The referral program actually worked

Launched our referral program. Early results look promising. +312 customers this week.

The mechanic is boring on purpose: give a month, get a month. No tiers, no leaderboard, no points. I spent two days trying to design something clever and then shipped the obvious thing instead, which is a lesson I apparently need to relearn every quarter.

What surprised me is where the referrals came from. Not the power users I expected. It was the people who signed up in the last 30 days, still excited, still telling people about it. So we moved the referral prompt from the settings page to day 12 of the lifecycle, and the share rate roughly tripled.

Next: figure out whether these customers stick. A referral that churns in month two is just an expensive discount.