Sub Club by RevenueCat

On the podcast: hitting $10M ARR without ever testing a paywall, paying their own customers to help make video ads, and why you might want to turn away some potential customers.

Top Takeaways:
💸 You can reach $10M ARR with the growth playbook still in the box 
$1M to $10M in subscription ARR in two years, with no lifecycle email, no paywall test, and no SEO, TikTok, or AdWords. The precondition was over a year of giving the product away first.

🚪 Screening buyers out protects every metric that matters 
A web quiz that tells some visitors the product isn't for them caps conversion on purpose, because the wrong subscriber wrecks retention, reviews, and product signal.
🎬 Your own customers can be a creative engine 
Members submit an audition tape, get a weekly brief, and receive a flat fee in real money (not credits, not discounts) for any video that’s used as an ad.
🏷️ Where you put the hardware margin is a bet on where the value lives 
Sell the band at cost, roughly $80, and the $20 subscription carries the value; charge a premium for the device only if it reads as an object people want.

🆓 Hardware kills the free trial, so the free tier has to do the de-risking 
You can't give away a physical device, so the free tier becomes the proof of quality that a trial would normally provide.
🔬 Published research is a moat nobody can clone over a weekend
Opt-in anonymized data sharing, ethics sign-off, and peer-reviewed papers move no revenue number this quarter, but are exactly what a skeptical buyer finds when they research your product.

About Luke Martin-Fuller:
🫀Co-founder of Visible, a wearable activity tracker built for illness, not fitness. Real-time heart rate data and personalized insights help users pace activity within their energy envelope.
👋 LinkedIn
🛥️Visible

🖥️Visible Careers

💬Visible on X

Follow us on X: 
David Barnard - @drbarnard
Jacob Eiting - @jeiting
RevenueCat - @RevenueCat
SubClub - @SubClubHQ

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] From $1M to $10M ARR in Two Years
[01:57] How Long COVID Led to Visible's Founding
[04:18] 5,000 Waitlist Signups for a Product That Didn't Exist
[05:54] Building the Founding 100 With a Free App
[07:33] Raising Just Enough Money to Get Started
[08:27] Why Visible Won't Call Itself a Cure
[11:06] Turning Research Into a Credibility Engine
[16:49] The Stigma Around an Invisible Illness
[19:40] Why Lived Experience Matters for Investors and Employees
[21:57] Why an Existing Wearable Wasn't Good Enough
[24:46] Designing for Brain Fog and Limited Energy
[26:53] Partnering With Polar Instead of Building Hardware
[29:12] The Hidden Complexity of Hardware-Enabled Subscriptions
[30:59] Oura, Whoop, and the Three Hardware Pricing Models
[37:13] From $1M to $10M ARR Without Testing a Paywall
[42:09] Meta, UGC, and the One Paid Channel Behind Growth
[44:37] Paying Customers to Create and Test Video Ads
[47:56] Running an Influencer Program With a Team of Two
[51:21] Why Visible's Funnel Qualifies Customers Before They Buy
[55:24] Why Hardware Forces Visible to Sell Through the Web
[58:49] A 10-Day Journey From Landing Page to Purchase
[1:00:44] Using the Free App to De-Risk a Hardware Purchase
[1:02:08] A Quiet Series A at $7M in Revenue
[1:07:11] Biggest Win: Rebuilding the Web Funnel In-House
[1:08:00] Biggest Fail: An AI Feature Users Hated
[1:09:41] Why Growth Depends on Insurance, and Who Visible Is Hiring Next

On the podcast: crowdfunding millions of dollars to accelerate growth, the two-year subscription that transformed his CAC payback, and why removing signup friction backfired.

Top Takeaways:

💰 Raising money means selling your business
Equity crowdfunding turned 10,000 engaged users into 2,500 investors, and the smartest founders still raise half of what they think they need.
📈 A 2-year subscription can transform CAC payback
Offering 2 years at a ~30% discount ($183 vs. $129/year) pulls revenue forward, funding marketing spend the moment it happens.
🚧 Removing signup friction can backfire spectacularly
Killing account creation looked like a huge win in early tests, but multi-device sync complaints and support grief erased the gains at 100% rollout.
🤝 Not every mouth is worth the same in word of mouth 
Instructors and industry insiders who refuse affiliate kickbacks carry more trust than any paid channel, precisely because they aren't sales reps.
🧪 Most startups don't have the sample size to A/B test properly
With a billion users, testing is easy; without them it's dangerously easy to read whatever you want into the numbers while a metric further down the funnel quietly breaks.

