Hierarchy of Engagement
A framework from Sarah Tavel (Benchmark) for diagnosing and sequencing the work of building an enduring consumer product. Three levels must be climbed in order:
Level 1 — Core Action + Activation. Get users to complete the core action: the single behaviour where (a) completing it demonstrates the user genuinely understands the product, and (b) users who complete it in a given week return the following week at a high rate. All growth investment before L1 is premature.
Level 2 — Accruing Benefits + Mounting Loss. The product gets better the more a user uses it (accruing benefits), and leaving becomes increasingly costly (mounting loss). A user who has built up years of data, a network of connections, or a curated library has more to lose by leaving than a new user. This is the layer that creates sustainable retention.
Level 3 — Self-Perpetuating Network Effects. Supply generates demand generates supply. At this level, the product grows and improves without direct company effort because each new participant makes it more valuable for all others. Very few products reach L3.
Finding the core action
The right core action is typically found via two parallel analyses:
- Bottoms-up: regress every possible action (like, follow, publish, subscribe) against next-week retention; rank them.
- Top-down: ask what it means for a user to have genuinely understood the product. If a user never performs this action, have they actually used the product?
Pinterest’s core action was pinning, not liking or following — discovered only after running both analyses. YouTube’s turned out to be subscribing, not watching.
Where mainstream views differ
The conventional growth instinct is to optimise for MAUs or DAUs. Tavel’s critique: these metrics measure presence in the funnel but not whether users are building a stake in the product. A fast-growing MAU number with declining cohort retention means you are filling a leaky bucket. The Hierarchy of Engagement reframes success as building a product people have reasons not to leave, rather than reasons to return.