How to win in consumer subscription

It’s brutal out there. But it’s not hopeless. There are a number of consumer apps that have stood the test of time, including some of my favorites: Grammarly, Duolingo, Noom, Calm, Flo, Future, and Spotify. To answer your question, I went deep into these seven companies (along with a few up-and-comers like Copilot, Centered, Mighty Health, and Greg... See more

The second most consistent pattern across these companies was an inseparable alignment between the product roadmap and the growth engine. Surviving in B2C is all about finding an efficient (aka cheap) growth channel.

Here’s what stood out:An obsession with efficiencyAlignment between product strategy and acquisition strategyA singular focus to build a magical, sticky product through rapid iteration and endless optimization

Rishi Mandal: “Efficiency, and the discipline to keep our team and footprint small, has allowed us to do something that I think category-creating consumer businesses have to be able to do, which is to be misunderstood for a number of years. When we started Future, we felt that the broader world (consumers, investors, our friends, the press) may not... See more

Think about it: When was the last time you (1) installed, (2) paid for, and (3) continued to pay for, a new app? I bet you it’s been a while. For me, it was upgrading to Twitter Blue, and I’m probably going to cancel it. I certainly pay for apps (e.g. AllTrails, Centered, Copilot, Future, and a few streaming services), but I’ve tried and discarded ... See more

We’ve observed a trend of consumer apps pushing annual discounted pricing more and more aggressively (sometimes not even offering monthly prices anymore, like Calm) to improve revenue retention metrics and reinvest revenues into growth. We’ve also seen others do a lot of creative experimentation with their price points (e.g. Noom’s ‘name your own p... See more

This helped us continuously increase our retention over the years, making Duolingo more fun and sticky. Every screen in our products is obsessed over many times by many people. You can see this throughout the product, where every screen takes Duolingo design principles seriously: every screen will have minimal text, be gamified, simple and intuitiv... See more

“One of the most important elements of Grammarly’s early success was nailing a narrow, strong PMF early. Specifically, this was ‘high-consequence writing,’ e.g. term papers, cover letters, business memos, public blog posts. We targeted them aggressively with custom creative, landing pages, and onboarding experiences.”—Yuriy Timen

“A helpful mental model we use when designing the first-time user experience is to look at how long it takes a person to reach the ‘aha’ moment in our app. That’s the moment when the problem we solve and the role our app plays in a person’s life becomes crystal clear. It’s the best moment for magic. On Tinder, it’s when you get your first match. On... See more