Stop 09 · Growth Marketing & ExperimentationTopics · 2/9

The AARRR Funnel for Growth

In short

AARRR is five questions about your customers: did they come, try, stay, tell friends, and pay? Find the weakest one and you know where to work next.

A framework splitting the user lifecycle into Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral and Revenue — a fast way to locate where in the funnel a product's growth actually has a problem.

The blob in a gym lifts a small dumbbell with a cheerful grin.

Think of it like this

A new gym's members

Someone walks into a new gym, does a first workout, comes back next week, brings a friend, and renews for a year. Each step loses some people. A smart gym owner knows exactly which step loses the most.

Watch it happen

The five stages, for a study app

Acquisition

Activation

Retention

Referral

Revenue

1/5Acquisition: people find and install the app from search, ads or a friend.

The big ideas

What you need to know

Pirate metrics

Nicknamed after how AARRR sounds. The idea was popularised by investor Dave McClure.

One metric per stage

Pick a number for each stage, like installs, first quiz done, week-2 return rate.

Find the leakiest stage

Working on the weakest stage usually helps more than polishing a strong one.

Order can vary

Some businesses earn revenue before referral. The stages are a checklist, not a strict sequence.

Save yourself the pain

Common mistakes

Oops

Pouring more money into acquisition when users leave after one day.

Do this instead

Fix activation and retention first, or you're filling a leaky bucket.

Oops

Defining activation as 'signed up'.

Do this instead

Activation is the first moment real value is felt, like finishing the first quiz.

Your mission

Map AARRR for an app you use

~20 min

Quick check

A food app gets lots of installs but most users never place a first order. Which stage is weakest?

Go deeper

1Map a product you use onto the 5 AARRR stages with one metric each.
2Identify which stage is usually weakest for early-stage products, and why.
3Practice diagnosing 'we have a growth problem' into a specific stage-level problem.