The first thing I do before anything else is get access to the data. An advisor without dashboards is just guessing. The most effective advisory arrangement is a recurring weekly meeting with leadership where the agenda flexes to the most pressing problem, but that only works if I can see the underlying metrics myself.
From there the diagnostic runs in sequence, and step one is the three-body problem. Consumer networks lack the established playbooks that enterprise or product-led models have, because they require you to solve for three things at once: the right target customer, the right value proposition, and the minimum network size needed to deliver that value. Most founders who come to me have misdiagnosed their growth problem as “we need more users.” Usually the actual problem is one of the other two legs.
I measure that quantitatively. Pull cohort retention curves by segment. If the curve trends toward zero for every segment you look at, you don't have a retention problem, you have a value proposition problem, and no acquisition strategy fixes that. If the curve flattens for a specific segment, you've found your Oklahoma — now the question is how to get to Missouri.
For network products a flat curve is harder to read than it is for a pure SaaS tool. Retention might be low because the value proposition is weak, or because the network isn't dense enough yet to deliver the value, and those require completely different responses. If you fix density for the wrong value proposition you've just scaled a broken product. So I look for bright spots: are there pockets, geographies, cohorts or use cases where retention is meaningfully higher? If yes, that tells you what the value proposition actually is and who it's for. If no bright spot exists anywhere, the value proposition needs rethinking before you touch acquisition.
Then I audit the acquisition model for kindle versus fire. Kindle strategies are bespoke and unsustainable but useful for early traction; fire strategies are scalable and long-term. At seed almost everything is kindle, and that's fine — but only if the kindle is sequencing you toward a fire. The fire options for consumer networks are limited: virality, SEO, paid, content and sales. I want to know which of those the product is structurally set up to support, and whether the team has even thought about it.
Most seed-stage teams think in funnels. Funnels create linear growth and force you to keep pouring into the top just to stay flat. I push them to model the business as a loop instead — a closed system where the output of one cycle becomes the input of the next. For a consumer network the question is whether retention at the bottom is actually feeding acquisition at the top. If it isn't, you're running a leaky bucket and no acquisition spend fixes that structurally.
The last check is magic tricks versus moats. Especially for AI-native consumer networks right now, a lot of what looks like growth is novelty. Viral growth is not a moat — once the trick is explained or cloned, the product is a commodity. I look at whether defensibility is structural, built on network effects or data network effects, or whether it's a feature incumbents can copy. The most durable models have cross-side network effects.
On the 1/3/6 structure: month 1 is entirely diagnostic and I'm not recommending tactics yet. By month 3 I want a clear answer on which segment has the flattest retention curve and why, what fire strategy the product can realistically support, and what the loop looks like modelled properly. By month 6 the focus shifts from broad diagnosis to deep work with whoever runs growth. If they're still in “let's try stuff” mode at month 6, that's a signal the strategy isn't clear enough yet.


