Sub Club by RevenueCat

On the podcast, we talk with Ben about all things app stores. From Apple’s revolutionary launch of the App Store in 2008 to the monopoly-like powers both Google and Apple now wield today. With multiple lawsuits filed, government investigations ongoing, and developer sentiment at an all-time low, we take an honest look at the challenges and trade-offs in trying to bring two of the world’s largest companies to heel.Ben Thompson's LinksStratecheryBen’s Twitter: @benthompsonFollow Us:David Barnard: https://twitter.com/drbarnardJacob Eiting: https://twitter.com/jeitingRevenueCat: https://twitter.com/RevenueCatSub Club: https://twitter.com/SubClubHQ

Watch the video version of this show on YouTube »Shamanth Rao is the founder and CEO at Rocketship HQ. Shamanth also hosts the Mobile User Acquisition Show podcast, and is the lead instructor for the Mobile Growth Lab workshop series.RocketShip HQ is a boutique growth marketing firm with 8 figures in managed spend. Before founding RocketshipHQ, Shamanth led growth marketing resulting in 3 exits: Bash Gaming (sold for $170mm), Puzzle Social (acquired by Zynga), and FreshPlanet (acquired by Gameloft). Shamanth has also helped many other mobile apps grow and scale.Shamanth is passionate about teaching and sharing everything he’s learned about mobile growth. Much of his time and energy goes into the Mobile User Acquisition Show. Shamanth strives to ensure that the wisdom he’s gained reaches as many people as possible.In this episode, you’ll learn:The history of user acquisition and algorithmic targetingHow Apple’s AppTrackingTransparency has shifted users to AndroidWhat Apple’s new tracking policy means for developersAre subscription apps impacted more than other apps by Apple’s tracking policy?Links & ResourcesA Brief History of App Store Monetization episode – with David BarnardA Brief History of Device Identification episode – with David PhilippsoniOS 14 & IDFA Deprecation How App Marketers Must Adapt - YouTubeShamanth Rao’s LinksRocketShip HQ’s websiteThe Mobile User Acquisition ShowMobile Growth LabFollow Shamanth on TwitterShamanth Rao’s websiteFollow us on Twitter:David BarnardJacob EitingRevenueCatSub ClubEpisode TranscriptShamanth: 00:00:00The more signal you give to the algorithm, the better the algorithm performs, right? You know, in the post AppTrackingTransparency world, if you gain more purchases, the better the algorithm performs, obviously that would take purchases from you and everybody in the world, and it would just do better. Now, obviously it’s just taking your trial and doing much, much better.David: 00:00:38Welcome to the sub club podcast. I’m your host, David Bernard, and with me as always Jacob Eiting.Hello Jacob.Jacob: 00:00:45David, glad to be here with you, as always. David: 00:00:48Our guest today is Shamanth Rao, founder and CEO at RocketShip HQ, of the podcast Mobile User Acquisition Show, and lead instructor at the workshop series Mobile Growth. Shamanth’s company, RocketShip HQ is a boutique growth marketing agency with eight figures in managed spend. Prior to founding RocketShip HQ Shamanth growth marketing, to three exits. Hey Shamanth.Welcome to the podcast. Shamanth: 00:01:16Honored to be here. Thank you for having me, David and Jacob.David: 00:01:19Yeah. So, I wanted to start with a little bit of a history lesson. You’ve been in mobile advertising and working on mobile apps for, since very early. So, could you take just a couple of minutes and step us through the history of kind of what led us to today with app tracking transparency, and all the different ups and downs and changes that have happened over the past?Shamanth: 00:01:48Yeah. There’s been a lot of ups and downs, as you said. I see two overarching trends, but for folks who want to go into the weeds, I would actually recommend two podcast episodes. One was mine with you, David. A brief history of App Store monetization. You provide a very great perspective into how the App Store itself has changed over the years.The other one was an interview I did with David Phillips, A Brief History of Device Identification You know, we are all about brief histories, but, I think to what we talking about ATT and how essentially disrupted growth in today. There have been two forces that have led up to this point, the last decade or so I think it’s important to know and understand both of these, just to know how we got here and why it’s important, right.Because ATT just did not happen overnight. There were signs for a decade. And, you know, I think obviously a lot of this is evident in retrospect. but I think it’s helpful to know and understand what those breadcrumbs were.Trend number one has been increasing accumulation of particular data platforms over the last decade.You know, I remember, you know, David, as you pointed out, I am a really old person who, which around then, but we don’t advertise. It took off, with all this gray hair. But you know, when I started that we were doing CPC buys, CPM buys. I started doing mobile advertising before Facebook even had mobile ads, app ads.There is no conversion tracking. you know, I give it like no conversion tracking. If you, would buy installs, and you’re like, oh, we bought 70 stops. We got so many touches that we are profitable and spent like millions on games the time. And suddenly the level of sophistication that emerged in mobile advertising. I don’t think we could have posted in 12, 20 13, 20 14. But like I said, from the TPC buys gradually they have a CPI buys as ad networks that now are billion dollar companies. And so it’s an app love and have a tiny ad networks at the

Watch the video version of this show on YouTube »Maddie Kirby is currently the Senior Social Media Manager for the video journal app, 1 Second Everyday. Maddie started her social media marketing career at Ozwest. Ozwest is an exclusive distributor of Zing branded toy products and the Ozwest toy line in the USA and Canada.While working at Ozwest, Maddie started growing her personal social media presence. Maddie has almost 400k followers on TikTok. Since joining 1 Second Everyday in 2019, Maddie has been instrumental in leveraging TikTok to organically drive millions of downloads.Maddie has a bachelor’s degree in advertising from the University of Oregon, and has also worked for companies such as Bytedance, Inc., Egg Strategy, Transition Productions, and Atomicus Films.In this episode, you’ll learn:How to promote your app with user-created contentClever tricks to get your app noticedWhy TikTok is a great place to market your appA great strategy for growing your app’s follower countLinks & ResourcesMaddie and David’s App Promotion Summit USA panel discussionCesar Kuriyama’s TwitterCesar Kuriyama’s TED TalkDavid Smith on The Sub Club PodcastWidgetsmith appMaddie Kirby’s LinksMaddie Kirby’s TikTokMaddie Kirby’s LinkedIn1 Second Everyday’s website1 Second Everyday is on Twitter1 Second Everyday’s InstagramZing Toys websiteFollow us on Twitter:David BarnardJacob EitingRevenueCatSub ClubEpisode TranscriptMadison: 00:00:00I like to think of them as content buckets or pillars. You pick three and stick with those for a little bit. Try a few ideas in each bucket. See what's working, what's not. Scrolling through the app is the best way to kind of keep on top of things. And then you have to be able to think really fast and post really fast because these trends come and go. Jacob: 00:00:39Welcome to the Sub Club podcast. Our guest today is Maddie Kirby, Senior Social Media Manager at 1 Second Everyday. She began her career in social media marketing at toy company, Ozwest.While working there she also started growing her personal social media presence, accumulating almost 400,000 followers on TikTok.In 2019, Maddie joined 1 Second Everyday where she has been instrumental in leveraging TikTok to organically drive millions of downloads.Maddie, welcome to the podcast.Madison: 00:01:08Thank you. I'm excited to be here.Jacob: 00:01:10I'm also here with David, my guest, which I forgot to introduce in our freaky Friday intro swap.David: 00:01:16I usually do the introductions, but that was great. Jacob.Jacob: 00:01:19Hey, you know what? I'm very, very, very versed at...David: 00:01:21You gotta mix things up. Jacob: 00:01:23I'll pass back to David because he's the one who preps all the questions. David: 00:01:29Nice. Maddie and I were on a panel together earlier this month, at App Promotion Summit, which is a great thing to watch. We can link it in the show notes.It was four of us on the panel and it went really quick, but she shared a lot of really interesting stuff about what she's working on in social media marketing, and working with 1 Second Everyday on their TikTok presence.So, I wanted to bring her on the podcast to actually give her time to talk a little more about it in the context of promoting apps, because she's been on a couple of other podcasts where they're talking more specifically about social media.I'm super excited to have you, Maddie.I do want to dive in. We typically do have more developer focused guests, you know, people that are doing the coding or focused on user acquisition, spending 50K a month on Facebook. And so that's another reason I was excited to have you on the podcast is to just get a really different perspective.I think that there's a lot of potential in social media marketing. But not a lot of people talking about it in the app space and then...Jacob: 00:02:40Or just knowing how to do it, right?How do you even start, especially if you're a developer-turned-promoter. I think a lot of app creators tend to do the things you were talking about. David does technical channels about buying ads on Facebook or whatever, where's a lot of leverage in social media stuff. If you can do it. David: 00:03:02Yeah, absolutely. So, I did want to start with, you got your start in social media marketing, not with an app, which is another thing. It's like you came to the app marketing with such a different perspective, which I think is is really good. There's too many people who are just so narrowly focused in the kind of existing playbook for marketing apps.So, are there any lessons from your time at of all the places a toy company? Any particular lessons from being at a toy company that you think helped you grow and learn this form of marketing and specifically that apply to subscription apps?Madison: 00:03:41Yeah. I don't know if it's necessarily a lesson or lessons that I've learned. But I think coming from the toy industry, which is also an industry where people don't leave it. They have a lot of people that s