About Jelte Liebrand:
🚀Founder of Savvy Navvy, a marine navigation app that is Google Maps for boats. Charts, tides, weather, and everything you need for sailing and motorboat navigation
👋 LinkedIn
🛥️ Savvy Navvy

🖥️ Savvy Navvy Careers

💬 Savvy Navvy on X

Follow us on X: 
David Barnard - @drbarnard
Jacob Eiting - @jeiting
RevenueCat - @RevenueCat
SubClub - @SubClubHQ

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Six Days to an Oversubscribed Crowdfunding Raise 
[00:36] Introducing Jelte Liebrand of Savvy Navvy 
[01:46] A Bad Day at Google and a Yacht Race Sign-Up 
[03:09] Plotting Courses by Hand on a Racing Yacht 
[05:12] Realizing This Wasn't Just an Ocean Racer's Problem 
[06:10] Buying a Clipboard to Research the Boating Market 
[08:16] What AI Teaches Us About Shifting Expectations 
[13:15] Even Dropping a Pin Is Starting to Feel Dated 
[14:31] Sitting Down With VCs and Walking Away 
[16:46] What Equity Crowdfunding Actually Means 
[20:56] Why VC Only Fits a Narrow Set of Businesses
[24:44] Raise Half of What You Think You Need 
[27:31] Inside Savvy Navvy's First and Later Funding Rounds 
[29:25] No Preferred Shares and the Same Terms for Everyone 
[32:35] Why He Tells Founders Not to Raise At All 
[35:42] Setting a Revenue Multiple Instead of a VC Multiple 
[39:34] From Just an App to a B2B Platform 
[42:27] The Arc Boats Partnership That Opened Doors 
[46:50] Spotting Hardware Opportunities Like Tessie and Tesla 
[48:30] How the Manufacturer Flywheel Actually Works 
[52:57] Instructors, Chandleries, and Trust Without Kickbacks 
[57:44] Two-Year Subscriptions and the CAC Payback Win 
[01:00:13] Biggest fail of the year: The Anonymous Accounts Experiment That Backfired

On the podcast: why founders belong in the marketing trenches more often, what makes ‘ugly’ ads perform so well, and why stable ad performance is actually a red flag.
Top Takeaways:
🚨 Stable ad performance is a warning sign, not a win 
A $30 acquisition returning $50 can feel safe enough to scale, but that comfort may stop the search for the breakthrough creative that halves CPA or triples purchases.
👀 Ugly ads earn the attention that polished ads lose
When every feed looks perfectly branded, an unpolished ad that explains the product in the first second has a better chance of stopping the scroll.
🛠️ Founders cannot outsource market intuition
Sitting in acquisition meetings and developing early creative gives founders a firsthand understanding that no agency or marketing hire can manufacture for them.
🧪 Validate demand before building the product
Selling a PDF, concept, or promise—even if it must be refunded—is a cheaper test than spending months building an app the market never asked for.
🌍 Localization is a testing advantage, not just a translation task
Similar-converting international markets can turn a $1,000-a-day US creative test into a $10-a-day experiment, provided the team still accounts for local culture.

About Yuliya Lennox:
🚀App marketing professional helping apps scale through strategy, experimentation, and deep understanding of user behavior. Experienced in B2C growth, monetization design, and funnel optimization across startups and established teams. Thrives on turning data into actionable insights and collaborating cross-functionally to drive sustainable, user-focused growth.
👋 Linkedin

Follow us on X: 
David Barnard - @drbarnard
Jacob Eiting - @jeiting
RevenueCat - @RevenueCat
SubClub - @SubClubHQ

Episode Highlights:
[0:00] The founder thesis: Why marketing has to be felt, not just understood.
[2:34] Stability is the enemy. Steady CPMs and CPAs mean you've stopped pushing.
[6:54] The case for ugly ads: Why the least polished creative usually wins.
[8:46] Sell before you build a single line of code.
[14:47] No silver bullet: Why founders can't outsource marketing to a hire.
[19:02] The belly fat ad. When brand caution costs you your best-performing creative.
[24:49] When brand actually matters: The Solid Starts backlash that proved the exception.
[26:31] Betting on localization for cheaper testing and bigger markets outside the US.
[32:45] The case for a marketer camp: Why sharing wins beats guarding them.
[40:11] Inside Higgsfield's grind: 17-hour days and an early bet on AI video.
[46:43] Organic growth's double edge. How Replika and Solid Starts hit a ceiling.
[56:14] Hire the obsessed: Why passion beats headcount on a great team.
[1:01:06] The end of black hat growth. Subscription quizzes, regulators, and a reckoning.
[1:06:45] The $1 trial that charged $350, dissected.
[1:10:32] Lightning round: Biggest win, biggest fail, and the red ocean/blue ocean divide.

On the podcast: the bootstrapper's path to $10 million in ARR, what's actually investable in consumer in 2026, and why product taste is the new bottleneck, not engineering.

