Welcome to the Subscription League podcast hosted by Purchasely, a world-class no-code Growth Platform for Subscription Apps. Drawing on the industry experience of Purchasely’s three award-winning founders, we sit down with CEOs, innovators, and experts to discuss hands-on experiences, pitfalls, and actionable insights and strategies for success. This podcast aims to guide you through your app subscription business journey.
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Inside the tech evolution: Insights from Fastlane and ContextSDK founder Felix Krause
Season 2 · Episode 1
Monday, September 9, 2024 • Duration 27:50
Felix takes us through his creation of Fastlane, which began as a college project to solve his own frustrations with app deployment and grew into a major tool used by developers worldwide, eventually being acquired by Twitter and Google. He also introduces us to ContextSDK, his latest venture designed to make apps smarter by understanding the user's context. Felix offers a peek behind the curtain at the differing work cultures of Twitter and Google, shares his insights on the changing landscape of the European tech scene, and discusses the shift towards remote work. Additionally, Felix speaks on the importance of security, privacy, and putting the user first in app development.
For noteworthy quotes and key takeaways from the episode, read the article - Inside the tech evolution: Insights from Fastlane and ContextSDK founder Felix Krause
Episode Topics at a Glance
The origins and impact of Fastlane
Transitioning from developer tools to context-aware technologies with ContextSDK
Security, privacy, and enhanced user engagement
Insights into corporate cultures at Twitter and Google
The evolution of the European tech ecosystem and remote work trends
Felix's personal journey and contributions to the tech community
More about Felix
Felix Krause is known for his significant contributions to the mobile development community, notably as the creator of Fastlane and ContextSDK. His work on Fastlane led to acquisitions by Twitter and then Google, highlighting the impact of his innovations in streamlining app deployment processes. Besides his developmental achievements, Felix is an active security and privacy researcher, offering his insights through talks and as the author of "iOS-Factor." For those interested in a more personal look at his life, Felix maintains howisFelix.today, a website that showcases a quantified view of his daily activities and experiences.
[00:01:19.700] - Fastlane: From University Project to Big Success
[00:06:22.940] - Introduction to ContextSDK
[00:09:41.990] - Use Cases for ContextSDK
[00:13:26.900] - Initial Success with ContextSDK
[00:16:54.770] - Privacy and Data Processing in ContextSDK
[00:19:22.650] - Potential User Concerns about ContextSDK
[00:22:10.550] - Importance of Lightweight SDKs
[00:24:51.400] - Exploring Felix Krause's Websites
Episode production by Mobdesign: https://podcasts.mobdesignapps.fr
Headway - Unlocking growth and diversification: the power of web and in-app subscriptions with Yeva Koldovska
Episode 28
Wednesday, June 28, 2023 • Duration 27:27
All about scaling an app by leveraging both web and app subscriptions!
In this exciting episode, we chat with Yeva Koldovska, the product manager at Headway, the world's most downloaded book summary app with over 18 million downloads.
Yeva shares valuable insights into Headway's journey and its strategic decision to offer web and in-app subscriptions.
Listen to the episode to uncover the profound impact of subscription variations on revenue and audience diversification, along with the behavioral differences and revenue advantages of web subscriptions.
Offering subscriptions through web and in-app channels
Reasons for including web subscriptions and diversifying revenue streams
Impact of privacy updates on user tracking and attribution quality
Differences in user behavior and preferences between web and app subscribers
Higher lifetime value (LTV) of web subscribers compared to app subscribers
Advantages of the web funnel
More about Yeva
Yeva Koldovska is a Product Manager at Headway, a company specializing in subscription-based services. With her expertise in product management, Yeva plays a crucial role in overseeing the development and enhancement of Headway's subscription offerings. She brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the table, enabling her to effectively identify and address the needs of Headway's diverse user base. Yeva is known for her strategic thinking, analytical skills, and ability to collaborate with cross-functional teams to drive product success.
