Paul Ganev

Along with higher subscription tiers, this is a great idea to break the ceiling the subscription model naturally brings.

Surfline has been pushing this much more lately. As a subscriber myself, I actually check out the perks for good deals and feel rewarded for my loyalty. They even added urgency as the latest perks are available only until a specific deadline.

Surfline’s premium subscriber perks: fins, surfboards, apparel, etc. at a discount

Paul mentioned that if you have the capital, it’s better to emphasize free user retention rather than conversion because it gives you time to improve your product.

The hope is that your baseline conversion gets better over time without the size of your free user retention going down.

Implementing a freemium model aims to reduce the Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) over time.

For Surfline, it wasn’t the original plan: they were free to begin with and then added a paid offering. However, the free aspect turned out to be very important because new surfers need to understand the importance of surf forecasts, and starting as free helps Surfline educate users about the product.

This doesn’t necessarily mean you should start with a freemium model: the path that Opal chose is also very interesting (start premium, open to freemium later)👇

💎 Growth Gems #108 - Subscription Growth

They discussed that it’s all about timing!

Your SAM should evolve to take more of your TAM because:

• Segments of your market can become more open to using your product

• Your product can evolve as you go after adjacent users or other geos

TAM SAM SOM: What do they mean and how do you calculate them? (source: Hubspot)

As Jacob mentioned: “If your model is so complex that you can’t rebuild it in a setting, then your model might be too complex”

And, of course, there are always users that will never pay no matter what.