Interviews with the experts behind the biggest apps in the App Store. Hosts David Barnard and Jacob Eiting dive deep to unlock insights, strategies, and stories that you can use to carve out your slice of the 'trillion-dollar App Store opportunity'.
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How WeWard Hit 20M Users Without Paid Ads — Yves Benchimol, WeWard
Épisode 179
mercredi 30 septembre 2026 • Durée 01:05:53
On the podcast: growing for four years on press and organic alone, affiliate deals as an underexplored revenue stream, and why deciding to pivot is the hardest part.
Top Takeaways: 🗞️ A PR retainer can beat paid UA for a mass-market app A $3–5K monthly retainer produced months with half a million downloads and four years of growth with zero Meta or Google spend.
🤝 Affiliate deals are the revenue stream most subscription apps still ignore Brands pay commission only on sales, so the pitch to Nike-sized partners is low-risk for them and the deals are reached directly, not invented.
📏 Pick the metric that is the user's outcome and A/B test every feature against it A walking app that refuses to track time in app and measures steps instead shipped a feature that lifted steps 10% by locking social media behind a step goal.
🌍 A growth playbook that works in one country can fail completely in the next The PR strategy that pulled 300,000 downloads from a single French TV segment produced nothing in the US, where nobody knew the founder or the app.
⭐ A celebrity works harder as a shareholder than as a spokesperson An ambassador-plus-investor deal changed hiring, press replies, CAC and retention at once, though the impact can be difficult to precisely quantify.
⏱️ At scale, app review times are a growth constraint, not an inconvenience The more parallel A/B tests you run, the more a 24-hour (or five-day) release cycle caps how fast you can learn.
About Yves Benchimol: 🚶 Founder of WeWard, a free mobile app backed by Venus Williams designed to make walking a more rewarding part of people's lives. WeWard’s mission is simple: to get more people walking the world over.
Episode Highlights: [00:00] Meet Yves Benchimol of WeWard [01:36] Why Yves left B2B retail analytics [05:04] Shutting down a business to start over [07:31] Building an app that rewards walking [09:29] Why WeWard ditched blockchain [12:24] Choosing user value over technical complexity [15:55] Loyalty, gamification, and motivational layers [17:41] Why WeWard measures steps, not screen time [18:37] Building revenue beyond subscriptions [21:46] How affiliate marketing fits WeWard [23:54] Using PR as the first acquisition channel [25:18] 300,000 downloads in under five minutes [28:32] Four years without paid UA, and why US press fell flat [31:12] Why US growth required local credibility [33:11] Pitching Venus Williams at lunch [37:47] What Venus Williams brings as ambassador and investor [42:01] What's next for WeWard's global growth [43:14] Staying ahead of copycat apps [46:25] Locking social apps until users walk [48:27] Motivational layers and staying focused on walking [50:11] Localizing rewards across 29 countries [52:35] Why growth strategies change by market [54:10] Moving to the US to scale WeWard [57:13] Why big growth requires bigger bets [1:00:06] Biggest win: rebuilding the onboarding [1:00:46] Biggest fail: returning to B2B [1:01:46] Why mobile app iteration is still too slow
Why BoldVoice Charged From Day 1 and Ignored the Duolingo Freemium Playbook — Anada Lakra
Épisode 178
mercredi 16 septembre 2026 • Durée 01:04:38
On the podcast: scaling to $10M ARR with a team of ten, having every employee do two user interviews a week, and why their hard paywall "win" backfired.
Top Takeaways:
🧪 Trial-start rate is the wrong scoreboard A hard paywall and a no-exit discount both lifted trial starts, then refunds spiked by more than the gain; judge paywall tests on net revenue after refunds, on a matured cohort.
🗣️ Every employee does two user interviews a week, engineers included Automated invites to a mixed sample of users book whoever has calendar space, so the whole team hears customers directly instead of through a PM.
💳 Charge from day one to find out who you're building for A plain $10-a-month paywall with a one-week trial at launch filtered for willingness to pay and freed the team to work on onboarding and the core product instead of pricing tests.
🧩 Mixing other apps' playbooks is the worst strategy of all Duolingo's freemium base only works because it teaches the basics of everything to hobby learners; a product for high-intent professionals should ignore that base entirely.
📅 Lead with annual to know your channel ROI the week the trial ends Annual cash lands after the seven-day trial, so payback per channel is visible immediately and can be reinvested; monthly leaves you guessing between one month and 24.
🧑💻 $10M ARR with 10 people runs on owners, one meeting a week, and everyone shipping Hire founder-type doers, hold a single Monday sync, and let AI coding tools turn the whole team, including a non-technical CEO, into builders.
About Anada Lakra: Anada Lakra is the Co-Founder and CEO of BoldVoice, an AI accent and speech coach for the billion people who speak English as a second language. The app provides real-time feedback powered by our proprietary speech models and lessons from Hollywood accent coaches.