Yeva’s Links
PhotoRoom - How to grow a subscription app business and its user base globally by Olivier Lemarié
Episode 20
Wednesday, March 1, 2023 • Duration 25:52
With over 50 million installs and a growing number of paying subscribers, PhotoRoom is scaling quickly across multiple markets across the globe. In our conversation, Olivier shares his insights on growth strategies in gaming and utilities, the challenges of scaling across markets, and the importance of experimentation and community-building.
We discuss how subscription-based utility apps like PhotoRoom defer from gaming apps that rely on one-time in-app purchases and user acquisition.
We also explore the challenges of scaling a business across multiple markets and how PhotoRoom is applying agile testing and learnings from one market to another.
Olivier also shares how PhotoRoom leverages TikTok content creators for user acquisition and emphasizes the importance of giving team members strong ownership and trust, making experimentation easy, and understanding the culture and needs of different markets.
Tuen in to learn more about PhotoRoom’s journey to grow its global footprint.
Episode Topics at a Glance
What is PhotoRoom
Market targeting and business strategies when growing an app internationally
TV apps vs. Photo editing and utility apps
PhotoRoom’s challenges ahead
Leveraging TikTok content for user acquisition
Growth tips for utility apps
Balancing ownership in a team
More about Olivier
Currently VP Growth at PhotoRoom, the leading AI photo-editing app for resellers, small businesses, and marketplaces, Olivier has been leading revenue and user base growth since 2020. Recently, PhotoRoom has reached 50 million installs, has millions of active users and several hundred thousand paying subscribers.
Prior to joining PhotoRoom, Olivier was heading Molotov marketing operations, a TV streaming app used by millions of french households and recently acquired by Fubo and he led the monetization strategy of Wooga, the Berlin-based mobile gaming studio.Olivier’s Links
CoinStats - Finding the sweet spot with the right subscription app monetization and pricing strategy with Vahe Baghdasaryan
Episode 19
Wednesday, February 15, 2023 • Duration 25:28
In this episode of the Subscription League, we explore the crucial balance between maximizing revenue and preserving subscriber satisfaction. Our guest, Vahe Baghdasaryan, a seasoned Growth Marketing Manager and 5-star Growth Marketing Mentor at CoinStats, offers invaluable insights into effective pricing strategies and monetization models for subscription apps.
Join us as Vahe highlights the importance of considering all aspects of monetization and emphasizes the significance of paywall optimization as just one piece of the puzzle.
You'll learn about:
1)the most commonly used pricing strategy
2)valuing features using Max-Diff Analysis
3)how to understand the willingness to pay using the drop principle
4)what to test when experimenting with pricing (subscription length, location, price)
Tune in for valuable tips and expert advice on optimizing your subscription app's monetization strategy.
Episode Topics at a Glance
CoinStats’ approach to monetization
Why understanding customers is important
What is a banded model in subscription pricing
How to value subscription features,
How to measure the willingness to pay
The drop principle - a commonly used product pricing strategies
Price Experimentation - Big Testing for Big Results
The impact of subscription length
Location-based pricing
More about Vahe
Vahe is a highly accomplished growth product and marketing professional with a wealth of experience in consumer startups across various industries, including education and fintech. He currently holds the position of Senior Growth Marketing Manager at CoinStats, where he is responsible for driving subscription optimization, user retention, and activation and leads the lifecycle marketing team. He has spoken internationally on engagement strategies, user activation, and onboarding optimization strategies. He’s also a 5-star rating mentor on GrowthMentor. Vahe has recently released his on-demand courses on subscription optimization & pricing strategy. More information can be found Vahe’s Links
Pollen VC - A guide to financing your user acquisition with Martin Macmillan
Episode 18
Wednesday, February 1, 2023 • Duration 23:33
When it comes to funding a young app venture, folks often seek out angel investors, venture capital, or equity investors. But in this episode, we sit down with Martin Macmillan, CEO of Pollen VC, to talk about a totally new way to finance an app business. It's called "revolving line of credit" funding and it's fast, flexible, and data-driven.