Watch the video version of this show on YouTube »Andy Carvell is the Partner & Co-Founder of Phiture, a mobile growth agency. Here he has worked with some of the biggest apps on the App Store, including Headspace, Spotify, Triller, and VSCO.Prior to founding Phiture, Andy worked on the marketing and growth teams at SoundCloud. His team built SoundCloud's activity notification system, which delivered over 500 million pushes per month, and increased M1 retention by five percentage points in its first few months of operation. Andy has been in the mobile industry since the late ‘90s, when he started working at Nokia. Andy has a deep interest in technology, strategy and the execution of ideas.In this episode, you’ll learn:Andy’s user retention techniquesThe most overlooked component in marketing your appHow to optimize your customer’s App Store experienceAndy’s formula for maximizing your app’s notification strategyLinks & ResourcesSoundCloudHeadspaceSpotifyTrillerVSCONokiaRevenueCatSalesforceIntercomElevateKiwiCoBrazeLeanplumIterableAndy Carvell’s LinksPhiturePhiture’s Mobile Growth StackAndy on Twitter: @andy_carvellAndy on LinkedInWork at PhitureFollow us on Twitter:David BarnardJacob EitingRevenueCatSub ClubEpisode TranscriptAndy: 00:00:00So the impact that you can drive with notifications is reach, times relevance, times frequency. What we learned from the time at SoundCloud was not all notifications are equal, and the really killer ones that are going to really supercharge your business, have high reach, high relevance and high frequency.And then, then you’re in that golden quadrant.David: 00:00:35Welcome to the Sub Club podcast. I’m your host, David Bernard. And with me is always Jacob Eiting. Hello, Jacob.Jacob: 00:00:42Hi, David. David: 00:00:43It’s a thundering in your neck of the woods, I hear. Jacob: 00:00:46It’s, you know, it’s cleared up now. I think we’re gonna make it.David: 00:00:50I’ve got a plumber. Our guests might have some construction workers. It’s going to be a fun one today!Jacob: 00:00:55Is it, David? You’re breaching the magic of podcasting and it’s going to get audited out.David: 00:01:01All right. Speaking of our guests, our guest today is Andy Carvell, partner and co-founder of Phiture, a mobile growth agency. At Phiture, Andy has worked with some of the biggest apps on the App Store, including Headspace, Spotify, Triller, and VSCO.Prior to find founding Phiture, Andy worked on the marketing and growth teams at SoundCloud.Welcome to the podcast, Andy.Andy: 00:01:23Thanks, David. A real pleasure. Thanks for inviting me on. Excited to be here.David: 00:01:27Yeah. So, you and I were chatting a little bit about your background as I was kind of prepping your bio, and you shared a really fun anecdote. So, I think I’m like, “Old man in the mobile space,” you know, or Jacob and I both; we both had apps on the App Store in 2008, you know, we were early. But you started in mobile a little, just a few years before that. Andy: 00:01:52Just a little bit more. David: 00:01:53Tell us about that. You were at Nokia making games in 1999.Andy: 00:01:58Yeah, right out of university, I graduated computer science in ‘99. I always wanted to be making games, and I was applying for roles in the games industry, and then the agent that was kind of helping me find those said, “Hey, there’s this company Nokia. They make mobile phones.”I didn’t own a mobile phone at that point. None of my friends did, but it was just kind of reaching the tipping point, and they wanted to put games on these things, and I’m like, okay, that’s sounds interesting.I went along to the interview. I really was very kind of amazed at the, you know, the R and D center there. It was like, like pretty space age, you know, they were working on some real next level shit.And, I was actually pretty excited by the idea of like cramming, you know, decent games into like 16 kilobytes, which is what I had to play with building embedded games on a black and white 84 by 48 pixel display.Jacob: 00:02:55So, I was going to ask, are we talking like Snake, or are we talking like Java level stuff?Andy: 00:03:00It was pre Java. It was an embedded game. So, I was coding in C in Assembly, and I basically had to like build the whole game from start to finish. We had this shared designer who did the pixel art, and I had to cram it into 16K and make it fun. Yeah.I wrote a pretty game called Space Impact there, which was released on the 3310 phone, which I think wasn’t available in America. But in the rest of world a lot of people played that game. It was like the first, side-scrolling arcade, shoot-them-up, on a mobile.David: 00:03:30That is amazing. Jacob: 00:03:31Well, it’s pretty incredible. Just even think like the iPhone wasn’t that far behind that right? Like you were doing 16K assembly and C, and like eight years later, we were going to have like open GL driven games. So just pretty wild.Andy: 00:03:51Yeah, it’s moved on a lot.David: 00:03:53So af