Scaling Meta Ads from zero to $100K a month — Ethan Ethier, Built With Science
Épisode 177
mercredi 2 septembre 2026 • Durée 01:00:03
On the podcast: scaling Meta ads from zero to $100,000 a month, why they waited a year after launch before buying ads, and how a pricing page experiment shifted users toward annual subscriptions.
Top Takeaways:
📉 A big audience buys you a launch spike, not a growth engine Even 7 million subscribers produce a bump at launch and a steady trickle after; durable growth still came from paid ads, SEO, and a product that converts cold traffic.
🧱 Fix trial-to-paid before you spend a dollar on ads A full year of product work before the first ad lifted the conversion floor for every channel, because paid traffic always converts colder than organic.
🧲 Cold traffic converts better on a quiz than in the App Store A long, personalized web quiz educates users, overcomes objections, and raises perceived value — and it beat direct-to-store traffic in a head-to-head test, which is why 90% of traffic goes there.
💰 Show annual first and shrink the perceived risk, not the price Presenting annual upfront with a day-by-day trial timeline and a promised day-12 reminder shifted plan choice from 60/40 to 75–80% annual, with no price change.
👯 A two-person plan is retention insurance disguised as a discount 15% off for adding a workout partner gets 15% of trial starts to take it, raising order value and keeping both users subscribed longer.
🔬 70% of experiments fail on the first try — winners come from documenting why Locking in the problem before brainstorming solutions, and writing every test down, turns failures into iterations instead of dead ends.
About Ethan Ethier: 🏋️Head of Growth and Operations at Built With Science, a science-based fitness app founded with YouTuber Jeremy Ethier. Personalized workout plans, nutrition guidance, and AI-powered coaching designed to help users train with research-backed methods.
$10M ARR Without Ever Testing A Paywall — Luke Martin-Fuller, Visible
Épisode 176
mercredi 19 août 2026 • Durée 01:11:43
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.
Why He Crowdfunded Millions Instead of Raising VC — Jelte Liebrand, Savvy Navvy
Épisode 175
mercredi 5 août 2026 • Durée 01:07:28
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
Make Ugly Ads to Grow Your App – Yuliya Lennox (Solid Starts)
Épisode 174
mercredi 22 juillet 2026 • Durée 01:17:19
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.
The Bootstrapper's Path to $10M ARR – Andrew Maguire, Volo Ventures
Épisode 173
mercredi 8 juillet 2026 • Durée 01:04:50
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).
How Simply Finally Cracked Facebook Ads with Web Funnels – Yoav Sharon, Simply
Épisode 172
mercredi 24 juin 2026 • Durée 01:06:32
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.
Every year, Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference introduces updates that ripple through the App Store economy for years to come. In this special post-WWDC edition of Sub Club Live, host David Barnard sits down with RevenueCat developer advocate Charlie Chapman and world-renowned growth expert Thomas Petit to cut through the keynote hype. Together, they analyze the technical realities and strategic implications of the biggest announcements coming out of Apple Park.
Rather than offering a generic recap of consumer features, the panel focuses entirely on the practical mechanics that impact subscription app growth, retention, and monetization. From the deprecation of SiriKit in favor of mandatory App Intents to the introduction of App Store Creative Assets and new subscription bundling options, this session provides a clear roadmap of what subscription businesses should test immediately, adopt eventually, or safely ignore.
More content from the RevenueCat family: 👉 Launched – Our sister show that features indie app developers and solo creators about what it really takes to ship something new into the world: https://www.youtube.com/@LaunchedFM 👉 StartApp School – Practical courses on monetization, growth, acquisition, and everything else that turns an app into a business. Completely free: https://www.startapp.school/ 👉 RevenueCat blog: Mobile Paywalls: The Ultimate Guide for Subscription Apps: https://www.revenuecat.com/blog/growth/guide-to-mobile-paywalls-subscription-apps/ 👉 Subscription App Churn: Why Users Cancel and How to Fix It: https://www.revenuecat.com/blog/growth/subscription-app-churn-reasons-how-to-fix/ 👉 App Trial Conversion Rate: Benchmarks and Insights: https://www.revenuecat.com/blog/growth/app-trial-conversion-rate-insights/ 👉 Apple Search Ads: The Complete Guide for App Marketers: https://www.revenuecat.com/blog/growth/apple-search-ads-guide/ 📆 Subscribe to the Sub Club livestream calendar: https://rev.cat/subclubcalendar 🔔 Subscribe to the Sub Club YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@SubClubPodcast?sub_confirmation=1
Follow us on X: David Barnard - @drbarnardJacob Eiting - RevenueCat - SubClub -
How Removing the Free Trial Grew Monthly Subs 2000% – Nancy Anderson, Natal
Épisode 169
mercredi 27 mai 2026 • Durée 01:04:46
On the podcast: why authentic founder-led content outperforms, tapping into HSA payments to unlock a whole new audience, and the growth lever no dashboard can measure.
