Growth Gems & Screw-Ups

Tailor funnels for specific GEOs with different value props and insights to scale further.

Alexey VorobeyAIstats · Co-founder

Market the moment, not the feature. People do not want another AI productivity app. They want to say a thought once and trust that the right action will be ready when it matters.
That is how I'm building and positioning Dayly: one clear outcome people instantly understand, remember, and share.

Anri MelikyanDayly · Founder & CEO

Plan the tweet/TikTok video before you build the feature. If you can't see it going viral, it might not be something your users will care about either.

David BarnardRevenueCat / Weather Up · Growth Advocate

Your experiment doesn't end with the Ship / Kill decision. It ends with a learning, which feeds your next experiment, your team's shared knowledge, and your database of learnings. Experimentation programs work best when they are shaped as loops, not linear processes.

Ekaterina ShpadarevaDataCamp

AI makes it incredibly easy to build and ship things now. But shipping more stuff doesn't mean you're learning what people actually value. The opportunity isn't just to use AI to build faster, it's to use that speed to figure out what users really care about faster.

Ethan GarrBreakout Growth Labs

Write your funnel as a chain of ratios. Each ratio is a different lever: creative, onboarding, paywall, targeting. Mine told me to stop buying trials that never paid and target the age group that did. Revenue doubled without changing the app.

Jozef Budacgmol6.studio · Founder

Support is not just where problems get solved. It is where loyalty gets built. A support ticket can become a product insight. A refund request can become a saved customer. A complaint can become a fan. Treat people better than they expect when things go wrong.

Samuel GhermanDa Vinci Eye · Founder

Build your app for the people who actually pay you, not the people you wish were using it. Your target market might surprise you. When you find the users who truly love your product, nurture them and lean in. Early on, you cannot reach everyone. Reach the people who care most.

Samuel GhermanDa Vinci Eye · Founder

Diversify your app portfolio by vibe coding. Unpopular opinion: Instead of focusing on one app, have multiple!

Sarah BolandLife Lapse

Be smart enough to know how to read the data, but intuitive enough to know when to ignore it.

Tim DikunReading.com

Hire smart people with different perspectives and let them argue.

Tim DikunReading.com

Test prices and plan mix early on. Both moves unlock significant cashflow headroom to experiment more.

Tim DikunReading.com

If you're under $100k/month, take the 15% fee and focus on other areas than moving transactions to the web. Never mix brand and non-brand in search ads and never use view-through for this.

Thomas Petit@thomasbcn

Update your icon regularly (seasonal look, not radical), like Duolingo: low effort, interesting effect on reactivations.

Thomas Petit@thomasbcn

The recently launched Apple Retention Messaging API is free money for low effort. Use it and get prepared for v2 where segments should bring another bump up.

Thomas Petit@thomasbcn

Real-time drop alerts don't retain — timing does. Subscribers who set up 3+ specific alerts (not just "notify me of everything") retain 2x longer, because the app becomes tied to a specific outcome they're waiting on rather than generic noise they eventually mute.

William EllisonCrepChiefNotify (CCN)

Put Monthly, Annual and Lifetime on the same paywall and annual stops being your biggest ask. It becomes the middle option, not the lowest commitment or the highest. That's usually where people go. Behavioural researchers call it the compromise effect, or extremeness aversion, and it's the reason "good, better, best" is everywhere from wine lists to SaaS pricing pages.

Alice MuirAMK Consultancy

Don't end onboarding on your home screen: send users straight into the core feature. We redirected the last onboarding step to a feature instead of the app's home page, and it increased by 20%.

Aloïs SuanezAce Global

The value of TikTok acquired users is very app dependent (e.g., low value on an education app but high value on a dating app).

Amanda MadarasRevenueCat · AE

Your activation funnel's biggest leak is usually a step you can simply remove, not a copy tweak. Audit each onboarding screen for drop-off and cut any screen that isn't doing real qualifying or delivering value — fewer screens beat better copy.

Annie ChenMachinepulse / Karpo · Head of Global Marketing

We stopped showing the paywall during onboarding and placed it right after the user generated their first study card. Trial conversion rose from 4% to 10%.

Aurelien SansonAce Global

The rule we now apply everywhere: the last screen before the paywall must be the screen where the product visibly does its job. Not a feature list, not social proof. The thing working, on their input.
On one of our apps (it turns lecture notes and podcasts into revision sheets), we added a generation animation just before the paywall. Trial conversion rose from 4% to 10%.