Top Takeaways:
🎨 Product taste is the new bottleneck, not engineering
Build costs have collapsed, but the number of great apps is still capped by the rare ability to make hundreds of small product decisions well.
💰 There has never been a better time to bootstrap a $10M app 
With infrastructure like RevenueCat, paid UA financing, and near-zero build costs, a solo developer can now reach eight figures without ever talking to a VC.
🔒 Low churn is the only thing that makes consumer investable
Network effects and deep AI-powered personalization are the two credible paths to building a subscription product that retains long enough to compound.
🚫 Don't raise venture unless you can articulate the billion-dollar outcome 
Venture capital comes with preferred stock, liquidation preferences, and outcome expectations that will make your life miserable if the ceiling ends up being $10M, not $1B.
🏗️ Bootstrap first, raise later if the market proves bigger
Building a cash-flowing business before raising gives you better terms, less dilution, and the option to stay indie if the venture-scale opportunity never materializes.
🛡️ Apps aren't going anywhere — agents won't replace beautiful visual experiences
People want to interface with products using their eyeballs, and dedicated apps built by focused teams will always beat bespoke AI-generated software.
About Andrew Maguire:
🚀Andrew founded Volo Ventures in 2021 and is now the Managing Partner. Andrew has spent 20 years building and backing technology companies. He founded Looksharp (acquired) and later became a Partner at Oakhouse Partners, where he invested in a top-decile fund. He also served as COO of The Mind Company, helping scale Elevate (Apple's App of the Year) and Balance (Google's Best App of the Year).
👋 LinkedIn

🖥️Volo Ventures

💻 Zo Computer

Follow us on X: 
David Barnard - @drbarnard
Jacob Eiting - @jeiting
RevenueCat - @RevenueCat
SubClub - @SubClubHQ
Episode Highlights:
[1:36] The consumer thesis: Why AI makes this a great time to build consumer apps.
[3:39] The real bottleneck: Taste and judgment, not capital, drive app quality.
[6:49] Money doesn't buy PMF: Why more engineers won't get you there faster.
[11:12] Breaking the one-shot myth: How X1 turns app-building into modular decisions.
[13:09] Neutral by design: What models trained to avoid a point of view cost consumer products.
[19:29] The power of utility: Why 15-year-old apps like Strava still win.
[22:48] The indie developer moment: Building a $10M app without raising a dime.
[25:39] The personal coach thesis: How AI personalization creates a new moat.
[28:02] The inference cost bet: Why timing matters more than direction.
[36:36] Should you raise venture capital: A real conversation with a founder chasing the wrong outcome.
[38:28] Debt vs. equity: What venture debt and preferred stock mean for founders.
[53:00] The problem with star ratings: Why review farming broke app quality signals.
[1:02:31] Biggest fail of the year: The rise in AI-driven security incidents.

On the podcast: reaching brand-new audiences through web funnels, how they created their own ‘Big Mac index’ for global pricing, and why monthly plans can beat annual for LTV.
Top Takeaways:

🌐 Web funnels unlock audiences that app stores can't reach
Moving users from a lean-back social scrolling mindset to an active download requires an intermediate web flow to build intent and explain value.

🍔 Global pricing requires more than currency conversion
Building a custom purchasing power index for international markets can dramatically increase conversion, but impact can be further improved by combining it with deep, culturally aware localization.

🗓️ Monthly plans create a faster feedback loop for product value
While annual plans offer better upfront cash flow, monthly subscriptions provide the undeniable truth about usage and retention. With strong retention, monthly plans can generate much higher lifetime value.

🎨 Delightful product moments are the best ad creatives
Features that create genuine emotional reactions—like bringing a child's drawing to life—naturally become high-performing marketing assets because they clearly demonstrate the product's core value.
🤝 Treating platforms as partners yields strategic advantages
Sharing roadmaps, challenges, and user insights with Apple and Google unlocks beta access and design partnerships that adversarial approaches miss.

About Yoav Sharon:
🎹 Head of Growth and Product at Simply, the company behind Simply Piano, Simply Guitar, Simply Sing, and Simply Draw, which are apps used by millions of learners across more than 180 countries.
👋 LinkedIn

💪 X

Follow us on X: 
David Barnard - @drbarnard
Jacob Eiting - @jeiting
RevenueCat - @RevenueCat
SubClub - @SubClubHQ

Episode Highlights:
[2:57] Dreams into habits: Helping people learn creative skills through smaller steps.
[7:10] The portfolio playbook: How Simply expanded into different instruments.
[10:05] Avoiding cannibalization: Measuring interactions between apps and channels across a multi-product business.
[15:15] Family first: Why multi-profile and multi-app households become the strongest retention segment.
[18:02] Beyond attribution: How web funnels unlocked new audiences and new growth channels.
[21:11] From lean-back to action: Using onboarding flows to move users from passive browsing into active intent.
[24:24] Web as audience expansion: Why Simply views web funnels as a growth engine, not a fee-reduction strategy.
[26:26] Partners, not platforms: Building close relationships with Apple and Google.
[32:54] The future of learning: Why immersive platforms could transform skill development.
[37:52] The case for monthly plans: How faster renewal cycles improve product learning and LTV.
[44:24] The truth about pricing: Balancing annual discounts with long-term customer value.
[50:54] The localization advantage: Building a pricing model inspired by the Big Mac Index.
[56:01] Japan surprise: The localization lesson that completely changed a paywall strategy.
[59:11] AI and visible value: Bringing children's drawings to life and increasing willingness to pay.