Journal · cohorts

Reading cohorts without vanity weeks

A Monday launch dumps sign-ups into week 0. If you then average that week with a quiet August, the line looks like a product insight. It is a calendar insight. In module four we keep the launch week labelled and we refuse to treat “users who did X in week 1” as a personality.

Internal accounts, demo tenants, and the founder’s mother should be excluded in a way you can explain. If exclusion happens in a secret dashboard filter, the next analyst will put them back and the chart will jump. Write the rule in the event contract, not in a personal saved view.

Month-end lumps in billing products are real. Flattening them to make a board slide “cleaner” is a choice to hide the job the product is hired for. We would rather a lumpy true line than a smooth fiction.

This is also why we publish an NPS of 41 from recent desks rather than a rounded marketing score. The same discipline belongs in your retention view.