone pays again.

And when someone quietly leaves.

Understanding these momentsis what makes you a better product builder.