Our "inactive" users taught us what success actually looks like
A few months ago, we noticed something in our data that most product teams would panic about: a group of users who had been highly active for weeks suddenly went quiet. No crashes. No angry support tickets. They just stopped showing up.
The instinct was to win them back. Send a re-engagement email. Offer a new feature. Maybe a push notification saying "We miss you!"
Instead, we reached out and asked one question: why did you stop?
Their answers surprised us. One user said she had a difficult conversation with her partner using what she practiced in Murror, and it went better than any conversation they'd had in years. She just hadn't needed the app since. Another said he started noticing his own emotional patterns without opening the app. A third told us: "I stopped because I started doing the thing it was teaching me to do."
These weren't churned users. They were graduated users.
That realization changed everything for us. We had been measuring success the same way every other app does — by how often people come back. But for a product designed to help people understand themselves better, the real win might be how confidently they leave.
We started tracking what we call "quiet confidence" — users who reduce usage but whose referral rates and satisfaction scores actually go up. Turns out these users recommend Murror more than our daily active ones. They share specific stories about moments that changed something real, not features they liked.
This shifted our entire roadmap. We stopped building for retention loops and started building for "transfer moments" — the points where insight moves from the app into someone's real life.
Has anyone else built a product where the best outcome is the user needing you less? How do you talk about that with investors or a team used to watching DAU charts go up?
Replies
There was a case when users wrote a copy of the service to always have it with them, for example, when the project I was working on sometimes closed
Murror
@julia_zakharova2 That's such a beautiful example! Users wanting to carry a copy of the service with them says so much about the value they found in it. It's like they internalized the experience so deeply that they wanted it as a personal keepsake, not just a tool. That's the kind of impact we aspire to at Murror too -- when someone takes what they've learned about themselves and carries it forward, even without the app open. Thanks for sharing this!
I came across this reflection and it makes sense on several levels.
Looking at it from a different perspective, I notice something that might be missing.
The question is directed at builders, but a product like this inevitably creates feelings in users — and those aren’t always expressed clearly or even consciously.
Instead of just asking “why did you leave?”, I’d be curious to explore what they actually felt.
Different people interpret the same words in very different ways. In a context where there’s some level of trust, even a small shift in wording can change the experience — “why did you leave?” can feel very different from something like “how are you doing?”.
Murror
@monikatest You're touching on something we think about constantly. You're right that the wording matters so much -- especially when emotions are involved. We've actually been experimenting with exactly this at Murror. Instead of exit surveys, we've started reaching out with softer, more open-ended questions like "what's been on your mind lately?" rather than "why'd you stop using us?" The responses are completely different. People open up more when they don't feel like they're being evaluated. Your point about how the same words land differently for different people is something we want to build more awareness around. Really appreciate you pushing this conversation deeper.
This is a profound shift in perspective, Mona. The concept of "Quiet Confidence" as a metric is both brave and deeply authentic. In an industry obsessed with "stickiness" and "retention loops," building a product that aims to be outgrown is the ultimate sign of respect for the user’s time.
I am launching PictaBase today. While we are on the technical side of the house (organizing visual assets), your post resonates deeply with our core philosophy of User Sovereignty.
Designing for "Graduation"
We haven't experienced this outcome yet—it’s Day 1 for us—but we’ve built the architecture specifically to allow for it. We call it "Zero Data Ransom":
The .meta.json Sidecar: We write every tag, note, and AI label to a sidecar file that lives in the user's own S3 bucket.
The Goal: If a user organizes 10,000 messy photos into a perfect relational database and then decides they’ve "graduated" to a custom in-house system or just don't need a manager anymore, they can leave with everything. Their metadata isn't trapped in our database; it's part of their files.
Answering Your Question: The "DAU vs. Value" Conversation
You asked how to talk about this with teams or investors used to seeing daily active user (DAU) charts go up.
When talking to stakeholders, we focus on "Transfer Moments" as a proxy for long-term Brand Equity. A user who "graduates" isn't a lost customer; they are a lifetime advocate. In the world of professional tools, a referral from a "graduated" expert who says, "This tool fixed my workflow so well I don't even have to think about it anymore," is worth more than a thousand users trapped in a notification loop.
Success to you on Murror! It’s inspiring to see a roadmap that prioritizes the human on the other side of the screen over the graph on the dashboard.
One question for you: How do you identify the difference between a "graduated" user and a "frustrated" user in the early stages of that usage drop-off?
Murror
@conleec Chris, this is one of the most thoughtful responses I've gotten on this topic. Your "Zero Data Ransom" concept is brilliant and speaks to the same principle from the infrastructure side -- if users can leave with everything, you're proving your value through the experience, not through lock-in. That takes real confidence in your product.
And congrats on launching PictaBase! The .meta.json sidecar approach is really clever. Making metadata portable rather than trapped in your database is exactly the kind of design decision that earns long-term trust.
I love how you framed it: "building a power tool" vs "building a crutch." That distinction is going to stick with me. Would love to stay connected and compare notes as both our products evolve around this philosophy.