Charles Galtier d'AuriacAce Global

For web2app paid acquisition, you CANNOT offer free trials, because tons of free trial starts are debit cards with low balance that will fail to convert — and all of those free trial starts will train your paid ad algorithm to find those low LTV users.

Christopher LauPrecious

Web2app works! But copying the typical web2app funnel isn't always the best option despite what other's say. Also, be careful with cannibalization of app2app campaigns. We found it best to separate the event data sources completely.

Daniel LauPrecious · CTO

Onboarding drop-off is often caused by one of three problems:
1. Trust ("I'm not giving you that yet."),
2. Context ("I don't get what this is.")
3. Value ("I get it, but I don't feel it").

Daphne TidemanGrowth Waves

Your "net-to-gross" on web is lower than you think. Everyone models Stripe at ~86% net. When we reconciled every line (processing, FX conversion, disputes, Radar, Billing, Invoicing) across a full year, it was under 84%. That two-point gap is invisible in payout reports and silently eats your ROAS target. Do the full reconciliation once a year and re-base your CAC ceiling on the real number.

Dogukan NefisWowoo Dijital · Co-founder

When scaling UA, we saw a massive drop-off on the hard paywall right after onboarding. Instead of just tweaking copy/price, we tested a dynamic personalization recap right before the paywall screen (showing calculated custom insights based on their inputs). It increased our onboarding-to-trial conversion by ~24% because it built immediate perceived value and made the paywall feel like the natural next step rather than an abrupt roadblock.

Emre SevenVibePalm

Ad revenue is a great data source: for example looking at how quickly eCPM decays between impressions tells you how valuable a user is for subscriptions.

Felix Braberg2.5 gamers

Optimizing for conversion alone can be misleading: the highest-converting paywall doesn't always create the best customers. Test paywalls as part of the full user journey, measuring not just conversion, but activation, retention, and LTV. The interesting part: a tiny paywall change can reveal that you were selling the wrong value proposition all along.

Giulia BorghiMode Mobile

When a funnel has multiple links, banners and calls to action, users are more likely to leave the intended journey. Before increasing spend or rebuilding the experience, remove unnecessary exit points and measure whether completion improves.

Hannah ParvazAperture · Founder

Adding new markets gives an advertising platform a larger pool of potential customers to learn from. If those markets share similar intent and economics, expanding geographically can reduce acquisition costs rather than simply increasing volume.

Hannah ParvazAperture · Founder

Use fast, inexpensive formats to establish whether a message resonates before investing in higher-production creative. Once an angle produces a meaningful signal, develop it through UGC, influencers and more ambitious executions.

Hannah ParvazAperture · Founder

The first screen of your app for new users is often a missed opportunity. This is a large drop off point, and almost every app just shows "Sign up" and "log in" buttons. Create an instantly engaging experience to pull people in and get them progressing through your flow. Opal has an interactive rock to break, Flo has a video animation, Headway has a curiosity hook.

Jacob RushfinnBotsi

Use the onboarding as a guide to make the user understand the aha moment of the app (aha moment being the reason that the user feels like your app is useful to them).

James LauWayk · Cofounder

Long onboarding is not always a bad thing (30+ screens) when there is a value in it (we have a 85% conversion from session start to last onboarding screen)

Jenia ZimmermanAtta · Founder & CEO

A partial onboarding is better than a paused onboarding. In our fintech product, where users had to link financials and business documents, letting them skip even required steps and come back later with a checklist of what was missing improved time to value. Users may have to complete everything to reach value, but preventing stalls on missing information keeps momentum during activation.

Kellen LagroonIndependent · Product Designer

Show different paywalls and pricing to paid and organic users.

Kyan Santiago-CallingToneAdapt · CEO

Customize the paywall depending on ad parameters, leveraging the campaign and ad names.

Lucas MosconAppstack · Founder

Do NOT be afraid of charging too much for a subscription. Too many people, especially in the health space, are terrified of charging higher prices.

Rishi RamnathsingRing Work: Shadow Boxing

A recent experiment with app to web showed -10% in trial starts but still led to increase in proceeds compared to App Store sales.

Teresa MayedeSolid Starts

The first and most important job of your onboarding is to convince the user not only that your app category will solve their problem, but that your app specifically (not a competitor's) will solve their problem. Frame the conversation by using language like "What makes my app unique?" as opposed to "Here's what my app does" (especially if a bunch of competing apps basically do the same thing).
I launched an onboarding flow that started with "what makes my app unique?" and boosted LTV 160%.

