Sub Club by RevenueCat

Latest Episodes:

From Sleep Devices for NFL Athletes to a $500k ARR Subscription App — Leon Sasson, Rise Science May 05, 2021

Show notes

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 SaaS
A/B testing and subscription lifestyle analysis
How to create a fantastic onboarding experience for your users

Follow Us:

David Barnard: https://twitter.com/drbarnard

Jacob Eiting: https://twitter.com/jeiting

Leon Sasson: https://twitter.com/leonsasson

Here’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 leon@risescience.

Quotes:

“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.” - David

Like this episode?

Subscribe to Sub Club on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to get the latest news on mobile subscription apps.

Revisiting the Fundamentals of App Marketing Post IDFA — Thomas Petit Apr 22, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, you’ll hear about:

Why most apps should do at least some paid user acquisition
How paid user acquisition has evolved over the past decade
How to think about marketing in the post-IDFA era

Building an Apple Design Award-Winning Photo Editing App — Majd Taby & Jasper Hauser, Darkroom Apr 08, 2021

Show notes

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 app
Why getting press isn’t always great for conversions
The benefits and drawbacks of bootstrapping your app

Follow Us:

David Barnard: https://twitter.com/drbarnard

Jacob Eiting: https://twitter.com/jeiting

Majd Taby: https://twitter.com/jtaby

Jasper Hauser: https://twitter.com/jasperhauser

Here’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.” - Jacob

Like this episode?

Subscribe to Sub Club on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to get the latest news on mobile subscription apps.

Going All-In on Indie App Development — Ryan Jones, Weather Line & Flighty Mar 24, 2021

Show notes

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/drbarnard

Jacob Eiting: https://twitter.com/jeiting

Ryan Jones: https://twitter.com/rjonesy

Quotes:

“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?” - Jacob

Like this episode?

Subscribe to Sub Club on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to get the latest news on mobile subscription apps.

How to Pitch Your App to Tech Journalists — Ed Zitron, EZPR Mar 10, 2021

Show notes

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/drbarnard

Jacob Eiting: https://twitter.com/jeiting

Ed Zitron: https://twitter.com/edzitron

Quotes:

“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.” - Jacob

Like this episode?

Subscribe to Sub Club on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to get the latest news on mobile subscription apps.

Pioneering a New Genre of Audio App — Faye Keegan, Dipsea Feb 17, 2021

Show notes

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?

David Barnard: https://twitter.com/drbarnard

Jacob Eiting: https://twitter.com/jeiting

Faye Keegan: https://twitter.com/itisthefaye

Download Dipsea:

Quotes:

“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.” - Faye

Like this episode?

Subscribe to Sub Club on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to get the latest news on mobile subscription apps.

The Next Big Opportunity in Software — Eric Crowley, GP Bullhound Feb 02, 2021

Show notes

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/drbarnard

Jacob Eiting: https://twitter.com/jeiting

Eric Crowley: https://twitter.com/crowxu

Quotes:

“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.” - Jacob

Like this episode?

Subscribe to Sub Club on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to get the latest news on mobile subscription apps.

Building a Lean Growth Machine for the World’s Largest Journaling App — Darius Mora, Reflectly Jan 20, 2021

Show notes

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.

David Barnard: https://twitter.com/drbarnard

Jacob Eiting: https://twitter.com/jeiting

Darius Mora: https://www.linkedin.com/in/moravcik

Follow Reflectly:

Quotes:

“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.” - Darius

11:30 “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

Transitioning a Free App with Millions of Users to Subscriptions — Vu Pham & Nick Robinson, Zero Jan 12, 2021

Show notes

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/drbarnard

Jacob Eiting: https://twitter.com/jeiting

Vu Pham: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vuprofile/

Nick Robinson: https://twitter.com/njrconcepts

Zero Fasting Links:

Quotes:

“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?”

- Vu

Like this episode?

Subscribe to Sub Club on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to get the latest news on mobile subscription apps.

Building a $100k App Business in 6 Months — Zach Shakked, Hashtag Expert Dec 16, 2020

Show notes

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.

David Barnard: https://twitter.com/drbarnard

Jacob Eiting: https://twitter.com/jeiting

Zach Shakked: https://twitter.com/zachshakked

Quotes:

“[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.” - Zach

Like this episode?

Subscribe to Sub Club on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to get the latest news on mobile subscription apps.

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected