Does the retention curve flatten?
Mapview is pre-revenue. The next 8 months are not about profit — they are about producing measured evidence of a durable, cheap-to-acquire, retaining user base, packaging it into a deck, and raising. The retention curve is the scoreboard; revenue is a secondary signal.
Retention curve — flattening vs decaying target
Investigator → Guardian, with the handoff target
Proof-point status
Now
Current gate
Next decision
Days to deck-ready
Top three risks
1. P2 is structurally thin by M6
The Investigator→Guardian handoff needs a 3–6 month buying window; Investigators acquired in M2 largely won't have purchased by deck time. The hinge of the thesis has the fewest observations exactly when it's needed. Mitigation: a Guardian seed cohort recruited directly.
2. The curve decays instead of flattens
If week-24 retention falls below half of week-12, the value prop isn't earning return visits and Gate 3 is a no-go regardless of anything else.
3. Acquisition is costlier than modelled
If cost-per-retaining-user stays above $50 and organic share doesn't rise, the "cheap to acquire" half of the pitch fails even if retention holds.
The moat is impartiality
Mapview is the independent information layer for Australian property — the impartial source of truth outside the sales machine. Every incumbent information source is sales-aligned: agents are paid by vendors, REA and Domain are paid by agents. The buyer has the most at stake and the least information. Incumbents cannot close that gap without cannibalising the vendor relationship that pays them. Impartiality is a category-defining moat, not a feature gap.
Short positioning
Mapview is the independent information layer for Australian property — the impartial source of truth outside the sales machine.
Long positioning
Every property information source today is paid by someone selling you something: agents are paid by vendors, the portals are paid by agents. The buyer — with the most at stake — gets the least impartial information. Mapview is different: an independent layer of planning, risk and development data with no vendor, no commission and no listing to protect. We don't sell property; we tell you what the sales machine won't.
Hooks
Buyer hook
"What aren't they telling you about this property?"
Leads with Site Alerts, not MVPS. Easements, flood, bushfire, heritage are emotionally concrete and PR-able.
Owner hook
"What is your neighbour about to build?"
Permit alerts — builds the durable Guardian relationship that flattens the curve.
Brand character & tone
- Impartial, evidenced, calm. Never alarmist — fear opens the door, facts close the sale.
- First-person plural for the audience ("what aren't they telling you"), never adversarial toward any individual agent.
- Every claim cites a source (council overlay, state dataset). No unsubstantiated statements — ACCC exposure is existential.
Wrong vs right framing
Rejected
"Comprehensive property data app" — utility framing: low emotion, low virality, low retention.
"Property credit score / passport" — cold, implies a single transaction. (The MVPS lives inside the product; it is not the brand.)
Approved
"Independent information layer / impartial source of truth." Category-defining, emotionally resonant (fairness), retention-aligned (the impartial source you keep returning to).
Editorial rule — the fear/impartiality line
Operating rule: every risk surfaced must be paired with the property's genuine strengths, and Mapview never publishes a negative-only view of a property. The hook opens with risk; the report must close with a balanced, evidenced picture. Testable standard: each property page/report carries ≥1 strength callout for every risk callout (a ≥1:1 ratio, audited per release). This is a content standard, not a sentiment.
Investigator → Guardian
Two archetypes, one person at two life stages. Acquire the Investigator, engineer the conversion to Guardian — the handoff is what flattens the curve.
Tier priorities
Tier 1
First-home buyers and burnt-once upgraders — emotionally engaged, data-hungry, high activation, long buying window. The primary Investigator pool.
Tier 2
Individual investors (repeat research, durable) and settled owners (the Guardian pool — harder to acquire, durable once acquired).
The handoff
An Investigator buys, and in that moment becomes a Guardian: home_registered fires, and they shift from "what aren't they telling me?" to "what is my neighbour about to build?". Retention stops being time-boxed to the buying window and becomes indefinite. The conversion rate (investigator_to_guardian_conversion) is the single most important number in the pitch — and the hardest to observe in 8 months (see /proof → P2 timing).
Cut list — and why
Never sell to the sales side — moat breach
Agents, buyer's agents, vendors and listing portals are removed entirely as segments and partners. Selling to the people who sell property makes Mapview a vendor-aligned source — it destroys the impartiality moat and the entire positioning.