Toby SolaBrightmind Meditation

The right messaging is a game changer. Founder-led content on an "inflation and money-saving" angle beat sustainability messaging by a wide margin for our food-rescue app. Same product, reframed from "save the planet" to "save money on food", and it became our cheapest acquisition channel.

Albert WettsteinMunch

TikTok farming saved Flamme. We didn't post from one brand account. We warmed up new fresh accounts, posted native content on each, and kept doubling down on whichever formats got traction. Do this over and over again and you hit 50m+ views :)

An NayalFlamme · Founder & CEO

UGC creator loyalty is critical to scale up a UGC program. Run your entire UGC program in one group chat. Share viral videos within the team, share 5 star reviews from the app store, give praise to your creators, do an analysis on why you think their video did well. Make it as easy as possible to help them go viral and hit view bonuses. This will improve buy in among all creators in your UGC program if they feel like they are a part of a team. Invest in them, they will invest in you.

Andy OkamotoPushClock · CEO/Founder

Make the product the content. Every flight deal Airclub finds is a ready-made short-form video, so our feed doubles as our content calendar. That loop got us to 300K+ users and 100M+ TikTok/IG views before spending a dollar on ads.

Anmol BajajAirclub · Founder/CEO

Scale creative testing against contribution margin and payback, not cheap CPI.

Ariel Tolomezeta / Scatterlabs · Marketing Director

Separate creative fatigue from funnel problems before increasing spend.

Ariel Tolomezeta / Scatterlabs · Marketing Director

Making our product free for around half a million evangelists helped us build a brand for almost free.

Arpit JaineSplashLearn

For organic marketing programs, verifying accounts can help enormously with building account health and trust score to skip the 1-2 month build up period.

Brian DuongForevermore

When it comes to paid ads, the only thing matters is the creative and the signal quality. Stay away from CBO vs ABO discussions.

Burak EregarEregar App Studio · Founder

Don't launch value campaigns on pLTV until you've actually stress-tested in 20 different ways the pLTV model sending this value to your ad networks.

Christinne CuyuganPraktika

Copying organic shares of your product is the easiest way to make good ads. They can write in a real way that is almost impossible to copy. Everyone says you should listen to the customer but few actually do. No matter the size of the company you should work in the support team now and then.

Clarence von RosenNapper

Set up a Dots automation that every day finds 50 creators in a certain demographic you give it, and automatically dm them. It's a volume play.

Daniel MargusovSkini & stratos

Also founder led content has been amazing for me.

Daniel MargusovSkini & stratos

YouTube Shorts is the best inventory to scale Google Ads for sub apps in 2026. A perfect inventory for videos that can be made fully with AI if the storytelling is good enough.

David VargasConsultant

Lookalike audiences correctly built can give you the path to grow in 2026. Think about leveraging IDFA, IDFV and IP parameters.

David VargasConsultant

There is a unique middle ground between organic UGC and paid ads where you can create organic UGC that doesn't go viral but gets the comment "what app is that" — run only those organic UGC videos as paid ads, and create a much cheaper paid creative engine than traditionally very expensive paid ads, bonuses and usage rights. Most people are only focused on organic UGC engine or paid engine but we have discovered a ton of value right in between.

Devin KeaneGratitude Plus · Co-Founder & COO

Run UGC marketing with hundreds of creators. Don't get picky... optimize for scale

Diego KafieNoise

If you work with creators at scale, let them write 30% of the briefs, you might get winners you would have never thought of!

Elise ZareieLingokids

Our biggest screw-up early on was treating TikTok and Meta Ads with the same creative format. On TikTok, high-production 3D UI showcases completely flatlined with sub-1% CTR. We pivoted to raw, native UGC hooks with split-screen before/after reactions and problem-agitation hooks in the first 2 seconds. That cut our blended CPI in half and allowed us to scale ad spend profitably without tanking trial-to-paid retention.

Eyup FindikVibePalm

Building an automated ML-driven local growth engine on Meta for SmartNews with up to 50k new ads per day.

Fabien-Pierre NicolasMillion Lords

When you find a creative that works, squeeze it much harder than you think. I often see teams constantly chasing the next big concept, while moving away from winners too quickly. Instead, take a winning creative and break down why it worked: the hook, angle, format, talent, visual, message, or offer. Then build iterations around those individual elements. Sometimes your next winner is just one iteration away from the one you already have.

Gessica BicegoIndependent

We accidentally found our best customers/audience from an ad that wasn't meant for them and that we haven't thought of.

