Retention rate is the closest proxy for future revenue (if your product is designed for repeat usage). Absolute "Active users" can be misleading if your user base is constantly growing either due to some marketing campaign running or other means. Because then you always see your "Active users" metric is growing. But not sure why and if you are on the right direction. The same goes for "Churn rate". That's why you need to measure them per cohort of new users/feature release/marketing campaign and not absolute numbers. I personally think the most important metric of all for a pre-PMF: "Retention Rate" per cohort of users. The percentage of users who continue using your product or service over a given time period. With that you can see if a new feature set, a new marketing channel, messaging, or a new target market made a meaningful impact on your results. And then act accordingly.

THE SOMEDAY PRINCIPLE: Regard "Someday" as a Lie that Really Means NEVER. Someday is another pacification of "I'm waiting for some condition" before acting. In reality, one new condition replaces the fulfilled one. #1: I'm waiting for the New Year. #2: I'm waiting to finish school #3: I'm waiting for a better job. #4: I'm waiting until the kids move out. #5: I'm waiting for a promotion. #6: I'm waiting to get out of debt. #7: I'm waiting until my vacation

"Focus your energy, guard your time, train your mind, train your body, think for yourself, curate your friends, curate your environment, keep your promises, stay cheerful and constructive and upgrade the world." —Michael Saylor, MicroStrategy's co-founder and founder CEO from 1989 to 2022

“How do you make something for a million people? I don’t know where to start. But if you pick one person, study them, and take their journey, you can actually build something really personal. You can design something and keep iterating until they love it. Don’t stop improving it until that person loves it, and you’re not allowed to move to the second person until the first person loves it. Then you get the second person and keep iterating until they love it. And so on.” -- Brian Chesky

Paul Graham: "You've got to start with a small, intense fire. Suppose you're the Apple 1. I think they made like 500 of those things, right? So all they had to do was find 500 people to buy these computers and they launched Apple. Apple!... You've got to find people who want what you're making a lot, and that's necessarily going to be a small number. But that's ok. That's how these giant things get started. You don't have to do any better than Apple and Facebook... You have to know who those first users are and how you're going to get them. Then you're going to sit down and just have a party with those first few users and focus entirely on them and making them super super happy."