Sub Club
RevenueCat's podcast on subscription app growth and monetization. 26 Sub Club episodes on product and growth, each as notes you can zoom: the bottom line, key takeaways and every chapter, linked to the moment in the video.
Ask all of them a question · The course
October 20262
Sub Club · Oct 28How Praktika built a profitable $50M ARR AI business — Adam Turaev, Praktika
Praktika's CEO explains how an AI language tutor app reached $50M ARR with a team of just over 40 by selling career outcomes in Brazil and letting micro-influencers run creative. A single creator video he did not like drove roughly 30M views and took ARR from $1M to about $12M in one month.
- Find creators with under 5,000 followers but very high view counts
- Do not tell creators how to make their videos
- Sell the outcome, such as a better job, not the activity
Sub Club · Oct 14How Cal AI turned creators into a growth machine — Jake Castillo, Cal AI
Cal AI's co-founder explains how creator partnerships, a visual magic moment, and flat-rate deals capped by revenue per thousand views took the calorie tracker past 15 million downloads. He also covers why UFC and mukbang creators flopped, how to read comment sections, and why a $30 a year price was chosen to win mind share.
- Never pay a creator CPM higher than your revenue per thousand views
- Prefer flat-rate creator deals so you keep the upside of viral hits
- Only use creator integrations if your app has a visual magic moment
September 20263
Sub Club · Sep 30How WeWard hit 20M users without paid ads — Yves Benchimol, WeWard
WeWard grew for four years with no Meta, Google or paid UA spend, relying on a small PR retainer, then used a celebrity ambassador and investor to break into the US. The episode covers affiliate revenue, measuring steps instead of screen time, and why pivoting is mostly a decision problem.
- Hire a PR retainer as your first acquisition channel for mass-market apps
- Prepare your app and servers before a TV segment airs
- Check retention after a press spike, then add paid ads
Sub Club · Sep 16Why BoldVoice charged from day 1 and ignored the Duolingo freemium playbook — Anada Lakra
BoldVoice charged from day one, aimed at high-intent professionals instead of hobby learners, and judged every paywall test on net revenue after refunds. That approach took it to $10M ARR with a team of 10 and no reliance on a freemium base or big paid-ad spend.
- Judge paywall tests on net revenue after refunds from matured cohorts
- Do not force trial starts with a hard paywall or unskippable discount
- Charge from day one to find your real ICP
Sub Club · Sep 2Why 90% of their paid traffic goes to a quiz, not the App Store
Built With Science, the fitness app from YouTuber Jeremy Ethier, shows that even a 7 million subscriber audience needs a strong product, a web quiz funnel and structured experimentation to grow. They waited a year after launch to fix trial-to-paid, then scaled Meta from zero to $100,000 a month in ad spend profitably, and a pricing page change moved annual plan share from 60/40 to 75 to 80%.
- Send paid traffic to a long personalized web quiz
- Show annual first with a day-by-day trial timeline to cut risk
- Fix trial-to-paid and retention before spending on paid ads
August 20262
Sub Club · Aug 19$10M ARR without ever testing a paywall — Luke Martin-Fuller, Visible
Visible, a wearable and app for pacing energy with chronic illness, shows how to grow with a product-first approach: it went from $1M to $10M in subscription ARR in exactly two years, with one paid channel, no lifecycle email and no paywall tests. The episode covers paying members for UGC ads, qualifying buyers with a web quiz, pricing hardware at cost, and building trust through published research.
- Pay your own customers a flat cash fee for ad videos
- Qualify buyers with a web quiz and tell some they're not a fit
- Build a great retaining product before investing in growth experiments
Sub Club · Aug 5He left Google to build the Google Maps for boats — Jelte Liebrand, Savvy Navvy
Savvy Navvy's founder explains how he funded a consumer app through equity crowdfunding instead of VC, built a B2B boat manufacturer flywheel, and used a two-year plan to speed up CAC payback. He also shares why removing signup friction backfired and why most startups can't A/B test cleanly.
- Offer a two-year plan at a discount to speed CAC payback
- Price a two-year plan at about 30% off the annual rate
- Verify test wins at full rollout before trusting them
July 20262
Sub Club · Jul 22Make Ugly Ads to Grow Your App – Yuliya Lennox (Solid Starts)
Yuliya Lennox draws on a decade of growing apps to argue for ugly, product-first ads, founder-led marketing, and aggressive localization. She explains why stable ad performance is a warning sign and why organic growth plateaus, using examples from BetterMe, Eva, Replika and Solid Starts.
