Sub Club by RevenueCat

On the podcast, I talk with Alper about the competitive advantage of ignoring (some) best practices, the risk of drawing false conclusions when researching competitor ads, and why poor metrics are just facts until proven problematic. Top Takeaways: 📊 Challenge Best Practices  Test what works for your app and market, even if it goes against common advice. Adapt best practices to your data and curr...

On the podcast, I talk with Greg about knowing when to pivot, why most consumer apps shouldn't raise VC, and why making free trials optional outperformed making them the default. Top Takeaways: 📉 Know When to Pivot  Wrangle struggled because it wasn’t solving a real problem. Burner succeeded because it met a clear need. Don’t be afraid to pivot when the product isn’t working. 💭Most Consumer Apps...

On the podcast we talk with Ravi about subscriptions as a force multiplier for consumables, why narratives matter more than metrics in goal-setting, and why you might want to try a longer onboarding, or a shorter one. 📊 Stack the demand curve Tinder didn’t just offer one price—it built a staircase of value. Low-tier subs, premium upgrades, and microtransactions filled in the gaps of user willingn...

On the podcast, we talk with Eric about the opportunities and challenges of AI for consumer apps, what you can learn from Strava acquiring Runna, and the flawed thinking around ‘subscription fatigue’. Top Takeaways: 💸 Value Overcomes Fatigue Consumers would rather not pay for anything, but when a product delivers real value, they are happy to pay, even via subscriptions. Whether it’s training for...

On the podcast, I talk with Michael about the blessing and curse of having a brand, why post-purchase is the perfect upsell moment, and why partnerships are hard to pull off but can be well worth the effort. Top Takeaways: 🌱 Growth is Built on Value Sustainable growth comes from consistently adding value, not just short-term tactics.  Success lies in constantly evolving your product to meet users...

On the podcast I talk with Josh about red flags that tank app valuations, why subscription-only apps are leaving money on the table, and how bootstrapped founders are cashing out for millions in months, not years. Top Takeaways: 🎯 Build to sell, but build smart Flipping an app in under a year is still possible, but the skill that matters most now is marketing. With AI lowering the barrier to deve...

On the podcast we talk with Mathias about running Subway Surfers' marketing machine on salaries, not ad spend, leaving money on the table to protect player experience, and why more apps should try rewarded ads, season passes, and other tactics from gaming. Top Takeaways: 🎨 Viral flywheels can out-perform massive paid campaigns Relying on salaries instead of ad budgets, a lean team can ship consta...

On the podcast we talk with Ora about LinkedIn’s value-driven growth philosophy, how they personalize experiences and plan offerings based on user intent, and the complexity of running over a thousand experiments a year. Top Takeaways: 🌱 Growth follows value The surest path to long-term growth is adding features and benefits that genuinely help people achieve their goals. Growth tactics may bring...

On the podcast I talk with Eric about how measurement dysfunction paralyzes growth, why diversifying channels for the sake of diversification actually hurts performance, and the futility of trying to interpret why ads win. Top Takeaways: 📊 Broken measurement kills growth The biggest pitfall isn’t creative or channel choice—it’s disorganized measurement. When finance, product, and UA each use diff...

On the podcast I talk with Thomas about using signal engineering to optimize ad spend, how AI is changing creative testing, and why most people should avoid app2web… for now. Top Takeaways: 🧠 The biggest AI opportunity in ads is smarter analysis, not faster production AI is now good enough to produce ad-quality video and variants at scale — but that’s where 95% of the industry focus stops. The un...

On the podcast I talk with Lucy and Nicole about how customer-driven iteration led Zumba from VHS tapes in 2001 to launching an app in 2024, their app2web experiments that boosted LTV by 17%, and how they are able to charge for content when countless Zumba classes are available for free on YouTube. Top Takeaways: 🗣️ Listening has driven 24 years of product evolution Every Zumba breakthrough — from...

On the podcast I talk with John about the fascinating 40-year history of Apple’s developer relations, how almost going bankrupt in the 1990s shaped today’s control-focused approach, and why we might need an ‘App Store 3.0’ reset. Top Takeaways: 🕹️ The 1980s: Apple’s developer DNA was born  Apple’s earliest wins came from nurturing third-party developers, even spinning off its own apps to avoid com...

