In this conversation, Vivek Kumar, an Investor and Advisor at Atlys with a strong background in product management, shares insightful strategies for retaining customers of low-frequency products. He discusses the unique challenges of engagement for infrequent use cases, emphasizing the need to differentiate between enduring and transient problems. Kumar also highlights the importance of customer experience in monetization and argues for a value-first approach in product design. His frameworks like BELT and ICE provide actionable tools for tackling these complex retention issues.
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insights INSIGHT
Definition And Recall Problem
Infrequent products are defined by natural transaction cadence, often less than once every three months.
Recall decays with time, creating a small monetisation window and high CAC pressure.
insights INSIGHT
PMF = Penetration Not Retention
For low-frequency products, market penetration matters more than retention curves.
Product-market-fit equals who captures the largest share of episodic buyers in a market.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Choose Enduring Problems First
Classify problems by existing behaviour, enduring vs transient value, and lock-ins before prioritising work.
Focus on enduring problems that drive long-term satisfaction, not transient pains.
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Product decisions built on daily-active metrics fall apart when your customers show up once a year, or once a decade. In this episode, Randy Silver talks to Vivek Kumar about building and growing low-frequency products, from property and tax to jobs and dating.
Chapters 04:25 — What makes a product “infrequent”? Episodic use and recall decay 07:05 — Rethinking PMF: penetration and market share over retention curves 10:36 — When iteration is slow: prioritising problems under seasonal cycles 14:28 — BELT framework: behaviours, enduring vs transient problems, lock-ins 21:56 — Spotting enduring problems: “what will still matter in 10 years?” 24:11 — ICE framework overview for infrequent products 26:03 — Engagement: active retention, complexity, single- vs constant-touch 29:55 — Predictable vs unpredictable retention; referrals as a strategy 31:06 — Lifetime retention: seeding frequency hooks (e.g., estimates, salary data) 33:01 — Distinctiveness and brand: why CAC collapses when you own the memory 33:48 — Control over experience: monetisation through end-to-end journeys 36:13 — Research that works: ethnography, diary studies, “follow-me-home” 40:22 — Example: discovering the real tax filing pain (document collection) 43:04 — Ethics and value: “cures vs treatments”, utility vs entertainment products
Featured Links: Follow Vivek on LinkedIn | Atlys | The Steps 'Grow and manag
Our Hosts Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.
Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.
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