Top Takeaways:
🗣️ Authentic founder-led content consistently outperforms manufactured UGC Real expertise and genuine personality compound over time in a way no UGC agency can replicate — and it shows up in your conversion metrics.
🏥 HSA payments can open your app to a whole new paying audience Accepting pre-tax HSA dollars at checkout effectively gives eligible users a 30–40% discount — and targets people who already see your app as a health investment, not a discretionary spend.
📊 The growth lever no dashboard can measure is trust You can't A/B test trust, but you can see it in every downstream metric — trial conversion, retention, word-of-mouth. The apps that invest in it consistently outperform benchmarks across the board.
🧪 Removing the free trial can dramatically increase paid monthly subscriptions If your audience already trusts you, a free trial is just a delay. Removing it from a monthly plan can force high-intent users to commit — and the results can be dramatic.
🏗️ Consolidating multiple apps into one ecosystem reduces user confusion and increases LTV A portfolio of niche apps sounds smart but usually just creates decision fatigue. One cohesive ecosystem lets you go deeper, price lower, and keep users longer.
About Nancy Anderson:
🚀 Founder & Business Owner of Natal, Birth Recovery Center, Nancy Anderson Fit, & , digital health and fitness platforms supporting a global community of hundreds of thousands of women each month through pregnancy, postpartum recovery, and long-term strength.
Episode Highlights: [00:00] Building a subscription app by focusing on product value over paywall hacks [01:12] Anada's personal experience with communication barriers [08:53] The early founding story of BoldVoice [13:30] Why BoldVoice charged from day 1 [16:36] Why over-optimizing paywalls distracts teams from improvement [18:40] Why mature net revenue after refunds is an important metric [22:04] How hard paywall experiments backfired once refunds were factored in [24:17] BoldVoice's reverse-trial freemium model & why it ignored the Duolingo playbook [33:32] How BoldVoice found its real ICP: professionals over students [36:42] Keeping customer obsession alive with user interviews [43:29] How Accent Oracle drove a major viral growth moment [48:33] BoldVoice's approach to paid growth and annual plans [50:45] How BoldVoice reached $10M ARR with 10 people [55:02] The expansion from accent training to spoken-English fluency [1:00:37] The stigma around accents and how BoldVoice hopes to change that
[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
Episode Highlights: 00:00 Intro 01:11 Welcome to Sub Club Live WWDC 2026 Special Edition 02:00 Upcoming Events: UGC Marketing & Meta Ads Masterclass 03:02 Meet the Panel: Charlie Chapman & Thomas Petit 04:47 Is Apple Competing for Payments? The "Carrot Era" of the App Store 08:45 Why Apple Omitted Hardware Announcements This Year 10:33 Keynote Vibes: A Return to a More Authentic, Humble Apple 17:07 The Siri Overhaul: Hands-On Beta Impressions of iOS 27 Speed 24:22 App Intents: The Mandatory Shift That Could Make Your App Invisible| 01:21:54 App Store Creative Assets: Images & Videos in Search Results 01:31:51 Custom Product Pages: A Workaround for Testing Header Images 01:35:06 The App Store Cleanup: Why Apple Is Cracking Down on Limited Utility Apps 01:38:42 The Ad Attribution Stalemate: Why Apple Didn't Update SKAdNetwork 01:13:11 Seat-Based Licensing & Group Pricing: Supporting Prosumer & B2B Apps 01:05:05 Subscription Bundles & Suites: New Packaging and Retention Strategies 01:45:57 Live Q&A: Resetting Trial Eligibility & App Store Cancellation APIs 01:49:38 Outro & Wrap Up
Episode Highlights: [0:00] Fitness is expensive; HSA payments make programs more accessible. [1:36] Identified a gap: limited science-based programs for pre/postnatal women. [2:38] Shifted from in-person to online coaching, keeping high-touch engagement. [4:20] First online challenge: 100 participants, before-and-after results drove organic growth. [5:51] Lessons from multiple apps; pivot to a single custom ecosystem. [6:53] Founder-led growth: build trust before selling. [9:30] Audience quality over follower count; engagement drives retention. [11:39] Treating online clients like real-life clients strengthens the connection. [14:50] Authentic, relatable content strategy. [18:52] Real coaches respond to all DMs, comments, and emails within 24 hours. [22:06] Soft selling drives high trial conversion and app downloads. [27:01] Prioritize long-term trust over short-term revenue. [30:27] User feedback informs product roadmap; App Rehab program launched. [36:08] Consolidated four apps into one to reduce decision fatigue. [38:45] HSA integration opens access for new audiences. [46:47] Onboarding logic: phase-specific content improves activation. [48:57] In-app community boosts early engagement and retention. [50:15] Posture assessment acts as an organic “lead magnet.” [51:23] Avoid free workouts to maintain perceived program value. [53:43] HSA simplifies pre-tax payments and incentivizes subscriptions. [59:15] Closing: trust-first, founder-led growth is sustainable for niche apps
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