Nico Wittenborn

You want to have some product components that accelerate paid acquisition: “the power of experience”. Examples: an actual feature, something you show people (e.g., Oura sleep story). Things really work when organic scales in lockstep with paid.

You need to take advantage of an acquisition channel when it opens up, and you also need to invest in diversification and have the discipline to try and crack the next channel(s).

The number one indicator for conversions is how often users see the paywall. You don’t want to go overboard, but the paid conversion also sometimes activates the user: the fact of paying increases a user’s engagement.

Churn in consumer subscriptions is usually very high in the first year, but from the second year on, it is closer to SMB SaaS churn. One-year subscription retention should be 50% (some companies even have 80-90%).

Subscription apps are a very cash-efficient way to get started, and a seed round can get you to tens of millions in revenue. But this is also usually just the first surface area of your product, and you can find other revenue sources. Example: Photoroom is a prosumer product that started on mobile; it’s popular in the US and emerging countries, and now the product is coming to the web, supports teams, and there is an API people pay for.

Steer acquisition so you can recover your CAC within the first year. You need a very good strategic reason to go past this one-year payback.