Phil Carter

Subversive

Business EN ↓ 40 episodes

Subversive is a podcast dedicated to sharing stories from the best consumer subscription apps in the world. We'll bring you lessons for how to grow your consumer subscription business, including insights and inflection points that led to exponential growth from leaders at category-defining companies and innovative startups.

Author

Phil Carter

Category

Business

Podcast website

www.buzzsprout.com

Latest episode

Jul 9, 2026

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Episodes

How Chess.com Became the World’s Top Chess App 24.07.2025

Albert Cheng is the Chief Growth Officer of Chess.com. Prior to joining Chess.com a year ago, Albert served as the Head of Product Growth and Monetization at both Duolingo and Grammarly, two of the world’s most successful consumer subscription businesses. Earlier in his career, Albert also held product and engineering roles at YouTube and SoFi, as well as a couple smaller startups. Outside of work...

How Superpower is Reinventing Healthcare 10.07.2025

Max Marchione is the cofounder and President of Superpower, a startup that is reinventing digital health by offering patients a comprehensive panel of 100+ labs, an online panel that centralizes all of their health data in one place, and access to world-class longevity clinicians to help them lead longer and better lives. Prior to Superpower, Max has spent the last five years as an investor and se...

How One AI Feature Supercharged Photoroom’s Growth 26.06.2025

Olivier Lemarié is the VP of Growth at Photoroom, one of the world’s largest and most popular photo editing apps. Olivier joined Photoroom in 2020 as the company’s second employee and helped it scale to >$50M in ARR in less than 3 years. Prior to Photoroom, Olivier held sales and marketing roles at Google, Wooga, and Molotov TV. He is also an experienced growth advisor who helps mobile app star...

How Runna’s Laser Focus Led to Its Successful Acquisition by Strava 12.06.2025

Miranda Paine is the Head of Growth at Runna, where she has contributed to its rapid expansion and recent acquisition by Strava. Prior to Runna, Miranda held growth and marketing roles at two other London-based fitness startups, including another fitness app called Fiit and a boutique kickboxing-inspired group fitness studio called Flykick. She holds a degree in Marine Biology, and credits her bac...

How Gamma Grew to $50M in ARR in 2 Years 29.05.2025

Jon Noronha is the cofounder and Head of Product at Gamma, where he's creating a new medium for presenting ideas. Gamma allows anyone to generate a presentation, document, or webpage in minutes using AI, just by writing a topic or pasting an outline. Before starting Gamma, Jon was the VP of Product at Optimizely, where he helped companies integrate rapid experimentation into their product dev...

How Tolan Built a Viral AI Companion 15.05.2025

Ajay Mehta is an accomplished entrepreneur who is currently cofounder and President of Portola, the company behind a viral AI companion app called Tolan. Prior to launching Tolan, Ajay founded other successful consumer startups including Birthdate Co., Therapy Notebooks, and FamilyLeaf, and he has held product and growth leadership roles at Wealthsimple (Canada’s largest FinTech company) and Tilt....

How Headspace Expanded from Meditation App to Wellness Platform 08.05.2025

Cori Shearer is currently a Lead Product Manager at Headspace, where she has spent the last four years leading teams focused on growth as well as engagement with their full suite of human-delivered care offerings like coaching, clinical, and AI-based services. Prior to Headspace, Cori worked at Quizlet as a Senior PM focused on acquisition, activation, and international growth. She is also an entr...

How Duolingo Built Duolingo Max 16.04.2025

Natalia Castillejo is a Director of Product at Duolingo, where she has spent the last decade since graduating from Yale University in 2016. Natalia started her PM career at Duolingo working on the company’s English Language Test and other core product features. More recently, she helped lead the development and monetization of AI-powered features like “Video Call,” “Roleplay,” and “Explain My Answ...

Insights from RevenueCat’s 2025 State of Subscription Apps Report 03.04.2025

Jacob Eiting is the founder and CEO of RevenueCat, the world’s largest SaaS platform for subscription apps that need help powering in-app purchases, managing customer data, and growing revenue across iOS, Android, and the web. Prior to founding RevenueCat in 2017, Jacob was the CTO of Elevate Labs, a consumer subscription business offering both brain training and meditation apps, and a software de...

How Grammarly’s Evolution from B2C to B2B Propelled It to a $13B Valuation 20.03.2025

Yuriy Timen is a seasoned growth and marketing advisor with 15+ years of experience scaling technology companies. Yuriy joined Grammarly as the company’s first marketing hire in 2012 when it had just 10 employees and left in 2020 as Global Head of Marketing and Growth. Since then, Yuriy has advised more than 40 companies, including Airtable, Canva, Oyster, Whimsical, and Otter.ai. He specializes i...

How Notion’s Community Helped it Win in AI 06.03.2025

Rachel Hepworth is the former CMO at Notion, where she helped the company expand internationally, move upmarket, and grow by 10x. Prior to Notion, she was part of the marketing leadership team at Slack, founding the Growth Marketing function and scaling the company through IPO. Rachel is now a full-time marketing and growth advisor, helping companies like Clay, Luma AI, and Attio reach their full...

How International Expansion and Canva for Teams Propelled Canva’s Growth 20.02.2025

Zain Abiddin is a global product builder and leader with 15+ years of experience. He joined Canva in 2020 as the company’s first subscriptions PM and spent four years helping to scale Canva to billions of dollars in ARR, including the launch of Canva for Teams as well as tools to support localized pricing, price migration, and involuntary churn management. Prior to Canva, Zain ran several startups...

How Tinder's Monetization Strategy Propelled it to $1B+ in Revenue 31.01.2025

Ravi Mehta is a senior product executive with experience leading product organizations for globally recognized brands like Tripadvisor, Facebook, and Tinder . Over his career, Ravi has scaled well-known products that have impacted millions of people and built teams to meet the challenge. Ravi is a well-respected thought leader, and his frameworks on product strategy and product leadership have bee...

How AllTrails Crossed the Chasm to 1M+ Subscribers 31.01.2025

Ron Schneidermann is an entrepreneur who is passionate about building great companies that help people have healthy, authentic, real-world experiences. He is the former CEO of AllTrails, the world's largest and most trusted outdoor platform with a community of over 75 million trail-goers. In 2005, Ron cofounded Liftopia, the global leader in ski lift ticket bookings, and was Head of Growth at...

How Ladder Nailed Product/Channel Fit on TikTok and Meta to Grow 2,000% 31.01.2025

Greg Stewart is the CEO of Ladder, an innovative strength training app that has grown subscribers by 2,000% over the last two years. He has a mix of startup leadership, company-building, and corporate finance experience. Prior to Ladder, Greg served as COO and a founding team member of Bungalo, an operationally intensive consumer-facing real estate technology platform he helped to build and launch...

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