COHORTSTRATEGY
hello@cohortstrategy.com

You can’t advertise your way out of a problem you haven’t found yet.

Every revenue funnel has five stages: acquisition, activation, conversion, retention, and expansion. One of them is underperforming right now, whether you’re stalled or growing. Most teams blame acquisition. We go into your data and find out which stage it really is, and what fixing it is worth.

The work

We start in the data, not the deck

Most revenue advice is built from interviews. Talk to the exec team, collect their theories, turn them into slides. We do the interviews too, but interviews give you hypotheses, not evidence. The evidence is in your data, so we go get it ourselves.

Then we break customers into cohorts, groups that share something that matters, like what they purchase or how they found you, because averages hide problems. A flat conversion rate is usually one segment falling apart while another grows. Steady churn can be good customers covering for a group that never really started using the product. And strong growth can hide both. Reports built to show totals will never show you any of it.

So the answer is specific enough to act on. Not “improve retention.” More like: customers from this one channel never get far enough into the product to see its value, and they’re gone by month two. You get a diagnosis of where your revenue funnel is actually breaking down and a plan your current team can run.

The revenue funnel

Five stages where revenue gets made, and lost.

  1. Acquisition

    Are the right people arriving at all, what does each one cost, and which channels bring the ones who stay?

  2. Activation

    Do new customers actually start using the product the way your paying customers do? This is the stage most often mistaken for an acquisition problem.

  3. Conversion

    Where do people drop off between first visit and first payment, and why? Is it the signup flow, the price, or a product that doesn’t match what the marketing said?

  4. Retention

    Who leaves, when, and what did they have in common on the day they arrived?

  5. Expansion

    Does an account get more valuable over time, or is the day they signed up the best it ever gets?

Growing doesn’t mean nothing’s broken.

Strong acquisition can cover for weak activation for years. A good retention average can hide one channel whose customers leave in 60 days. When growth slows, whatever was hidden becomes the problem, and you end up fixing it under board pressure. Finding it while things are good is cheaper, and you get to fix it on your schedule.

Usually a fit

Companies between $5M and $100M in revenue with an established product and enough customer history to trace what happens from first touch through renewal. Any business with a repeat customer: B2B, SaaS, subscription, ecommerce, and two-sided marketplaces.

Engagements

Three shapes, depending on how deep you need us

Diagnostic

4–6 weeks Defined-scope investigation

Finds the weak stage in your revenue funnel, whether that means looking across all five or going deep on one. Diagnosis, evidence, and a prioritized plan your team can actually staff. Fixed scope, fixed fee.

Advisory retainer

~5 hours a week A senior revenue leader in your corner

You have the team. What you don’t have is someone outside the day-to-day who’ll tell you the truth about your plan before your board does. That’s this.

Embedded

Scoped to the work Someone to actually do the work

A diagnostic finds the problem. Embedded fixes it. We work inside your team on whatever closing the gap takes.

Inside a diagnostic
  1. Before

    Scope agreed in writing. One point of contact named on your side. Access requests go out.

  2. Week 1

    You provision access to the systems and data. Nothing else is asked of your team. While we wait, we go through your product the way a new customer would. We only get one chance to see your product the way a new customer does, so we do it before we look at your data.

  3. Weeks 2–3

    Analysis and conversations. Funnel and cohort work against your own data.

  4. Weeks 4–5

    Assessment and prioritization. Findings pressure-tested, scored, and built into the recommendation matrix.

  5. Week 6

    Delivery. The written assessment is circulated in advance, then a 60 to 90 minute working session to argue with it.

You leave with
  • A diagnosis of the primary constraint, and the evidence for it
  • The cohort analysis underneath that diagnosis
  • A funnel map with drop-off ranked by revenue at stake
  • A prioritized recommendation matrix scored on impact and effort
How we work

Four things worth knowing before you call

We look for broken processes, not people to blame

Whoever owns the work we’re examining is a collaborator in week one, not a subject of the report. It’s also the only way findings survive after we leave.

Everything is scored on effort

A recommendation you can’t staff is not a recommendation. Impact and effort both get a number, so you can start on Monday.

You keep the work, not just the conclusions

The metric definitions, the cohort views, and whatever we built to produce them stay with your team. If we found it once, you can watch it every month without us.

Small by design

We take a limited number of engagements at a time, and every one is run by a principal. There are no juniors to hand it down to and no bench to keep busy.

Who does the work

We’ve carried the revenue target, not just advised on it

Cohort Strategy is deliberately small and deliberately senior. Twenty years of that experience sits inside operating companies on the revenue side, most of it accountable for the forecast rather than consulting on it. Everything below was done as an operator, in the job, with the outcome attached.

Chief Revenue Officer, twiceThe number, the team, and the forecast, across subscription, payments, and two-sided marketplace revenue
Built a first business intelligence functionFrom nothing: the team, the metric definitions, the governance, and the reporting an executive team made decisions on
Tripled recurring revenueAt a subscription and payments business, through activation, retention, pricing, and partner-led acquisition rather than more spend
Rebuilt a marketplace after an 80% collapseDemand vanished in a quarter. Back to growth and to profitability, with a new B2B line growing 300% year over year
Two exitsOne as founder of a venture-backed marketplace, one as an executive through acquisition
Trained in management consultingData-driven strategy engagements for Fortune 500 clients across tech, media, finance, and automotive before going operator
Not a fit

Four reasons to call someone else

  • 01You’re pre-launch, with no customers and no data yet. We work from evidence. If there isn’t any, come back when there is.
  • 02You want someone to run your ads. We’ll tell you where your money should go and what to ask your agency for, but we don’t run campaigns.
  • 03You need someone full-time. This is part-time on purpose. If the job needs a full-time person, hire one.
  • 04You want someone to tell you you were right. If you were, we’ll say so. If you weren’t, we’ll say that too. If only one of those answers works for you, save your money.

Do you know which stage of your revenue funnel is weakest? If not, let’s talk.

Tell us what revenue is doing and where you think the funnel is weakest. Thirty minutes is usually enough to know whether there’s an engagement here.

Or write to hello@cohortstrategy.com.