Mark Ungerer
Where to hear and read about Mark Ungerer1 episode or test
Mark Ungerer is chief product officer at Skylight, the bootstrapped family calendar and photo frame maker, and he led the move of its subscription from $39 to $79 a year. The thing most worth learning from him is to set subscription price and paywall lines by customer emotion as well as test data, and to protect the core product people bought.
Mark Ungerer: the story and the lessons
1Mark Ungerer's role at Skylight
Ungerer is Skylight's chief product officer and runs its subscription work. Skylight sells a family calendar and photo frame at $300 to $700, plus a subscription of about $80 a year. The company is bootstrapped and profitable.
The sources say nothing about his career before Skylight.
Ungerer led the $79 plan from start to finish. Raising the plus plan from $39 to $79 a year cost minimal retention or attach. CEO Michael Segal called the effect on the ARR curve "transformative".
No retention, attach or revenue figures are given for the increase.
Ungerer reads app downloads as devices sold, not subscription health. He says health depends on how critical the device is. Most hardware subscriptions he named almost required the subscription.
One Bird Buddy owner loved the product but balked at the $60 or $90 a year price at onboarding. A Backbone owner plays daily without knowing what the subscription includes.
His target is for half of customers to call Skylight life-changing. About 20% of survey replies say so today. Segal's hypothesis is that these people each bring in dozens of customers by word of mouth.
The goal for the chief product officer is 50%, reached by building features.
2How Ungerer raised Skylight's price to $79
Ungerer tested subscription price and hardware discount together. The two trade off against margin per unit and change hardware conversion and software attach. Skylight varied both at once and modeled the combined result before choosing a price.
Calendar and frame had originally shared one $39 subscription, which likely left value on the table.
He chose $79 over a $99 price that earned slightly more. The spreadsheet showed $99 would earn a little more, but customer interviews put it near "disgust" or "not worth it yet" territory.
Skylight expects to revisit $99 as it adds more valuable features to the subscription. Segal's reason for stopping at $79: "we want good vibes to continue."
Skylight paired customer calls with quant tests, because people say one thing and do another. The biggest mistake, as Skylight sees it, is skipping the customer calls and trusting the numbers alone. Focus groups show what the market wants very quickly.
Existing subscribers were protected from the increase. They moved to a "legacy plus" plan covering frame and calendar. Anyone who had waited months and wrote in got the old price, effectively indefinitely.
Squeezing legacy customers was worth about a couple million dollars. Skylight skipped it to build for the next 10 million customers. The increase was not announced and simply appeared as the new price.
Ungerer cut checkout friction by sending QR scans to Apple in-app purchase. Non-subscribers scanned a QR code that led to a web checkout. Switching it to Apple checkout lifted conversion over 100%.
Fewer people use the QR code, so the dollar gain is smaller than the price change. Mom scans, is subscribed and is done.
Price was the lever because most families already subscribed. More than half of Calendar buyers subscribe, so attach had little room left to grow. Revenue per user was the biggest remaining lever.
3Ungerer's rules for drawing the paywall
Ungerer keeps free what the customer came to buy. On the frame, sending photos to grandma is free and video is paid. On the calendar, events, tasks and chores are free, while recipes, meals and an AI engine are paid.
His test is whether the person came, spent the money and got what they wanted. The risk is customers who feel "tricked and duped" if core features move behind the paywall.
New features launch behind the paywall instead of moving there later. Meal planning launched paid, and many such features go untested. Moving a feature out of the paywall is easy, while moving one in is very painful.
Features should be understood quickly, not discovered as a locked setting.
He watches anger in reviews and interviews, not only A/B results. Some paywalled items lifted numbers but drew begrudging or angry reactions, so Skylight reversed course.
Marketing wants to advertise the loved AI feature, but buyers who then find it paid feel surprise or frustration. Segal says disgust is the emotion to avoid when building a multi-billion dollar brand.
Skylight does not label premium features inside the product for subscribers. Hardware buyers decide after months of research and want to know the device is valuable and used daily. Renewal is high for both heavy and light users of the bundle.
4Where Ungerer's growth work fell short
The free trial test gave no lift. Skylight tried one version taking a credit card and one without. Those who opted in were about the same people who would have subscribed anyway.
Most buyers subscribe at checkout, and Skylight reached its scale without a trial.
Growth work ran on about 5% of the roadmap, so one test was all it got. With no growth PM, Skylight ran one trial test and had no time for the roughly eight follow-ups it needed. It called the trial a "Hail Mary" and is hiring its first subscription growth PM.
With few shots, the team wants to know what will work before testing, rather than testing widely.
Retail buyers set up the calendar and never find the rest of the product. Within weeks, or even days, of settling into a routine, the chance of getting them to try new features drops to near zero. Customers say they know it can do much more.
