Bhavin Sheth

Retention is the hardest problem in SaaS and everyone seems to find the answer from a completely different direction. For some products it's habit formation - streaks, daily emails, contribution graphs. For others it's network effects - the product literally doesn't work if you leave. For others it's switching costs - data gravity, integrations, workflows that are now muscle memory.

What's the one thing you shipped that measurably moved your retention number? Was it something you planned, or did you discover it accidentally by watching what your best users actually did?

After having hit 30k+ ARR with a vibecoded app, I now have to ask myself:
what s the most dangerous thing AI coding tools make look easy?

My top 3 picks:

• Auth

• Payments

• Database permissions

Built my app with Lovable a few months ago. Launch went fine but since then I've had three separate production issues; auth breaking, database timeouts, a webhook that silently fails. Each one took me days to figure out and I have zero engineering background.

Curious what others are doing. Are you just patching it yourself, hiring freelancers each time, or has anyone found something more ongoing? I've been wondering if a monthly retainer for this kind of support would actually be worth it or if that's just me.