ChatlyAI — 200K to 1.2M users in eight months
An AI chat product with good retention and a user graph that kept flattening. Restructuring how conversations persisted was the unlock.
- Monthly active users
- 6x
- D30 retention
- 2.3x
- Session length
- +40%
- Revenue contribution
- $6.5M+
Problem
ChatlyAI had decent retention for an AI chat product but inconsistent growth — the kind of user graph that goes up and then flattens. Up and flattens. The product worked. Users who stuck around loved it. The problem was getting people to stick around.
Constraint
A narrow high-growth window and no time to buy the answer. SEO content took 60 days to show results, which was too slow for the moment we were in.
Decision
I went after the activation moment rather than the top of the funnel. Users who joined an active thread within their first 10 minutes had dramatically higher 30-day retention, so we made threads persist — conversations that grew and built context over time, instead of every session being ephemeral. We shipped it without announcing it, because the bet was that users would discover it and not want to leave.
Outcome
200K to 1.2M+ monthly actives in under a year. D30 retention improved 2.3x over eight months, session length rose 40%, and the work contributed to $6.5M+ in revenue.
Between October 2025 and June 2026, ChatlyAI went from roughly 200,000 monthly active users to over 1.2 million. That is 6x growth in under a year.
This is the honest story of how that happened — including the things we tried that did not work.
Where we started
When I joined as Associate Product Manager, ChatlyAI had decent retention numbers for an AI chat product but inconsistent growth. The kind of user graph that goes up and then flattens. Up and flattens.
The product worked. Users who stuck around loved it. The problem was getting people to stick around.
Finding the activation moment
The first thing we did was figure out when users who stayed were different from users who left.
The answer was in the first session. Users who created or joined an active thread within their first 10 minutes had dramatically higher 30-day retention. Users who bounced from the landing page never got there.
So we rebuilt the onboarding entirely around getting users to that activation moment faster. Fewer friction points, clearer prompts, a default thread to start with rather than a blank canvas.
What worked
- Referral loops built into the sharing experience — not slapped on after as a growth hack, but native to how you share a thread.
- Reducing the steps to create a shareable chat from 4 to 1. Small change, measurable lift in viral coefficient.
- A weekly digest email that brought users back to active threads — context-aware, not generic.
- Persistent memory threads: conversations that grew and built context over time.
What did not work
- Push notifications — high unsubscribe rate, minimal re-engagement.
- A gamification layer we shipped and pulled back in 3 weeks.
- SEO content that took 60 days to show results — too slow for the growth moment we were in.
The product decision that changed everything
The single biggest unlock was changing how threads were structured.
Previously, users started fresh conversations. There was no concept of a running thread or context that persisted. Every session was ephemeral.
When we introduced persistent memory threads — conversations that grew and built context over time — retention improved within 2 weeks. Not because we told users about it. Because users discovered it and did not want to leave.
The best product decisions feel obvious in retrospect. They are not obvious in the meeting.
Key metrics
- MAU: 200K to 1.2M+ (6x)
- Session length: +40% after the persistent threads launch
- D30 retention: improved 2.3x over 8 months
- Revenue contribution: $6.5M+
What I would do differently
Ship the persistent threads feature 3 months earlier. We had the signal. We did not move fast enough on it.
The referral loop we built was the right idea but came too late. High-growth windows are narrow. The users who wanted to share were already churning by the time we made it easy.