Watch the video version of this show on YouTube »Alex Ross is the co-founder & CEO at Gregarious, Inc. Gregarious is the company behind Greg, an app dedicated to helping people grow healthier and happier plants. Greg’s community has grown from 100 beta users in August 2020 to over 50,000 monthly active users today.Alex graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, and studied data science and statistics at MIT. Alex has worked for companies such as Cisco, The Daily Aztec, and Cannon Trading.Prior to founding Gregarious, Alex spent 4 years as Director of Engineering at Tinder. Alex also co-founded Enplug, a digital signage company that was acquired earlier this year.In this episode, you’ll learn:The two critical steps in making a successful appAn ingenious strategy for partnering your app with retail companiesWhy you should involve your customers in content creationLinks & ResourcesTinderEnplugfitbod appY Combinator (YC)Alex Ross’ LinksGreg appAlex’s Twitter: @AreteRossJob opportunities at GregariousAlex’s LinkedInGregarious, Inc. on LinkedInFollow Us:David Barnard: https://twitter.com/drbarnardJacob Eiting: https://twitter.com/jeitingRevenueCat: https://twitter.com/RevenueCatSub Club: https://twitter.com/SubClubHQEpisode TranscriptAlex: 00:00:00The two steps in making a successful app business are make something worth using, and then put it in front of the people who would use it.If you have a plant, and you don’t know what to do with it, we solve that problem.So, what we did is we reached out to a bunch of plant retailers, “Hey, we will help your customers have a positive outcome with your product.”Can you put in our little QR code? And now when these retailers ship out a new plant, every single one of them has this little QR code in it.It led to our first 15,000 users, I’d say. David: 00:00:30Welcome to the Sub Club podcast. I’m your host, David Bernard. And with me as always, Jacob Eiting. Hello, Jacob.Jacob: 00:00:53Happy to be here. David: 00:00:55You sound incredibly happy.Jacob: 00:00:57It’s great. It’s a Friday, David. The sun is shining. They’re grilling a bunch of chickens in my hometown. I got nothing to complain about. It’s gonna be great.David: 00:01:05Our guest today is Alex Ross, founder and CEO at Gregarious, makers of Greg, an app to help you grow healthier and happier plants. Prior to founding Gregarious Alex spent four years as director of engineering at Tinder.Alex also co-founded Enplug, a digital signage company that was acquired earlier this year. Welcome to the podcast, Alex.Alex: 00:01:27Thank you guys. Good to see you. Thanks, David, Jacob.Jacob: 00:01:29Hi. David: 00:01:30So, I’m going to try really hard this whole podcast and not call you Greg, but I’ve made that mistake.Jacob: 00:01:36I was thinking like, I get like annoying company name questions. Sometimes. I’m like, I’m sure you get more worse than me.Alex: 00:01:43But I’m considering just legally adopting Greg as alias or something. Jacob: 00:01:48Yeah. You know, I mean, that’s a news cycle right there. A little bit of earned PR. David: 00:01:55So I wanted to ask you, so obviously, you know, director of engineering at Tinder that’s, I mean, what a rocket ship that must’ve been quite a wild ride. So, tell me a little bit about, about how you ended up at Tinder and then, you know, if you do have any fun, war stories from there, that’d be great to hear. Alex: 00:02:16Yeah, definitely. It was a rocket ship. Definitely some war stories, some wins, some losses. So, I came across Tinder and I was looking to get into like a consumer application. so I was interviewing with Uber and Twitter, and then I came across Tinder on an angel list. Actually the head of recruiting at the time reached out to me and I kind of took it on a whim.To be honest, I had not used the app before, before even interviewing or anything. that’s kind of a challenge for Tinder is like, do you, how many of the teammates need to use Tinder? Because a lot of people are married and in relationships, and those are great people to have on the team. And so it makes it odd, and kind of difficult or complicated. But, basically I joined when it was around 70 people, if I recall. So, it was a pretty small team. There was already a global user base, so it was one of the scrappiest, global brands I think probably has ever existed. Because this was all right before Tinder or right around the time that Tinder launched its first monetization efforts.And so there wasn’t really awareness as to like, great, there’s this like large, global, many millions of people are using this thing, but is it going to make money? Right? That was still an open question at the time that I joined. So, yeah, basically I joined and it was very, it was definitely still a startup.And, so there was not a lot of structure and I think my manager changed on the first day, like the person I was talking about working with's desk changed, but I had a great time and basically I ended up cre

David Smith is a full-time independent app developer. Since 2006, David has owned and operated a small company focusing on creating applications for the iPhone and Apple Watch.David has built many successful apps over the years. His most recent app, Widgetsmith, went viral and hit #1 on the App Store. It has over 50 million downloads. David’s other successful apps include Watchsmith, Pedometer++, and Sleep++.David also co-hosts a weekly podcast called Under the Radar, where he and his co-host Mario Arment discuss Apple-related topics.In this episode, you’ll learn:How to transition from a hobbyist to a full-time app developerTwo big mistakes to avoid when starting out as an app developerHow customers find new apps in 2021The biggest waste of time and money for an app developerLinks & ResourcesThe LibriVox projectMirror appLaunch Center Pro appDavid Smith’s LinksDavid’s WebsiteAudiobooks appWidgetsmith appWatchsmith appPedometer++ appSleep++ appUnder the Radar podcastDavid’s Twitter: @_DavidSmithiOS Version StatsFollow Us:David Barnard: https://twitter.com/drbarnardJacob Eiting: https://twitter.com/jeitingLike this episode?Subscribe to Sub Club on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to get the latest news on mobile subscription apps.Episode TranscriptDavid Smith: 00:00:00I’ve launched, I think it’s 56 or 57 apps at this point, and all but about six of them have completely failed. I say that mostly because I’ve launched more failures probably than anyone in the App Store in some ways, and that’s the way that you can end up with success, I’ve just kept trying, and it got me that little baseline of income that it was like, okay, I’m not just wasting my time here.David: 00:00:19Welcome to the Sub Club podcast. I’m your host, David Barnard, and with me as always Jacob Eiting. Hello Jacob.Jacob: 00:00:43Hi David Number one, How are you?David: 00:00:46I’m good. Our guest today, maybe number two, is David Smith, long time indie developer and podcaster. Starting with Audiobooks in 2009, David has built many successful apps over the years, including Widgetsmith. Pedometer. His most recent app, Widgetsmith went viral on TikTok, and hit number one in the App Store.Welcome David.David Smith: 00:01:10Thank you, It’s great to be here.David: 00:01:11Yeah, it’s great to chat. We’ve chatted in person a few times, and bumped into each other at WWDC over the years. You’ve been doing this pretty much since the very beginning, right? Audiobooks came out in 2009, when did you actually start working on that?David Smith: 00:01:27So, It wasn’t even my first first app. I think my first app that never went anywhere, it was launched in 2008. So, I mean, I was within a couple of months of the App Store launching. So I’ve been doing it essentially as long as you could, and I think I started working on, oh yeah. Audiobooks, the end of 2008.And it’s just kind of grown from there. So it’s about 13 years in the App Store.David: 00:01:46Like me and Jacob, actually, we both had apps...Jacob: 00:01:50In the on days of paid up front, and only 200 apps on the App Store, and all that. It is a good time. Were you a developer, like a Mac developer before that? Or how did you trip into iOS?David Smith: 00:02:06Sure. I was a web developer before I did this, and so, I mean, honestly, I started writing apps before I even actually owned an iPhone. I just, it seemed like a good opportunity and I wasn’t particularly happy where I was at work and it was just something that I thought would be interesting opportunity.And I started learning and didn’t know what I was doing for a long time, but just kept at it. And so it’s just one of those things I got into mostly because it seemed like a good opportunity at the time. And so, you know, I just, eventually I initially was doing some web consulting as well as my iOS work.And eventually they just, the web consulting disappeared and it became iOS full-time, and that’s sort of been the story for more than a, you know, like 10 years now probably.Jacob: 00:02:47Yeah, no, I was, Kind of similar, like I just saw it coming and it was like, Hmm, maybe I should. And I went and picked up the Macco OS, the the Hillegass book and learned Mac OS programming, like, yeah, because there wasn’t the iOS book, right. There was no iOS, it was iPhone iOS. But yeah, it was a different time, fewer apps way, smaller community.So, yeah. Interesting decade.David: 00:03:15I do want to start by digging into the story of Audiobooks, and, I think one of the, one of the interesting things to me, because it happened to me as well, is how having this kind of foundation app that, that started in 2009, that did well enough. And, and I’m, I kind of jumping ahead here a little bit, but I, I think if I know your story correctly, Audiobooks is kind of what helped you make the leap to be full-time indie. And then once you become full-time indie, you started to have the time to experiment with all these other apps, and a similar thing with me, like I’ve had a co

Our guest today is Ben Bajarin, CEO and Principal Analyst at Creative Strategies. For the past 20 years, Ben has been studying the consumer tech market and providing actionable insight and strategic recommendations to many of the top technology companies in the world.In this episode, you’ll hear about:The results from Ben’s survey of iOS developersWhy positive developer sentiment is invaluable to platform ownersHow much developers think is fair for Apple to chargeFollow Us:David Barnard: https://twitter.com/drbarnardJacob Eiting: https://twitter.com/jeitingBen Bajarin: https://twitter.com/BenBajarin