Ivan de Caboidecapps · Founder

Winning ads are art and patterns. With enough performance data you can build video creative down to the edit cuts: timing, color, sound design. Humans are predictable. Treat creative like an engineering problem and you stop gambling on taste.

Jordan WadeReading.com

Signal engineering > campaign optimization. We built ML into our onboarding to estimate each user's conversion value / expected LTV very early in the journey. Instead of sending Google every conversion, we selectively send the signals we believe represent genuinely valuable users. CPA increased ~10%, but estimated LTV roughly doubled, with significantly better retention. Don't just optimize the ads — engineer the signals the algorithm learns from.

Jus AvilaCarrots

Treat influencers as a performance channel, not just a media channel. We hire creators at scale and use paid CPM as the base, but layer incentives around valuable in-app actions rather than just views or installs. We also gamify performance between creators. The best influencer programs align creator incentives with actual product outcomes.

Jus AvilaCarrots

Always optimize for conversion first. Operate under the perspective that no one will ever download your app unless you make your app an essential part of your content.

Kyle FowlerCardstock · CEO

Your comments section is the best creative brief you'll ever get. When a video takes off, read what people are asking underneath it and make that the hook of your next video. It's free research from the exact people you want to convert.

Lauriane NayalFlamme

We've built an internal AI interviewer that conducts voice interviews, including JTBD interviews, and runs our surveys. It helps us collect customer insights, gather data to support marketing claims, and build a better product. It costs one-sixtieth as much as the tool we considered using, with similar or even better results.

Mark OpanasiukPawChamp · CPO

We "hacked" SEO algorithms to rank among the top search results and appear in Gemini responses for "dog experts online" and "best dog training app," increasing our product's visibility.

Mark OpanasiukPawChamp · CPO

Make the product itself do as much of the marketing as possible, and give people something to talk about organically.

Morgan HirshTiny Dinner

We are all about Max Conversions in ASA

Olivia XuLose It!

First run your organic program yourself to understand and learn the whole process from sourcing to getting your first 100k views. Only once you get some results delegate to middle UGC managers who check and control every creator. Then, scale.

Radim VysokyArtie the AI teacher · CEO & co-founder

Acquire Facebook groups to get your first users.

Raymond LiVeriswap · Founder

Use agents to create large scale Custom Product Pages to auto match them to relevant keyword clusters to increase conversion rate from search ads.

Ryan ThorpeFload / Reflective Technologies · Founder

Signal engineering helped us a lot: sending LTV value to Meta and optimizing for VO increased profitability by 40%. We built, based on historical data, an accurate model which can predict the LTV of the user based on their first interactions. Also dynamic pricing: different pricing and plans based on user segments.

Viktor MaricCamPlan · CEO

With AI it’s now easy to autolocalize apps for all markets. Do it even for long-tail countries.

Lukas KoenigshoferThe Mindfulness App

Trending formats look the same no matter who runs them, especially the long Pixar-style cartoon ads. Swap the app name, and it could be any app.
Use trends wisely:
• Brand recall is low, and viewers remember the format, not you.
• Your direct competitors can copy them in hours.
• Borrow the trend's hook, but build the rest around something only your product can do, and show it in the ad.

Nataliia DrozdIndependent · Growth Consultant

Instead of selling a “3-month subscription,” sell a “12-week plan” built around the result the user wants to achieve. It’s essentially the same product, but the way you present it changes what users feel they’re paying for. People aren’t necessarily looking to buy another subscription, but they might feel differently about an outcome.

Cristian RotariIndependent · Growth Consultant

Not all signups should be treated the same. Build a simple onboarding-flow where you adapt pricing, offering, and communication per segment. At Tracklib 70% of users were beginner-producers, and they had a 68% lower conversion rate. A better flow for this segment along with phased pricing led to a 80% reduction in Meta CAC. Additionally, by breaking out segments we were able to acquire experienced / pro producers at better scale which led to a 300% increase in residual revenue.

Shuan SalimTracklib / Musopia / RecipeApp

Paywalls in onboarding will always be the biggest lever of attach rate. The smallest optimizations can be the biggest needle movers.

Sophie ConlonHatch

Our biggest subscription revenue wins came from relentless paywall and trial pricing experiments — small paywall conversion lifts compounded into outsized LTV gains.

Lucian PrinzPickFinder · Co-founder

Data is ubiquitous but signal is scarce: most growth teams are sitting on a goldmine of valuable data that can and should be used to inform marketing actions beyond where the data was collected.

Andy CarvellPhiture · CEO