You are right. I don't give any real focus in my talks/writing to just making the core product better, but that happens. Builders get enamored of the shiny new things but the thing that most delivered improved retention In our DVD days was delivering the disk the next day in the mail -- not any fundamental innovation on the website -- until the launch of streaming In Jan 2007. There was a swimlane for Customer Service, for instance. On one hand their job was to identify all the stupid mistakes we made-- provide dispositioning data -- so the other teams knew what broken stuff to fix. But also to figure out how to provide help better. Insight: stop doing email help and switch to phone only. It turns out in the email back and forth we did a lousy job of answering questions that were better served by phone. Short answer: making the core product better Isn't as sexy/interesting as talking about the new stuff Netflix launched.