In this episode, you’ll hear about:The pros and cons of selling an app on your own versus going through a brokerWhat to watch out for during negotiationsWhat to expect after selling your appFollow Us:David Barnard: https://twitter.com/drbarnardJacob Eiting: https://twitter.com/jeitingEric Owens: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericowens/Here’s the Outline of Our Interview with Eric:(1:00) Eric and David have worked together before!(1:25) How Eric became an app broker.(5:09) The top reasons app developers decide to sell their businesses; capital gains taxes; David’s experience selling his first app.(8:03) Why people buy app businesses.(10:11) Do app buyers typically purchase successful apps or fixer-uppers?(13:35) The benefits of selling a successful app “prematurely;” David’s Mirror app.(15:25) The challenges of selling iOS apps: iCloud, Passbook, Sign In with Apple, Catalyst; Gas Cubby.(19:13) How app business valuations are calculated; the App Store Small Business program.(23:34) Adding subscriptions to an app increases its value to buyers.(26:51) What kind of documentation you should have in place before selling your app.(28:34) How buyers approach purchasing an app from a solo developer.(30:27) Finding app buyers.(33:33) App business sales increased during the COVID-19 pandemic.(34:00) The pros and cons of selling your app on your own; Flippa.(39:17) Going through a broker helps you stay emotionally detached during the negotiation process.(40:35) Fiduciary duties; representing app buyers versus sellers.(42:38) What to watch out for during negotiations; low-ball offers; due diligence.(48:17) The app sale closing process; escrow.com; closing costs.(50:21) Brokerage fees; working with Eric.(51:00) What comes after an app sale? Non-compete agreements; handoffs.(57:00) Connect with Eric on LinkedIn or get in touch at appbusinessbrokers.com.Quotes:“Any business with any kind of subscription revenue is always going to sell for higher, no matter what it is. Buyers love that... The one move you can make in any business that will increase your valuation is to add some kind of subscription revenue.” - Eric“As I get later in my life, [I’ve realized] brokers are amazing. Think about it: as an app developer, you spend 99% of your time being an app developer, right? And then you have this 1% critical action, which is the sale… It’s really useful to have somebody on your side who’s done this before and can tell you what you’re doing that’s wrong and what you’re doing that’s right.” - Jacob“If you’re an inexperienced seller of something, get somebody to help you out.” - Jacob“I forget what I paid Eric; it was probably $20,000 or $30,000. But to me, I saw it as worth every penny because he helped bring the market that got the highest and best value of the app… Having access to that pool of buyers and having Eric’s experience helping me walk through it, I think it made up the [cost] of whatever I paid him in the valuation that I got in the sale.” - David“I’ve sold three apps, and it’s been huge for me. It’s helped pay off debt, it’s helped put a little money away, and helped me sleep better at night. There’s a lot of reasons to do it.” - David“There’s a lot of people who can’t make [apps]. I think as indie app people, we just kind of take for granted — because we hang out on Twitter with a bunch of other people who know how to make apps — that it’s not that unique. And it’s a tough business; it’s not always easy to make an app that’s going to make you a lot of money. But if you factor in… the fact that not everybody can make these things, that can be a really useful tool for you to unlock liquidity earlier than you would otherwise.” - Jacob“I think people should have the mindset… that you are building an asset that you can sell someday if you want to. You don’t ever have to, but build something that is sellable. If people can treat it more as an investment, that can see people through some of the dark times, the challenges of being an entrepreneur.” - EricLike this episode?Subscribe to Sub Club on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to get the latest news on mobile subscription apps.

Our guest today is Leon Sasson, Co-Founder & CTO at Rise Science, a company dedicated to helping people overcome sleep challenges, feel better, and be more productive.Since its inception in 2014, Rise has primarily focused on elite athletes, helping some of the top NFL, NBA, and college football teams with their sleep. But in 2019 they decided to enter the consumer subscription space, which became even more important in 2020 as COVID challenged their B2B model. Leon and the team at Rise went from no experience in consumer subscriptions in late 2019 to over $500k in ARR today.In this episode, you’ll hear about:The blurring line between B2B and consumer SaaSA/B testing and subscription lifestyle analysisHow to create a fantastic onboarding experience for your usersFollow Us:David Barnard: https://twitter.com/drbarnardJacob Eiting: https://twitter.com/jeitingLeon Sasson: https://twitter.com/leonsassonHere’s the Outline of Our Interview with Leon:(1:25) Leon’s background in sleep research and the founding of Rise; FitBit.(3:38) Rise started as a solution for elite athletes; the NFL; sleep hardware devices.(4:38) How the COVID-19 pandemic prompted Rise to switch to consumer subscriptions.(5:26) The difference between the B2B product and the Rise app.(7:13) Pre-launch user cohorts and test strategies; TestFlight; Typeform.(9:36) How Apple responded to the switch from B2B to consumer app; Notion; the Apple App Review process.(11:32) Selling digital services to enterprises; Salesforce.(16:01) How other products are investing in enterprise; Slack; Calm; Headspace; Kaiser Permanente.(18:08) App user licenses; Family Sharing; Business vs. Personal SaaS.(23:00) User onboarding best practices; Leon’s controversial opinion on adding friction.(32:18) A/B testing and statistical significance; user research.(39:31) Simultaneous experiments; R.(41:52) The downstream effects of A/B experiments; counter-metrics; monthly subscriptions and free trials.(47:57) Subscription lifecycle analysis; RevenueCat charts; Amplitude.(50:00) Pricing consumer apps; the freemium model.(51:56) Connect with Leon on Twitter or by email at [email protected]:“The most important thing you can do for your health and energy during the day is sleep.” - Leon“I would suggest to anybody who’s in that pre-launch phase, if you can get some situation … where you have a trickle of users and you can start to make decisions integrated with user feedback, that’s so much better than flying blind.” - Jacob“The activation energy of one consumer subscriber is so much lower than one enterprise deal.” - Jacob“You need to figure out who’s the person that buys your product at a company—and what do they care about and what do they need to justify the budget? And if you do, it’s great because they can pay more than consumers. And I think that’s sort of the holy grail. You can sell the same product for more expensive because they get more value [out of your product].” - Leon“There are ways to sell services outside of the App Store. It’s just generally a way worse experience for users.” - Leon“The [purpose] of onboarding is never to show people how to use the app. People don’t really want a tutorial—if you need a tutorial, it’s too complicated. They just want to know how what you’re doing and what your product is doing affects their lives and why they should care about it.” - Leon“The key for your onboarding … is that you match intent to friction. Part of the reason best practices around onboarding are to reduce friction is because people come into so many apps with so much less intent… You just have to match that.” - David“Testing is not going to make a great product. Having a really good A/B testing organization and team that can A/B test is not going to lead to the best product ever.” - Leon“You can much more easily A/B test your way into a bad product than into a good product if product isn’t the focus around the testing.” - DavidLike this episode?Subscribe to Sub Club on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to get the latest news on mobile subscription apps.

In this episode, you’ll hear about:Why most apps should do at least some paid user acquisitionHow paid user acquisition has evolved over the past decadeHow to think about marketing in the post-IDFA era

