How to win in consumer subscription

“’Take the long view’ is an operating principle at Duolingo that we’ve stuck to for years. We believe it’s key to building a durable business. It means: if something works in the short term but hurts Duolingo in the long term, it’s not right. We make decisions that keep us moving toward our big goals.For example: If you offer subscription pricing t... 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

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.

“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

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

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

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

“The bar for freemium models at the time was Skype, which converted about 7% of their users to pay at least something—maybe a dollar. We hit that in a few months, but it just continued from there. Past 10%, 15%, 20%—and we realized that we had stumbled on what might just be the most effective freemium model the world had ever seen.”—Gustav Söderstr... See more

Duolingo, which was also driven almost exclusively by word of mouth, optimized for free user growth: “By offering all of its learning content for free, Duolingo built a massive user base through word of mouth and no paid marketing. This also helped us build a growth revenue loop: Building a free and fun product → more users → more subscribers → mor... 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