- Treat stable CPMs and CPAs as a sign you stopped pushing
- Make ugly ads that explain the product in the first second
- Sell a PDF or promise before building the app
Sub Club · Jul 8The Bootstrapper's Path to $10M ARR Without Venture Capital – Andrew Maguire, Volo Ventures
Covers why product taste and judgment, not engineering, is now the bottleneck for great apps, what makes consumer subscription investable in 2026, and when to bootstrap versus raise venture. The takeaway is that cheap building, UA financing and tooling make a $10M indie app more reachable than ever, while venture only fits if you can name a billion-dollar outcome.
- Only raise venture if you can describe a billion-dollar outcome
- Bootstrap first and raise later if the market proves bigger
- Build a low-churn product through network effects or deep personalization
June 20261
May 20262
Sub Club · May 27How Removing the Free Trial Grew Monthly Subs 2000% – Nancy Anderson, Natal
A founder-led, trust-first approach to growing a niche fitness app: answer every message with real experts, soft sell, and keep one focused app. It produced a 68% trial conversion rate, a 17% download to trial rate, and a 2,000% jump in monthly subscriptions after removing the free trial from the monthly plan.
- Remove the free trial from the monthly plan if your audience trusts you
- Build trust before the paywall so checkout feels safe, not risky
- Answer every DM, comment and email within 24 hours using real experts
Sub Club · May 13Protecting Freemium at 100M Users AND Driving $500M Revenue – Giordano Contestabile, Life360
Life360's VP of Product explains how the company runs growth as a company-wide experimentation system and protects a generous free tier instead of squeezing short-term conversion. Life360 has close to 100 million monthly users, about 3 million subscribers and nearly $500 million in annual revenue, and a machine learning test doubled Platinum signups without losing any Gold subscribers.
- Use machine learning to target a premium tier at likely buyers
- Refuse to weaken the free tier even when the test wins
- Treat a large free user base as a network moat
April 20263
Sub Club · Apr 29Why Opal Stopped Chasing Revenue to Build a Billion-User App – Kenneth Schlenker
Opal's CEO explains why the app moved from a hard paywall to freemium, aiming at a billion-user product built on retention, brand and a real team rather than short-term revenue. Paid penetration fell from 20% to 9%, yet daily active users passed a million, organic growth rose sharply, and he says the payback is tenfold.
- Give away enough of the product that free users recommend it
- Accept a lower paid conversion rate if free users drive organic growth
- Test free-tier limits by measuring install LTV and overall retention together
Sub Club · Apr 15The AI Growth Playbook for Subscription Apps – Phil Carter, Elemental Growth
Phil Carter walks through twelve AI-era tips organized by his subscription value loop (value creation, delivery and capture), covering onboarding, personalization, creative testing, tiering and credits. He backs them with client results such as Runna going from tens to 400+ creative concepts a month and a 75% LTV lift from a multi-step freemium paywall.
- Convert users in the first session with a magical onboarding
- Use onboarding answers to build a one-of-one product experience
- Niche down to an underserved segment and personalize deeply for it
Sub Club · Apr 1How the World’s #1 VPN App Reached 1 Billion Downloads – Tanuj Chatterjee, Super Unlimited
Super Unlimited reached the number one VPN spot on the App Store and over a billion downloads by treating the top of the funnel as a product decision: a frictionless, genuinely good free tier, obsessive service quality, and restraint in monetization. It now gets over a million downloads a day, mostly organic, and is profitable.
- Treat the top of the funnel as a product decision
- Read your competitors' and your own reviews to decide what to fix
- Win the last 15% of quality that competitors skip
March 20267
Sub Club · Mar 18$6.7M ARR, No Paid Ads, and an Exit to Quizlet in 2 Years – Brett Bauman & Zack Hargett, Coconote
Two ex-Loom builders launched an AI lecture note-taking app with a free trial from day one, grew it through a small team of content creators, and used a long onboarding and trial-extension cancellation offers to convert and retain students. They reached $100K ARR in 45 days, $1M in 4 months and $6.7M ARR with no paid ads, then sold to Quizlet in about two years.
- Move account login to after the paywall in onboarding
- Offer a free trial extension to users who try to cancel
- Lengthen onboarding with personalization and social proof before the hard paywall
Sub Club · Mar 7The Art of Driving Retention Through Product – Ben Gammon, Ladder
Retention comes from the product reliably delivering the result users came for, with lifecycle messaging layered on top. Ladder worked backwards from five-star reviews to a three-workouts-a-week target, then built a journal, check marks and a widget around it, and a nutrition add-on found through surveys now lifts conversion and retention among hybrid users.