Our guests today are Majd Taby and Jasper Hauser, co-founders of the Apple Design Award-winning app, Darkroom.Prior to founding Darkroom, Majd spent time at Apple, Facebook, and Instagram working as a product-focused engineer. Alongside Darkroom, Majd has also published a photobook documenting the Syrian Refugee Crisis.Jasper is a 3-time Apple Design Award winner, with 18 years of industry experience in creating digital products and mentoring people. Prior to founding Darkroom with Majd, Jasper founded Sofa, which was acquired by Facebook in 2011.In this episode, you’ll hear about:What Apple looks for in a featured appWhy getting press isn’t always great for conversionsThe benefits and drawbacks of bootstrapping your appFollow Us:David Barnard: https://twitter.com/drbarnardJacob Eiting: https://twitter.com/jeitingMajd Taby: https://twitter.com/jtabyJasper Hauser: https://twitter.com/jasperhauserHere’s the Outline of Our Interview with Majd and Jasper:(2:06) Majd’s feature on The Launched Podcast; Jasper’s feature on Design Details.(3:08) Majd’s background at Instagram and passion for photography; Matt Brown.(5:00) How Darkroom was founded; iOS 8 PhotoKit.(6:04) What differentiates Darkroom from other photo editing apps.(9:23) Jasper’s background in design and photography; joining the Darkroom team.(11:19) Why Apple featured Darkroom so heavily after launch; The Factory; Rdio.(13:46) Darkroom’s pricing structure and business model; VSCO; Snapseed.(18:09) How useful is it to have your app featured by Apple?(19:03) Frustrating aspects of App Analytics traffic attribution.(21:39) What happened after Darkroom launched—and plateaued.(24:36) Product-market fit: Darkroom had 450,000 MAUs and was making $70,000 per year even after Majd stopped working on it; Heap.(30:58) Combining Apple’s design principles with Facebook’s analytical, process-driven thinking.(33:06) User feedback, experimentation, and lessons learned.(37:04) The switch from in-app purchases to subscriptions; grandfathered IAP users.(40:28) Is the subscription model right for every app?(42:46) How users reacted to Darkroom adding subscriptions.(45:40) The CSS Flywheel.(46:00) Why Majd and Jasper haven’t taken VC money.(50:40) Darkroom’s $5M goal; diversification and optimization strategies.(57:50) Why Facebook ads aren’t right for every app; organic growth versus paid acquisition.Quotes:“When Apple features your app, it’s great and you get a lot of downloads. But those are often very low-intent users.” - David“Apple featuring you in and of itself might not be always the most valuable, just from a conversion perspective. But when you think about it from a legitimizing you as a company or product perspective, it is extremely useful.” - Jasper“Part of why a lot of indie apps just don’t ever make sense or get built is like, if you can go make $200k+ at Facebook, $120k really is not comparable. A lot of indies are sacrificing to keep the app going.” - David“Indie is still an investment. I don’t think we as an industry actually appreciate that. Majd made an investment. I made an investment. Not by putting cash in the company but just like living literally off our own savings.” - Jasper“The hardest part… is having the conviction that the path is worth going on and will lead us to a place (and then scale) that is worth spending the energy to get there. And the second part of that is saying no to every opportunity along the way to just like go chase the money.” - Majd“We had tried really, really hard to make Darkroom a smooth experience for our free tier. We removed so much friction that people started slipping.” - Majd“We tried a lot of different things. There wasn’t like one thing we did and then the revenue doubled—no. It was like we tried 15 things and all of those cumulatively led to revenue doubling.” - Jasper“Always be eager and looking for the easiest path forward and the path that’s most likely to match what you care about… I think that’s important. You’re the ones who are going to wake up every day and do this thing, so do what you want.” - JacobLike this episode?Subscribe to Sub Club on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to get the latest news on mobile subscription apps.

Our guest today is Ryan Jones, long-time indie developer of Weather Line and Flighty. Before going full-time on his apps in 2019, Ryan spent time in operations at Apple and as Entrepreneur-in-Residence at McGarrah Jessee, a full-service product marketing agency.In this episode, you’ll hear about:(3:53) Ryan’s background in mechanical engineering and the oil industry.(6:35) Ryan’s first app, Weather Line, hit #12 in the App Store(11:09) Weather Line’s Super Forecast(16:21) Networking with famous app bloggers as a growth hack; the “reply guy”(34:41) The fine line between zero tracking and anonymous tracking.(44:31) Integrating customer feedback into your app; user studies.(46:22) Ryan’s controversial opinion on customer support.Follow Us:David Barnard: https://twitter.com/drbarnardJacob Eiting: https://twitter.com/jeitingRyan Jones: https://twitter.com/rjonesyQuotes:“When I talk to people about apps… the first thing that they say is, ‘What makes it different?’ And I have to answer that question. And in my head, I know all the tiny little things that add up to make it different. But [that question] really does cut through what users are trying to figure out… just tell me what makes it different.” - Jesse“Being clear and clearly communicating that value prop is more important than it being clever or this, like, amazing brand.” - David“If you’re helpful, people pay attention. If you’re not just… asking for stuff [and] saying stupid stuff… If you talk to press, if you talk to influential people, if you’re actually helpful and give helpful responses and [are] insightful and blog about things and talk about things—that’s how you get people’s attention.” - David“A good way to bootstrap a following is to have something interesting to say.” - Jacob“There is a niche market for privacy-centric digital products, and that niche will probably grow—but as a percentage of the entire market, it probably is a single digit-percentage. And maybe it’s going to grow… but I doubt we’re going to see half the market reading those things and picking apps based on privacy labels and stuff like that.” - David“I was a pretty big [user tracking] naysayer before I had more experience. I was like, ‘You don’t really need that—just listen to your users, talk to them in customer support and Twitter, and do user studies. [But] you… can’t really get a replacement for [tracking customer behavior]… You just have to do it in a respectful way.” - Ryan“User studies are key, and it’s a thing I constantly remind myself to do. And it’s freaking painful, if we’re being honest. It’s hard work. They just want to tell you the small little fix that they want you to do. But nine times out of ten, the reason that they want that small little fix is because you failed at something way upstream—and you have to keep digging at it to get it. And it’s hard.” - Ryan“The people who email you and ask support questions, they’re the ones who care. They’re your real customers. The people who don’t care, they just stop using the app—they’re gone, they’re out.” - David“It’s not a bad sign when you have lots of support [tickets]. That’s a good sign, actually.” - Jacob“Who writes in? It’s folks that have found the edge of your product. And that’s super useful as a product creator. They have found where your product doesn’t quite meet their need, or they have been frustrated. Sometimes it’s a simple thing… and you answer that question, but you learn a little bit… It also gives you some data around the trade-offs you’ve made.” - Jacob“You have to make a decision: Is support a cost center for your company? Or is it part of the product?” - JacobLike this episode?Subscribe to Sub Club on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to get the latest news on mobile subscription apps.

Our guest today is Ed Zitron, the founder and CEO of EZPR, a media relations company based in San Francisco. Ed has worked with everyone from drone-maker Skydio to game-maker PUBG to app-maker SmartNews. He has a unique approach to media relations and is quite effective at helping his clients get results.In this episode, you’ll hear about:(4:41) Why PR is so much more difficult these days; Facebook; Cambridge Analytica; Theranos.(11:37) Joanna Stern may be the best tech journalist working today; The Verge; Engadget.(12:55) Does cold emailing tech journalists still work?; DoNotPay.(16:42) How to pitch your app to a tech journalist; Sarah Perez.(18:38) Getting press coverage in large vs. niche publications; catering to journalists’ interests; Skydio.(26:40) Make it super easy for tech journalists to write about your app; hero images.(27:57) You should hire a PR agency if you truly have a special app; Wyze; Meater.(30:04) Don’t waste money on a press release—you don’t need one; Unbox Therapy.(33:13) PR vs. direct marketing; Cheddar.(46:15) The best way to interact with journalists: Be human, be useful, and be respectful; Suhail Doshi.Follow Us:David Barnard: https://twitter.com/drbarnardJacob Eiting: https://twitter.com/jeitingEd Zitron: https://twitter.com/edzitronQuotes:“Journalists generally want to hear about things they’re interested in or their readers might be interested in. Seems obvious, but it is not. Indeed, many PR people do not act that way.” - Ed“I feel like tech journalism needs more [joyful enthusiasm]. It is a lot of fun watching someone whose job it is to be critical genuinely be won over by something.” - Ed“The big secret of PR is that every journalist pretty much tells you what they want if you go on Twitter and read their tweets and articles.” - Ed “If you’re working with a PR agency, go month-to-month, first of all. Don’t sign on for multiple months—just don’t do it. But also I would argue you want to make sure that there are actually journalists writing about this sort of thing.” - Ed“As an app developer, there’s nothing wrong with you reading a whole bunch of stuff and emailing the reporter with 90-110 words and saying, ‘This is my app, this is what it does, this is why it’s good.’” - Ed“You have to think about [a journalist’s] motivation, what their job is. Their job is to inform readers, and cynically, at some point, it’s also to get clicks. There is an aspect of understanding their business model.” - David“When you’re early on, the best thing to do is go look for those niche publications, niche YouTubers, niche sources of attention that are really so deep into your target market, and that’s going to be 10X more effective than cold emailing TechCrunch. And then as you grow and have a broader-market app, then you can think about working with Ed.” - David“An agency can cost between $8,000 and $25,000 a month. If you look at that and it’s going to be make-or-break money for your business, it’s the wrong time to do PR.” - Ed“Start smaller. Start with people who are going to really care… People who are really into what you’re doing are so much more effective than a lukewarm writeup on TechCrunch.” - Ed“[PR] is not this one-in, one-out thing. It’s this beat of a drum. You’re building… a brand. Sometimes brand leads to downloads. Sometimes it leads to hiring people. Sometimes it leads to investors. It’s building this portfolio of social proof that you’re something.” - JacobLike this episode?Subscribe to Sub Club on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to get the latest news on mobile subscription apps.

