I stopped obsessing over signups. I started obsessing over the second session.

For a while, I celebrated every new signup.

Then I realized signups are just people saying, I'm curious.

The second session is where they answer a much more important question:

Did this solve enough of my problem to come back?

That changed how I think about product growth.

Instead of asking:

How do we get more users?

I've started asking:

Why did this user come back while 20 others didn't?

The answers have been surprisingly small:

They tried to accomplish a real task.
They personalized the product.
They came back with a specific goal instead of just exploring.

Those behaviors have taught me more than any acquisition report.

Curious how other founders think about this:

What's the earliest moment where you know a new user is likely to become a long term customer?

I'd love to hear what patterns you've discovered.