- Work backwards from five-star reviews to define the result users want
- Turn your retention goal into one simple weekly behavior target
- Let users log data that powers personalization and visible progress
Sub Club · Mar 6The Top 10% of Apps Grew 306%. Everyone Else? Barely Beat Inflation | SOSA 2026
A walkthrough of RevenueCat's 2026 State of Subscription Apps report: a flood of new AI-built apps, a power-law split in growth, and what the data says about paywalls, trials, churn and AI app retention. Key results: the top 10% of apps grew 306% while the median grew 5.3%, and hard paywalls converted 10.7% download to paid versus 2.1% for freemium.
- Test a hard paywall if you pay for acquisition
- Don't fear hard paywalls hurting year-one retention
- Choose freemium only when free users create real value
Sub Club · Mar 5Why Web Onboarding Should Sell The Problem, Not The Solution – Leon Sasson, Rise Science
Rise Science spent years failing at web funnels by copying its app onboarding, then found success by treating web as a separate channel with a different audience, a problem-first flow, and discounted paid trials. The episode shows how to design, market and bill for a web funnel that works alongside app install campaigns.
- Build web funnels from scratch instead of copying your app onboarding
- Sell the problem first on web, and save the solution for the app
- Test a heavily discounted first month instead of a free trial on web
Sub Club · Mar 4Dynamic Paywalls That Drove Millions in New Revenue – Shawn Gong, Tinder
Tinder used machine learning to show each user the single product they are most likely to buy instead of every tier and plan, and learned how to sell features a la carte without cannibalizing subscriptions. The ML paywall drove a multi-million dollar annual revenue increase, and the failed Tinder Select tier shows that stated willingness to pay is not enough.
- Show each user the one product they are most likely to buy
- Offer three tiers if you have no ML team
- Price a standalone feature equal to the same-length subscription
Sub Club · Mar 2The Counterintuitive Way To Nudge Users Into Free Trials – Anmol Tiwari, Duolingo
Duolingo's approach to free trials favors clarity and trust over persuasion: spell out the trial timeline, offer multiple trials and no-strings free tastes, and personalize upsells. Shortening the trial from 14 to 7 days doubled experimentation velocity, and letting users pick their reminder day lifted conversions despite the added friction.
- Give users clarity and confidence to buy instead of persuading them
- Let users choose which day they get their trial reminder
- Shorten the free trial to speed up experiment results
Sub Club · Mar 1How Mojo Increased ARPU 60% In Just Five Months – Michal Parizek, Mojo
Mojo raised average revenue per user 60% in five months through paywall and pricing experiments, tested by region and measured on 7-day revenue per user. The episode shows how a weekly paywall for free users, regional retesting and fast experiment cycles each added revenue.
- Show free users a paywall on app open once per week
- Retest every paywall winner in each key geo before rolling out
- Do not assume a winning paywall design transfers across regions
February 20262
Sub Club · Feb 18How 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.
- Pick the price customers feel is fair, not only the revenue-maximizing one
- Test subscription price and hardware discount together, not separately
- Grandfather existing subscribers and honor the old price for people on the fence
Sub Club · Feb 4How ElevenLabs Ships So Fast With Small Teams
ElevenLabs runs small autonomous pods, prices consumer apps in terms users understand, and treats earned-media launches as a compounding asset that also makes paid cheaper. The mobile leads share what worked, such as dropping a pricing tier for hours of listening, and what failed, such as over-optimizing onboarding instead of testing a stripped-back base case.
- Price consumer AI apps in outcomes like hours, not tokens
- Test a stripped-out onboarding base case before optimizing the quiz
- Write the launch Twitter thread first, then turn it into video
January 20262
Sub Club · Jan 21Why Your Free Users Are Your Real Growth Engine – Cem Kansu (Duolingo CPO)
Duolingo's CPO explains how the app moved from fully free to ads, subscriptions and a multi-subject product without hurting its free-user growth engine. He covers button copy tests like 'Try for $0.00', measuring monetization backlash, and why protecting free value is both a mission and a business moat.
- Write the trial button as 'Try for $0.00'
- Offer free trials even if your product already has a free tier
- Explain exactly how the free trial works on the purchase page
Sub Club · Jan 7From Tinder to VC: Jeff Morris on Product-Market Fit, Monetization, and AI-Driven Growth
Jeff Morris explains how Tinder built its pricing, packaging and paywall system, and why founders who monetize on day one can get a false read on product-market fit. A single throwaway paywall entry point test at Tinder generated $50 million in revenue.
- Add paywall entry points in prime, high-visibility product real estate
- Give every paid feature its own paywall entry point and track it daily
- Expect one or two features to drive most of your subscriptions