Our guest today is Faye Keegan, co-founder and CTO of Dipsea. Part technology company and part story studio, Dipsea is the first audio platform for women's sexual wellness. Prior to founding Dipsea, Faye spent time at Neighborly as a software engineer and Bridgewater as an investment associate. With a background in economics and investment analysis, Faye isn’t your typical startup CTO.In this episode, you’ll hear about:(4:16) The growing popularity of audio as a medium; Headspace; Calm.(11:21) Building a content library for a SaaS app; content analytics; Elevate.(17:00) The challenges of building a sexual wellness app for the app stores; HBO’s Game of Thrones; the Showtime app.(22:59) Dipea’s tech stack; Firebase; RevenueCat.(34:29) Scaling a SaaS app team; hiring for different strengths and a shared product vision.(36:55) How Dipsea is expanding into new uses cases: self-improvement and sleep.(38:28) User engagement; getting feedback from users on what to build next.(40:00) What’s the future of Dipsea?Follow Us:David Barnard: https://twitter.com/drbarnardJacob Eiting: https://twitter.com/jeitingFaye Keegan: https://twitter.com/itisthefayeDownload Dipsea:iOSAndroidQuotes:“Subscription … is an exploding space. People are getting so much more used to consuming premium media on their phones and paying for it.” - Faye“There can be an advantage, tactically, to raising [money] before you’re in market because maybe you don’t get that product-market fit right away. Sometimes what’s inside the box, if the box is closed, is a little more enticing to investors.” - Jacob“The number-one rule I have for tech stack is if you’re building it from scratch, you probably haven’t googled it… There are so many great tools out there.” - Faye“I’m a huge fan of … Firebase and RevenueCat. I don’t have stickers on my computer, but those would be the two.” - Faye“The majority of consumer subscription apps — you’re not building new technology. You’re building a great product and a great experience. You should spend your engineering time on things that matter.” - Faye“Generally, it’s about leveraging really great tools that offload your engineering time into the stuff where you have an edge as a company.” - Faye“There’s going to be one thing your company does that’s different from every other company — and that’s the thing that you should put all your energy into. And then everything else, just solve for as quickly as possible [in a way that] doesn’t compromise the ability to achieve the one thing.” - Jacob“The learning curve once something is in market is totally different — it’s like a totally different universe — than the learning curve of you and your friends talking about it.” - FayeLike this episode?Subscribe to Sub Club on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to get the latest news on mobile subscription apps.

Our guest today is Eric Crowley, a tech investment banker with GP Bullhound, focusing on consumer subscription software (CSS), enterprise software, and financial technology. With investments in companies ranging from Spotify to Fishbrain, and clients such as AllTrails, Partnerize, and Motif, GP Bullhound provides transaction advice and capital to many of the leaders in the consumer subscription software space.In this episode, you’ll hear about:(8:52) Prediction: There will be 50 more publicly-traded CSS businesses in 10 years.(25:38) Web 3.0 is subscription-only CSS services.(32:30) Cost structures for CSS vs. SaaS; Calendly.(49:08) The evolving investment ecosystem: what does the future of CSS look like? Follow Us:David Barnard: https://twitter.com/drbarnardJacob Eiting: https://twitter.com/jeitingEric Crowley: https://twitter.com/crowxuQuotes:“An easy bet to make is that there will be 50 more CSS publicly-traded businesses in 10 years than there are today.” - Eric“My thesis is that if you fast-forward 5 years or even 2 years, I bet most people will be subscribing to 4 or 5 different things — through their phone only. And I bet that’ll be closer to 10 in the next 3 years.” - Eric“The exciting thing about this space is that entrepreneurs are building better products.” - Eric“Consumers have been conditioned, just like CTOs and businesses were, to pay for software — because it makes your life better.” - Eric“The thing that I get excited about with CSS is that it can be done with very little capital raised.” - Eric“I think you’re going to see people see value in these services because they streamline your life. They make things easier, either in your professional work or your personal work, and the idea of $10 a year for something is not that material.” - Eric“Looking at all these trends — people paying for podcasts, things like OnlyFans and Substack — we’re seeing these financial gatekeepers, or barriers to the direct exchange of value between very disparate creators and consumers, coming down.” - JacobLike this episode?Subscribe to Sub Club on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to get the latest news on mobile subscription apps.

Darius Mora is the Chief Marketing Officer at Reflectly, the world’s largest journaling app. Reflectly is consistently in the top 5 Health & Fitness iPhone apps in the US, competing with companies 10X its size. Over the past 6 months, Reflectly has broadened its scope, acquiring 8 new apps in the mental fitness space.Darius has been in the app space for almost a decade and founded 4 app startups prior to joining Reflectly in 2018. He’s been focused on ASO, free marketing, paid user acquisition, and retention for both Android and iOS apps.In this episode, you’ll hear about:(2:58) How Darius joined Reflectly.(4:48) How Reflectly added subscriptions and grew to 12 million users.(13:40) 3 solutions for getting past the growth “glass ceiling;” second product-market fit.(18:57) User retention and churn; the “leaky bucket;” Apple’s 85/15 revenue split.(24:52) A quick and easy hack for boosting retention: add paid subscriptions.(29:28) Split-testing strategies; Amplitude; Mixpanel; RevenueCat.(44:43) Advertising on TikTok vs. Instagram.Follow Us:David Barnard: https://twitter.com/drbarnardJacob Eiting: https://twitter.com/jeitingDarius Mora: https://www.linkedin.com/in/moravcikFollow Reflectly:WebsiteApp StoreGoogle Play StoreInstagramTwitterQuotes:“I’ve had 25 apps on the App Store, and I feel like I’ve learned more from the failures than the successes.” - David“[With my first app] we made all the usual mistakes… we spent half a year building it without talking to a single user, released it — crickets.” - Darius11:30 “I think in SaaS, but also in consumer apps, the need for capital is going down… infrastructure can be rented, things can be experimented with and scaled very cheaply. It really doesn’t take what it used to to get something off the ground. And I think, strategically, it’s really smart because the leaner you are, the more options you have — and options are leverage.” - Jacob“It does feel like we’re in the middle of a gold rush. There’s just huge opportunities and shiny objects every day, all around. So the hard thing is staying focused — and are you willing to wait out 5 years until you start generating that recurring annual revenue?” - Darius“Most of the things that vendors are selling at conferences [solve] problems that are fixed by a better product.” - Darius“Unless you have really good retention, you shouldn’t be doing anything else — none of the other stuff will matter.” - Darius“You can’t fix bad retention with better growth strategies.” - Darius“Retention is a metric that measures product-market fit; it’s not a goal in itself. If you don’t have retention, it’s not a retention problem — it’s a product-market fit problem.” - Jacob“The truth is, a lot of times monetization is easier than retention. If you can figure out how to build an amazing product that works, monetization is not really difficult.” - Darius“It’s nice to get annual subscriptions because you get all the money up front, but a lot of times companies will get more money from doing the monthly because you can price it higher compared to the annual. And you get a higher LTV down the line, but it comes after a couple of months instead of all the money up front. So depending on what stage you’re in and how much pressure you [have for] scaling, you can decide which one you’re going to push more.” - Darius“When you’re running ads on any platform, it’s quantity over quality. Don’t show the market what you think is good. Show them everything you’ve got, and they’ll tell you what’s good.” - Darius