Segal says this is the problem his product chief is cracking this year. Skylight is exploring conversational, AI-driven onboarding that builds a chore chart in the first 10 minutes from the kids' ages.
How Skylight Doubled Subscription Prices to $79 – Michael Segal & Mark Ungerer
Skylight, a bootstrapped family calendar and photo frame maker, explains how it prices and gates a subscription on top of a $300 to $700 device. It doubled the plus plan from $39 to $79 a year with minimal loss of retention or attach, and chose $79 over a revenue-maximizing $99 after talking to customers.
Ungerer is Skylight's chief product officer and runs its subscription work. Skylight sells a family calendar and photo frame at $300 to $700, plus a subscription of about $80 a year. The company is bootstrapped and profitable.
The sources say nothing about his career before Skylight.
Ungerer led the $79 plan from start to finish. Raising the plus plan from $39 to $79 a year cost minimal retention or attach. CEO Michael Segal called the effect on the ARR curve "transformative".
No retention, attach or revenue figures are given for the increase.
Ungerer reads app downloads as devices sold, not subscription health. He says health depends on how critical the device is. Most hardware subscriptions he named almost required the subscription.
One Bird Buddy owner loved the product but balked at the $60 or $90 a year price at onboarding. A Backbone owner plays daily without knowing what the subscription includes.
His target is for half of customers to call Skylight life-changing. About 20% of survey replies say so today. Segal's hypothesis is that these people each bring in dozens of customers by word of mouth.
The goal for the chief product officer is 50%, reached by building features.
Ungerer tested subscription price and hardware discount together. The two trade off against margin per unit and change hardware conversion and software attach. Skylight varied both at once and modeled the combined result before choosing a price.
Calendar and frame had originally shared one $39 subscription, which likely left value on the table.
He chose $79 over a $99 price that earned slightly more. The spreadsheet showed $99 would earn a little more, but customer interviews put it near "disgust" or "not worth it yet" territory.
Skylight expects to revisit $99 as it adds more valuable features to the subscription. Segal's reason for stopping at $79: "we want good vibes to continue."
Skylight paired customer calls with quant tests, because people say one thing and do another. The biggest mistake, as Skylight sees it, is skipping the customer calls and trusting the numbers alone. Focus groups show what the market wants very quickly.
Existing subscribers were protected from the increase. They moved to a "legacy plus" plan covering frame and calendar. Anyone who had waited months and wrote in got the old price, effectively indefinitely.
Squeezing legacy customers was worth about a couple million dollars. Skylight skipped it to build for the next 10 million customers. The increase was not announced and simply appeared as the new price.
Ungerer cut checkout friction by sending QR scans to Apple in-app purchase. Non-subscribers scanned a QR code that led to a web checkout. Switching it to Apple checkout lifted conversion over 100%.
Fewer people use the QR code, so the dollar gain is smaller than the price change. Mom scans, is subscribed and is done.
Price was the lever because most families already subscribed. More than half of Calendar buyers subscribe, so attach had little room left to grow. Revenue per user was the biggest remaining lever.
Ungerer keeps free what the customer came to buy. On the frame, sending photos to grandma is free and video is paid. On the calendar, events, tasks and chores are free, while recipes, meals and an AI engine are paid.
His test is whether the person came, spent the money and got what they wanted. The risk is customers who feel "tricked and duped" if core features move behind the paywall.
New features launch behind the paywall instead of moving there later. Meal planning launched paid, and many such features go untested. Moving a feature out of the paywall is easy, while moving one in is very painful.
Features should be understood quickly, not discovered as a locked setting.
He watches anger in reviews and interviews, not only A/B results. Some paywalled items lifted numbers but drew begrudging or angry reactions, so Skylight reversed course.
Marketing wants to advertise the loved AI feature, but buyers who then find it paid feel surprise or frustration. Segal says disgust is the emotion to avoid when building a multi-billion dollar brand.
Skylight does not label premium features inside the product for subscribers. Hardware buyers decide after months of research and want to know the device is valuable and used daily. Renewal is high for both heavy and light users of the bundle.
The free trial test gave no lift. Skylight tried one version taking a credit card and one without. Those who opted in were about the same people who would have subscribed anyway.
Most buyers subscribe at checkout, and Skylight reached its scale without a trial.
Growth work ran on about 5% of the roadmap, so one test was all it got. With no growth PM, Skylight ran one trial test and had no time for the roughly eight follow-ups it needed. It called the trial a "Hail Mary" and is hiring its first subscription growth PM.
With few shots, the team wants to know what will work before testing, rather than testing widely.
Retail buyers set up the calendar and never find the rest of the product. Within weeks, or even days, of settling into a routine, the chance of getting them to try new features drops to near zero. Customers say they know it can do much more.
Segal says this is the problem his product chief is cracking this year. Skylight is exploring conversational, AI-driven onboarding that builds a chore chart in the first 10 minutes from the kids' ages.