Gratitude Loops Fuel Growth

Hello from NYC!  

I hope you all had an incredible Thanksgiving, whether you spent it with family, friends, or took time to relax solo.  

Stay with me today. This is a 1,800-word strategy on how top companies are totally architecting customer gratitude and using it to quickly scale.

Startup culture and mentality get a bad rep because it can mean that being miserable is necessary to move fast and innovate. 

But does it really have to be that way? 

I just spent multiple days in the ruins of ancient Rome, where cities were built on top of each other for thousands of years. One empire’s work masked in totality by another. Again and again.  

What you’re building is, at best, a generational foundation for the future.  At worst, you’re taking a swing to make the world a better place.  

Since you’re building a space for people to connect with you (via your product), you need to create room for them to express their full emotional spectrum.  

It’s your responsibility to listen and keep up with the next layer that’s coming.

The companies that win are actively engineering positive sentiment loops that compound retention.

We often focus on customer complaints, product issues that we need to tweak, eng bug tickets we need to kill. 

It’s funny because that isn’t what actually drives the product roadmap.  

It’s when you give customers the space to have a delightful experience that proves out retention.  

This area of feedback makes space on the roadmap for what’s actually important. It shows you what you should build.  

Letting your customers tell you what they like is critical. So why do most companies have only one touchpoint to reinforce this, presented at a totally random time and at the end of the user experience? 

When you remind people that they are, in fact, happy, that makes your product sticky. 

A consistent dialogue with customers gives them a direct path for feedback before they take issues to Reddit, Discord, or public review sites that AI models scan for sentiment.

This keeps feedback inside a controlled loop, surfaces problems earlier, and increases the odds that your strongest users shape the public narrative around your product.

Here’s how to correctly give your customers the space to be grateful throughout their user journey.  

Influencers have actually done this flawlessly. 

Specifically, B2B creators, who have their audiences spread across platforms like YT, beehiiv, Skool, Discord, etc. 

This free-flowing exchange of feedback on familiar platforms (outside of the product experience)  opens up the space for your customer to live your product in more than just their isolated interaction with it. 

It breathes life into the world they are existing in and extends it beyond their daily use.  

In fact, many of these companies have their customer feedback channels directly in these spaces, like Discord, totally off-platform.  

This isn’t a net new idea, and it’s time for more B2B companies to have this. 

It drives emotional investment into your product, connects you with like-minded industry peers, and allows you (the company) to have an instant line of sight into what your customers are experiencing and thinking.  

I’m not suggesting you open up a space for customers to share proprietary data.

I’m suggesting you build a moderated community forum (at minimum for the top 10% of power users, at max for all users), that gives them the space to be grateful.  

If you want the forum to be hyper-moderated, you can toggle on settings that allow you (the company) to start threads, while group members have the ability to comment only.  

In D2C, it’s called surprise and delight moments. 

Example: Do you throw in a free eye mask with your eye cream? 

In B2B, this often looks like notes from the founder to the entire company userbase.

This is my absolute favorite way of giving space for gratitude. In fact, I’ve seen this work incredibly well at orgs doing $20M ARR all the way to $100M ARR.  

Comms that come directly from the founder have a personalized touch. It’s even better when they drop you a gift, too, like a deck showing their roadmap.

And at the bottom of the message, ask the reader to reply and share their thoughts.  

As a small, micro example of this, I always get replies to my newsletter (yes, I’d love to hear from you!). 

Sometimes people ask me to write about a certain topic, maybe it's a simple email that says, “loved this”, or even a request for 1:1 time to go deeper into an area and build together.  

The amount of 1:1 calls I get on with founders who say they feel like they know me from being a newsletter subscriber (and we have never met) is….pretty cool.  

Personalization matters when you’re seeking responses of gratitude. When your customers feel like they are talking to a person vs. a product, this opens up the space for them to feel more connected to you and your company.  

When you rewrite comms to come from the founder, it builds an incredibly powerful, scalable way to solicit customer feedback.  

I’m confident that even if they write in with a complaint, you’re good enough at your job to make them feel good after you respond to them.  

What if you set up a simple auto message (from you, the founder or head of marketing) to all new followers, power users or customers? Make this authentic and NOT salesy. 

“Hey! Thanks so much for the follow. Here’s a peek inside our [insert lead magnet e.g., Series A deck or Founder Fav Tips Deck] that helped us build what you’re experiencing today. What do you think about the product so far?” 

Trigger DMs based on behavior, not just time: first purchase, first feature used, hit 10th session,  invited a teammate, or posted about your brand 

Rotate lead magnets by segment: 

Core rule: ask right after a clear “win” and make it one-tap easy to respond.

You should know before a bad review hits the app store that your user is unhappy. Sometimes,  this is the entire point of an AI chatbot: to give the user space to express feedback, for you to fix it, and then for them to be happy.  

The Real Real (up 196% YoY on S&P 500) has some of the best customer feedback teams I’ve ever experienced.  

Consumer products fail when they hold out for the aha moment and then ask for the review after.  

For B2B: Getting a strong user review requires a strong relationship.  

B2B: where to send them after a good thing/gratitude delivery 

B2C: where to send them after a good thing/gratitude delivery 

What overlaps (and what B2B should steal) 

I know, I know. This was a long newsletter. I’m glad you stuck with me.

If a customer is interacting with your product, YOU have something to be grateful for.

This is a milestone reached by very few (because very few people actually bring something new into this world). 

Now, it’s your turn to build spaces for the customer to be grateful (because they are). They opted into this experience for a reason. They are welcoming you into their world.  

It’s your job to create structured spaces where gratitude can surface, where sentiment can guide the roadmap, and where your best users become your loudest advocates.

After all, the foundation of enjoyment for customers is gratitude. It’s a pillar of retention. It’s how you grow and evolve together.  

I hope you enjoyed today’s newsletter. Please reply and let me know what you think!!  

I can’t believe it’s December tomorrow.

I’m so grateful for all of you, the incredible community and brands I get to work with via Knight Vision, my family, friends, and for the space to reflect on it all.  

Having this space allows for a deeper appreciation of my work and life. Thanks for building it with me!  

Julia