Today on the podcast we have two guests from Big Sky Health: Vu Pham, who works on the product team, and his colleague Nick Robinson, Chief Business Officer.Big Sky Health was founded to help people live healthier, longer lives with the help of technology. They are currently working on 3 apps: Zero, the world's most popular fasting app, Less, an app for more mindful drinking, and Oak, a meditation and breathing app.In this episode, you’ll hear about:(6:07) Zero helped create the “fasting app” category.(9:17) How Zero is scaling health advice to millions of patients; Dr. Peter Attia.(13:13) Striking a balance between free features and paywalled premium content.(25:44) Data tracking; long-term revenue goals and retention.(32:38) Balancing a mission-driven mindset with paid conversions and return on ad spend.(41:33) Business success metrics; ARR; volume vs. conversion.(46:15) Forecasting ARR with auto-renewal status; A/B tests; churn.Follow Us:David Barnard: https://twitter.com/drbarnardJacob Eiting: https://twitter.com/jeitingVu Pham: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vuprofile/Nick Robinson: https://twitter.com/njrconceptsZero Fasting Links:WebsiteApp StoreGoogle Play StoreInstagramTwitterQuotes:“We’re in this place now where we have these small apps that are really interactive, engaging, content delivery platforms — and they allow these people with value to add to people’s lives to reach them in a way… that television, radio, books, or podcasts never could.” - Jacob“It’s using content plus technology, forming community modes around it — but it’s all about amplifying these niche desires, these niche needs that people have. And you kind of turn into a mini TV network that’s better and it’s optimized.” - Nick“We know a lot about you as a user, what your goals are, where you are in your health journey, and we can contextually provide content to you in the moment of need.” - Nick“Working with RevenueCat made our steps leading up to launch a lot easier.” - Vu“I hear this all the time from devs who are nervous about this transition. They’re always nervous about, ‘Oh, what are these people gonna say?’ And there are a lot of public examples of apps getting beat up about [monetizing], and I’m like, ‘Listen, you were subsidizing them — they really weren’t your customers. They really didn’t see the value in it that you do. It’s your product; you’re resetting where that value bar is. So if they’re upset, it’s like, ‘Well… it was good while it lasted. I’m sorry, but I’ve got to move on.” - Jacob“[Free users] are huge vectors for growth for a business like this because those people, even if they’re not paying you dollars, they’re telling their friends, they’re using [your app], they’re engaging more deeply.” - Jacob“It’s crazy the number of people that do a first download of Zero from a text message. It’s huge.”- Nick“For the same revenue earned, would you rather have a small user base and a really, really high conversion rate? Or would we rather have a really small conversion rate, but a huge user base?” - VuLike this episode?Subscribe to Sub Club on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to get the latest news on mobile subscription apps.

While in college Zach built Hashtag Expert, an app for finding top-performing hashtags. After growing it organically for a bit, he started doing paid acquisition and quickly scaled it to hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in revenue. You can see exactly how much Zach spent to grow Hashtag Expert to that level because he publishes an interactive dashboard that shows the past couple years of income and expenses. Zach is now writing an email newsletter on his process of building a new app business with the goal of earning $100k in profit within the first 6 months.In this episode, you’ll hear about:(2:28) How Hashtag Expert was born.(7:58) Reporting in Facebook ads; Zach’s ad strategy as a bootstrapped app company.(19:40) Pricing and paywall placement experiments; the elastic demand curve; Jake Mor.(35:10) Zach’s latest project: a meal planning app that helps with weight loss; Weight Watchers; MyFitnessPal.(41:11) The status of the $100k app challenge 3 months in.Follow Us:David Barnard: https://twitter.com/drbarnardJacob Eiting: https://twitter.com/jeitingZach Shakked: https://twitter.com/zachshakkedQuotes:“[Hashtag Expert] definitely changed how I think about branding an app. If you make an app, it should have one really good functionality. And then if you want to build another piece of functionality that’s similar but not exactly part of it, then separating it out into its own app can be another way to get way more users because you have a whole new set of organic traffic to get.” - Zach“If you get somebody on a subscription, you know that they’re willing to pay, and so then you can push those to all your other subscription apps. It’s a smart strategy.” - David“[With paid ads] you’re basically building a money-printing machine. Even if you’re at break-even, if I pay $10 to get somebody and they spend $10 and I don’t profit immediately, the next year or the year after, I could make money. And that just allows you to build a substantial revenue monster.” - Zach“If you had a machine where you could literally put in one dollar and get back two, how much money would you put into it? Literally every dollar you had! Once that clicked in my head, I started spending on ads a lot.” - Zach“Something about showing the product as like, ‘Hey, this costs money; this isn’t a free product’ — that changes how people view it. It’s like, “Oh, OK, I have to pay for this.” - Zach“Meeting people where they’re at and giving them more options to pay, I think, is compelling.” - David“The narrative that subscriptions in general are a way to trick users into paying more money is, I think, more and more not becoming the case.” - Jacob“That’s a really savvy thing, I mean, outside of app businesses in general. Validate — just get some validation, some heat.” - Jacob“I think sometimes entrepreneurs can get caught up in themselves and believe some demand exists for something because they care about it — but you really have to take that extra step to be like, ‘Are there 10 other people I can find that also care?’” - Jacob“There are dozens of different use cases for every app, and if you’re at scale advertising and you hit a ceiling and you’re trying to unlock additional channels for revenue, then [multi-channel optimization] is naturally the next point.” - Zach“I never saw somebody being super, ultra-transparent about how they’re doing things — like literally documenting exactly how they named their app and exactly how they think about an app idea. There’s a lot of high-level advice out there but not a ton of micro, super focused, super transparent advice.” - ZachLike this episode?Subscribe to Sub Club on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to get the latest news on mobile subscription apps.

