SaaS growth friction case studies
Five common SaaS-growth scenarios, diagnosed against the AUG v3 framework. Models from a portfolio of 30+ live SaaS products — composites of patterns we see repeatedly. Names + numbers are anonymized; the failure modes are real.
Case 1 of 5
The pricing-page tweaker
SaaS analytics dashboard, 6 months old
AUG Score
0.40
Biggest friction
Acquisition — 2/10
Acq
2
Act
7
Eng
6
Ret
5
Adv
3
Mon
4
Per
8
Diagnosis
AUG 3.36. Founder spent the last 8 weeks A/B testing pricing-page copy. Acquisition score of 2 (sessions ~400/month) means revenue ceiling per the math floor ≈ €5/month — no pricing tweak beats that ceiling. Activation, Engagement, Performance are already healthy. The bottleneck is the top of funnel; the founder is optimizing the wrong factor.
Recommended fix
Stop pricing experiments. Spend 4 weeks on Acquisition fundamentals: programmatic SEO pages for 3 comparison queries, llms.txt + AI-crawler allowlist, IndexNow on every deploy, one HN Show HN. Re-audit at month 9. Expected AUG lift: ~3.4 → ~7.2.
Case 2 of 5
The signup-celebration trap
B2B utility, 1 year old
AUG Score
0.67
Biggest friction
Retention — 2/10
Acq
6
Act
8
Eng
5
Ret
2
Adv
4
Mon
5
Per
7
Diagnosis
AUG 3.41. Founder celebrates 5,000 signups in 12 months. But D7 retention is 4% — users sign up, complete onboarding, never return. Activation score 8 is misleading; the activation event is "complete onboarding" which doesn't correspond to "still active in week 2". The product has a one-time intent (filing taxes, generating a one-shot artifact) and was built like a recurring SaaS.
Recommended fix
Either change the product (add weekly-recurring value: progress tracking, weekly digest, version control on past artifacts), or change the business model (one-time purchase instead of subscription). The framework is opinionated: don't build subscription products around one-time intent.
Case 3 of 5
The slow dashboard
SaaS metrics tool, 8 months old
AUG Score
0.03
Biggest friction
Performance — 1/10
Acq
7
Act
4
Eng
3
Ret
4
Adv
2
Mon
5
Per
1
Diagnosis
AUG 0.84. Founder hired a performance consultant who said "your Lighthouse score is 92 — performance is fine." Wrong score — field data from PageSpeed Insights shows LCP p75 = 7.2s (mobile, 4G). Lab tests run on desktop fiber; real users are on phones with slow connections. Every other factor (Activation, Engagement, Retention, Advocacy) is artificially low because users bail before the dashboard finishes loading.
Recommended fix
Single highest-leverage week of work in this case study: ship static-export landing pages for public surface + lazy-load the dashboard chunks. Re-measure CWV via Google PageSpeed Insights (mobile strategy). Expected lift: LCP 7.2s → 1.4s; AUG 0.84 → ~25 (composite drag from Performance=1 → Performance=8 affects 5 other factors via cascade).
Case 4 of 5
The viral-feature-that-isn't
Generator / share tool, 4 months old
AUG Score
0.34
Biggest friction
Advocacy — 1/10
Acq
5
Act
7
Eng
6
Ret
5
Adv
1
Mon
4
Per
8
Diagnosis
AUG 1.68. Founder built a generator tool ("Generate your X in 30 seconds"). Users complete the action and leave. No share trigger, no embeddable widget, no public-collection URL. The product has the shape of a viral tool — but zero advocacy mechanics. k-factor measured at 0.02.
Recommended fix
Ship per-result share card (Canvas API → 1200×630 PNG + pre-composed tweet). Add embeddable iframe with attribution link-back. Make result URLs bookmarkable with OG preview cards. Expected: k-factor 0.02 → 0.15-0.25 within 60 days; AUG 1.68 → ~6.5.
Case 5 of 5
The zombie
Reference site, 2 years old
AUG Score
0.00
Biggest friction
Retention — 1/10
Acq
3
Act
3
Eng
2
Ret
1
Adv
1
Mon
2
Per
5
Diagnosis
AUG 0.04. Two years old; 800 sessions/month; D7 retention 2%; zero shares; €3/month revenue. Founder has spent another 60 hours this year tweaking copy + adding small features. Every factor scored low. This isn't a "fix the weakest factor" situation — it's a 90-day kill-criteria candidate per AUG's built-in floor (composite <5 for 2+ weeks = sunset signal).
Recommended fix
Three options: (1) Kill — redirect domain to portfolio anchor; archive the codebase. (2) Pivot — keep the URL, rebuild concept around a different ICP (probably a different archetype). (3) Accept-as-zombie — keep at zero ongoing investment; revisit in 12 months. Most operators try option 4 (keep tweaking) — the framework explicitly rejects this; it's sunk-cost compounding into more sunk cost.
What does your SaaS look like in this format?
Run your own 7-factor audit. 60 seconds. No signup. Get your AUG score + the one biggest friction to fix this week.