On the podcast we talk with Eric about his journey from a failed first app to success with his second, the advantage of building for problems people are already talking about, and why he turned down a lucrative acquisition offer to keep building. Top Takeaways: 🔍 Demand-first discipline wins Testing for willingness to pay before writing a line of code can spare you five years of false starts. Qui...

On the podcast, I talk with Charlie about why Liquid Glass represents a big opportunity for new and existing apps, Apple’s new on-device AI models and their practical limitations, and why the improved App Store Analytics complement rather than replace third-party tools like Appfigures and RevenueCat. Top Takeaways: 🫧 A style refresh is a growth hack A major UI overhaul—like Apple’s new “liquid gl...

On the podcast we talk with Charlie about why React Native has become the default for VC-funded apps, how AI is accelerating development cycles, and why speed of iteration matters more than programming language. Top Takeaways: ⚡ Instant iteration cycles unlock agility  React Native and Expo supercharge development by collapsing long build times into mere seconds. With tools like Expo Go enabling...

On the podcast I talk with Tim about the importance of trust in web2app funnels, replacing free trials with money-back guarantees, and how they’ve found success with contractors after struggling with in-house marketing hires. Top Takeaways:  🔁 Replace trials with trust to attract high-intent users A 30-day money-back guarantee can outperform traditional free trials—especially in web funnels. Payi...

On the podcast we talk with Chris about how to do freemium the right way, drafting a customer “Bill of Rights” to guide product decisions, and why blindly following A/B test results can lead to short-term gains but undermine your business long-term. Top Takeaways: 🧮 Data has limits Short-term data can lie. When every experiment looks like a win in isolation, it’s easy to miss the slow erosion of...

On the podcast, I talk with Daphne about why skipping user interviews is costing you growth, how to bring your product’s ‘aha moment’ forward into your marketing, and why your assumptions about why people use your app might be wrong. Top Takeaways: 🎯 Your app is a means to an end Users don’t care about how many features you have — they care about achieving something in their lives. Apps that focu...

On the podcast, I talk with Dan about estimating the ROI of product changes before building them, calculating your subscription app's growth ceiling, and why you shouldn’t make assumptions about what is and isn’t working in other apps. Top Takeaways: 💸 ROI-first thinking helps teams prioritize what actually moves the needle Every project has a cost - whether or not you calculate it. Estimating th...

On the podcast, I talk with Ajay about the fresh opportunities AI is creating for app developers, how they built a cost-effective TikTok growth engine, and why being forced to monetize helped improve their product decisions. Top Takeaways: 🤖 New tech, new apps – AI isn’t just making apps smarter. It’s enabling new categories entirely. Apps built around real-time interaction, emotional context, an...

On the podcast we discuss how AI is changing both what apps do and how they’re built, the relationship between price and retention, and why React Native apps monetize better than native. Check out RevenueCat’s State of Subscription Apps 2025 report here: https://revenuecat.com/report Top Takeaways: 📊 AI apps: Higher revenue per user, but differentiation is key AI-powered apps don’t convert users...

This episode is shorter than usual and will be featured in RevenueCat’s State of Subscription Apps report. On the podcast: top strategies for paywall optimization, how storytelling during onboarding impacts conversions, and why framing the user journey leading to the paywall is more critical than the paywall itself. Top Takeaways: 🔐 Your paywall is only as good as the story leading up to it A wel...

This episode is shorter than usual and will be featured in RevenueCat’s State of Subscription Apps report. On the podcast: The state of major acquisition channels in 2025, how improved measurement is boosting confidence in ad spend, and why Reddit might be your next top-performing user acquisition channel. Top Takeaways: 📡 Signal recovery is improving ad efficiency iOS signal loss made UA harder,...

This episode is shorter than usual and will be featured in RevenueCat’s State of Subscription Apps report. On the podcast: maximizing success with web subscriptions, how payment flexibility creates better user experiences, and why making cancellations difficult can do more harm than good. Top Takeaways: 💳Web subscriptions aren’t just a cost-saving play - they’re a growth opportunity Many apps sta...

This episode is shorter than usual and will be featured in RevenueCat’s State of Subscription Apps report. On the podcast: diversifying revenue beyond subscriptions, what Google Play’s data reveals about buyer behavior, and why lower price points can actually increase total revenue.  📈Expand beyond subscriptions to capture new buyers Many users in emerging markets prefer one-time purchases over s...