Since Apple’s big announcement about upcoming privacy changes in iOS 14, mobile app developers have been scrambling to understand how these changes will affect their businesses. With IDFA effectively dead in the water, developers will no longer be able to use device-level attribution and high-resolution tracking to send targeted ads to their users. So what can they do?In this week’s episode, we asked mobile marketing expert Eric Seufert for his take. Eric has had quite a career in mobile. From VP of user acquisition at Rovio to his recent consulting projects with subscription app companies, Eric has a depth and breadth of experience with mobile apps and games that few can match. He’s also a prolific writer. He wrote a book on freemium economics and has written hundreds of insightful articles on his site Mobile Dev Memo.In this episode, you’ll hear about:(1:07) Managing user acquisition at Rovio; freemium app dynamics at scale.(6:30) Why it’s hard to determine the effect of a specific ad channel; holdout testing.(9:10) The difference between mobile and traditional advertising: response time; Pepsi Super Bowl ads.(22:10) Why Eric doesn’t like the term “user acquisition.”(31:00) Why post-IDFA is more work for advertisers but provides a bigger opportunity.(37:43) How App Store changes have shaped the entire mobile app market; Top Charts.(44:25) Prediction: SKAdNetwork changes will most likely go into effect this January.Follow Us:David Barnard: https://twitter.com/drbarnardJacob Eiting: https://twitter.com/jeitingEric Seufert: https://twitter.com/eric_seufertQuotes:“When you’re spending a lot of money and you’re showing a person five ads a day, incrementality is critical in figuring out how much value did this particular ad contribute? … That’s the more interesting question because when these budgets get really large, you get these signals coming from all these different mediums, and figuring out which of those actually drives value is more important.” - Eric“That’s what’s so interesting about the mobile ecosystem: that immediacy, that kind of lack of friction.” - Eric“Just doing the fun clicking around Facebook Ad Manager, that’s not performance marketing. That’s advertising operations or something.” - Eric“Google’s always going to tell you to spend more money. Whatever question you ask Google about improving your performance, it’s like, “Oh, just pay more money!” - David“These systems were designed to sort of alleviate that need, on the part of the advertiser, to not have to have this big team of data scientists working on these models. Like, “Hey, we’ll do it for you!” And to be honest, Google could do it better than any individual advertiser could — it’s Google. And just the fact that they’re syndicating all that data across all these different advertisers, they just have more data than any single advertiser could. And that’s a good thing.” - Eric“This is something I think Apple has failed at since the very beginning of the App Store: understanding the way their individual, seemingly small decisions end up shaping the entire market… Now we have SKAdNetwork, we have one ConversionValue, you can’t update it in the background, you can only do it once, it has these weird timers… the entire market for apps is going to reshape around the shape of SKAdNetwork versus it having been shaped around the existing tools.” - David“There’s billions and billions of dollars being generated in the App Store, and it’s such a tiny little market, so people put in the effort to find ways to game, to maximum advantage, any point of leverage that Apple gives them. So now people are poring over the SKAdNetwork documentation just trying to find ways of like well, “How can I best use ConversionValue?” It will shape the design of apps. It’s going to be a totally new design paradigm.” - Eric“I just get really scared because ultimately if [Apple gets] it wrong, we’re gonna see apps moving in a direction that just is for them to extract the most value across the ecosystem and not necessarily provide great experiences for each user. I think lower resolution tracking, in this sense, actually can lead to that.” - JacobLike this episode?Subscribe to Sub Club on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to get the latest news on mobile subscription apps.

In This EpisodeApple recently shocked the App Store developer community with news that small developers with revenue of less than $1M per year will pay a commission of 15% instead of 30%. Within hours of the news dropping, David and Jacob recorded this episode with the hottest of takes, exploring what this means for the future of the App Store.Here's what we cover in the episode:(1:32) Is this a good thing or a bad thing? (For once, David takes the cynical view!)(4:39) 97% of developers using RevenueCat qualify for the program.(7:13) What this means for ad spend, CAC, and LTV ratios.(9:26) Doing the math: How much of a difference can this really make?(14:16) 97% of developers are affected by this change — representing only 5% of all App Store revenue.(18:56) What happens if you cross the $1M revenue threshold?(26:00) The $1M “magic number”; the 85/15% split.(36:35) How Apple could help different types of businesses succeed in the App Store; Kindle.Follow Us:David Barnard: https://twitter.com/drbarnardJacob Eiting: https://twitter.com/jeitingQuotes:“Indie developers can hire out more things, like customer support. You can afford to do a lot more as a small developer and spend on tools and services and help and designers — there’s so much you can spend that money on that will improve your product, that will help you build a better business, that will lead to more innovation.” - David“What this does is it make small developers more competitive in the bids because we can spend more, so on the ad spend side of things, I think it’s a huge boon to smaller developers.” - David“I still think that the App Store economy generally is more limited on innovation not because of money but because of App Review. VCs are making decisions whether to fund or not fund a mobile company based on App Review, not the 30%. VCs recognize that the marginal costs of digital goods and services is zero. So you can stomach a 30% tax on zero-marginal-cost goods, if you can build a great product.” - David“From a more strictly innovation standpoint, it’s not the money that’s limiting innovation — it’s Apple’s stranglehold on what can and can’t [succeed in the App Store].” - David“I do think this is in some way, the perfect non-action for Apple.” - Jacob“We have to keep asking for the things that developers need, and making more money is always good! That's our mission at RevenueCat; I'm always a fan of that. - Jacob“This is a step, it’s something, and it's not insubstantial. And it's well targeted and well thought out.” - Jacob“Apple gave us a raise!” - David“Ultimately I think all these things that [Apple] could do — like changes to App Review, creating a program to reduce the App Store fee for businesses who can't make it work — all those things ultimately benefit Apple in the long run. As developers are more innovative, as more apps are able to be on the App Store, as the platform grows, they're going to make even more money. So it’s a win all around.” - DavidLike this episode?Subscribe to Sub Club on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to get the latest news on mobile subscription apps.

Starting a mobile-first subscription app business can be tough — there are a lot of decisions to make. Should you bootstrap or raise investor funding? How will you classify your business? When is the right time to monetize your app?Fortunately, you don’t have to go it alone! One of the best ways to chart your course is to learn from the experiences of developers who’ve been through the process before. And one of the best ways to do that is to go through an accelerator like Y Combinator.This week, David and Jacob caught up with Jake Mor to find out how he navigated the process of building a subscription app from the ground up. Jake is the founder of FitnessAI, an app that builds personalized weight lifting plans to help people achieve their goals without having to hire a personal trainer. The app was released in early 2019 and quickly grew to over $85k in MRR! Based in part on that growth, FitnessAI was accepted into the Y Combinator Winter 2020 batch and raised a seed round coming out of demo day.In this episode, you’ll hear about:(4:38) Jake’s first accelerator experience; co-founding Shopturn and going through Techstars.(8:44) The fitness app opportunity: market size, structured data, and machine learning.(13:20) Pricing experiments; users are willing to pay more than you think.(18:53) Scaling ad spend; what Jake learned from his first $20k.(19:02) The importance of mentorship; Bryan Welfel; JSwipe; The Beard Club.(22:15) Pro tip: Put your ad spend on a credit card to sync up with Apple’s payment schedule. (But be very careful to manage your debt!)Follow Us:David Barnard: https://twitter.com/drbarnardJacob Eiting: https://twitter.com/jeitingJake Mor: https://twitter.com/jakemorLike this episode?Subscribe to Sub Club on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to get the latest news on mobile subscription apps.

We’re at an interesting point in the evolution of the subscription app ecosystem. Mass adoption of smartphones, consumers’ increasing willingness to pay for digital services, and a better business model — Personal SaaS — are all coming together to create a huge opportunity for mobile-first subscription app developers. Just how big is this opportunity?(Full disclosure: Nico is so bullish on the future of subscription apps, he recently invested in RevenueCat!)In this episode, you’ll hear about:(4:10) The formula for a breakout SaaS business: engaged users.(5:00) Stickiness, engagement, and churn: B2B SaaS vs. consumer app businesses.(6:56) Identifying nascent markets before they become mainstream; meditation apps (Headspace & Calm).(14:00) The lines between consumer and business use cases are getting blurry.(19:51) We’re in the early stages of figuring out subscription app pricing; Salesforce.(24:46) Pricing your subscription app: balancing adoption, data collection, and user price sensitivity.(39:55) Increased mobile spending and subscription fatigue.(48:26) Sophistication of today’s apps and technology; Oura ring.Follow Us:David Barnard: https://twitter.com/drbarnardJacob Eiting: https://twitter.com/jeitingNico Wittenborn: https://twitter.com/ncsh

Welcome to the Sub Club podcast: a deep dive on building and growing subscription app businesses. Hosts David Barnard and Jacob Eiting will guide you through the ins and outs of subscription apps — sharing insider tips, predictions, and insights from industry experts.In this episode, you’ll hear about:(00:58) Meet your hosts David Barnard and Jacob Eiting.(05:11) Sub Club is the first podcast focused on subscription apps.(05:15) Personal SaaS is a nascent industry.(6:18) The first billion-dollar mobile subscription companies; Lightricks, Calm, Headspace.(16:50) How to submit feedback and suggestions for the Sub Club podcast.(37:19) New platforms and form factors; AR(44:15) The “AWS-ification” of mobile app development.Follow Us:David Barnard: https://twitter.com/drbarnardJacob Eiting: https://twitter.com/jeiting