Cut — renters
Excluded from the launch strategy: they do not convert to Guardians on a property they don't own, so they contribute no P2 and thin the retention cohort. Revisit only if a renter→buyer handoff can be shown.
Moved — conveyancers, brokers, accountants
Not consumer segments — they move to /b2b as the non-selling side: low-cost consumer-acquisition channels (co-branded reports) and an upside signal, never a revenue business in this window.
One loop, two ignition sources
Not a funnel. A flywheel with two things that light it: paid social (buys Investigators fast) and data PR (earned reach, creates Guardian demand).
The loop closes on itself: share re-enters Acquire. The handoff (Convert to Guardian) is the engine — it's what stops the curve decaying.
Ignition 1 — Paid Social
Buys Investigators fast and validates hooks. Funded by investment, not by $9.95 report margin — the v1 CAC-ceiling-from-gross-profit constraint no longer governs channel selection (see /model). The measure is cost-per-retaining-user, not cost-per-registration.
Ignition 2 — Data PR
Earned reach that creates Guardian demand directly ("what is your neighbour about to build?"). Slower to spin, but it produces the owners the flywheel needs — and the credibility the deck needs.
Three compounding loops
Shareable property pages
A property page is a shareable object passed between partners, family and advisors — each share re-enters Acquire with zero marginal cost.
Investigator → Guardian handoff
The same person, two life stages. Converting buyers into owners converts a time-boxed relationship into a durable one — the retention flywheel's core.
Lifecycle emails
Watchlists and permit alerts that pull users back — the cheapest re-entry into Engage & Retain.
Five-stage lifecycle → events
| Stage | Events | What it proves |
|---|
What we have to prove to raise
Seven proof points. P0 is proven by P1 + P2; P3 proves affordability; B2B proves it scales cheaply; the $ are bonuses.
| ID | Proof point | Question | Target | Status | Satisfying evidence |
|---|
Retention curves
The numeric definition of "flattening"
P2 timing risk — the primary structural risk
Cohort table
| Reg. cohort | Registrations | Consistent-User rate (target) | Consistent Users | Cost / retaining user | Read at |
|---|
Eight months, three gates, two clocks
Gates — pre-committed, numeric
Two clocks — growth and raise in parallel
Growth clock
Raise clock
Kill criteria (pre-committed)
| Initiative | Kill / hold threshold |
|---|
Four-tier measurement hierarchy
Tier 1 is the hero — the retention curve. Tier 4 is vanity and is never led with.
| Tier | Purpose | Metrics |
|---|
Locked metric definitions do not redefine
Event taxonomy — the instrumentation spec
| Lifecycle stage | Event | Meaning | What it proves |
|---|
Instrumentation checklist
Definition versioning (change control)
Definitions are locked. Any change requires a definition change request: a named owner proposes it, it is logged with date + reason, it needs growth-owner sign-off, and every historical cohort is re-computed under both the old and new definitions for the transition window. The taxonomy carries a version (e.g. metrics v1.0) and a definition is never silently redefined.
The non-selling side
In this window B2B is not a revenue business. It is (a) a low-cost consumer-acquisition channel via co-branded reports, (b) an upside signal for the pitch, (c) validation that the dataset has commercial value.
Moat guardrail — who Mapview will never sell to
Agents, buyer's agents, vendors, and listing portals. These are the sales side. Selling to them makes Mapview vendor-aligned and destroys the impartiality moat. This list is binding and must not be eroded by any commercial opportunity.
Targets (non-selling side)
| Target | Why | Cycle |
|---|
Co-branded reports — the tracking chain
A co-branded report must carry a trackable link measuring Report → Registration → User Retained. A partner is only valuable if their reports produce retaining users — not clicks. Chain:
Pipeline stages
| Stage | Definition | This window |
|---|
Budget, cohorts & cost-per-retaining-user
The cohort-size requirement drives the budget — not the reverse. All figures are modelled proposals for approval.
Inputs
Budget envelope (8 months)
Cost-per-retaining-user by source
Organic share timing
Secondary — revenue is a signal, not the scoreboard
The $9.95 report is a probe, not the business — proof point $1 (people will pay for the data). Consumer data is free; near-zero marginal cost-to-serve is the point. The paid-social channel is funded by investment, not report margin.