Tune in to hear Martin share insights on
How this financing method works
How Pollen VC’s funding model differs from the others
Who can benefit from it
How "Clean Room Accounting" strategy can help apps better manage their finances
Financial forecasting for subscription apps: Pollen's calculator
Join us for a fresh perspective on app financing with Martin Macmillan.
Pollen’s online calculator: ROAS, LTV, and cash flow
More about Martin
Martin Macmillan is Founder and CEO of Pollen VC. He has 20 years of experience in launching and building technology businesses in financial services and media sectors and a prior career as an investment banker.
Having directly experienced the growth challenges facing tech start-ups and the lack of debt financing options open to early-stage technology businesses, he saw the opportunity to marry his traditional financial markets and technology experience to create a new financing model for the app and gaming economy.
[REPOST] GP Bullhound - What venture investors look for in subscription apps with Eric Crowley
Thursday, January 19, 2023 • Duration 24:28
Despite a lot of doom and gloom out there about the slowdown of VC investment and how start-ups need to brace for the impact, smart and well-disciplined investors are still looking for home runs, and funding opportunities are still available for the best subscription app companies.
In this episode with Eric Crowley, partner at GP Bullhound, we talk about Consumer Subscription Software Flywheel, the investment north star that defines the main attributes of a successful CSS.
Then we talk about how subscription apps can maximize investors’ attention by
Building a paradigm-shifting Consumer Subscription Business
Paring UX and UI with high-quality content and proprietary data
Targeting a niche
Thinking as a third-party
Listen to the episode to find out more about the investor’s inside scoop.
For noteworthy quotes and key takeaways from the episode, read the article -
Eric is a Partner at GP Bullhound, focusing primarily on M&A, Capital Raises, and Advisory transactions with expertise in consumer subscription software, tech-enabled agencies and ad-tech. Over his career, he has completed transactions totaling over $3 billion in enterprise value.
Prior to GP Bullhound, Eric served as an executive at a software start-up where he focused on financial management and driving growth. In addition, Eric worked at Lazard and Antares Capital focusing on middle market transactions.
Breakthrough - Company spotlight: Health and Fitness App Productization Platform with Sunny Dulay
Episode 17
Wednesday, January 4, 2023 • Duration 32:35
With his background as a software engineer and app productization expert, Sunny Dulay was inspired by his personal journey with Headspace, a meditation app, and founded an app development and management studio, Breakthrough apps.
Breakthrough is dedicated to helping fitness coaches to productize their coaching into an app. Since its birth, the company has been growing exponentially, with a one-of-a-kind business model that sets itself apart from app aggregators.
Breakthrough and its clients come together on a mission to productize fitness activities by bringing in complementary assets: coaches bring in their brand and community, and Breakthrough provides the technology and app business know-how.
Breakthrough is a business enablement platform similar to Shopify. Instead of presenting multiple services/coaches in a single place, it provides an infrastructure for coaches to monetize and productize their service within their unshared and exclusively branded digital space.
Listen to hear about
The founder’s vision and lessons learned from the world of health and fitness apps
How the company was founded and where it is going
Tips on how to onboard an existing community onto an app
Importance of brand awareness and community
For noteworthy quotes and key takeaways from the episode, read the article -
What Breakthrough looks for when partnering with a new coach/influencer
Difference between Breakthrough’s offerings and an aggregator
Sunny’s learning from the fitness space
Community onboarding tactics
Together Labs - Leveraging user research to maximize subscription app monetization with Jenny Pollock
Episode 16
Wednesday, December 21, 2022 • Duration 32:07
Named to TIME‘s list of the 100 Most Influential Companies of 2022, Together Labs is a Silicon Valley-based 3D social networking company that innovates technologies empowering people worldwide to connect, create and earn in virtual worlds. Jenny Pollock, Lead Subscription Monetization Manager at Together Labs, is involved in every aspect of interlocking subscriptions and revenue optimization, driving IMVU, the emblematic brand of the company, to the world’s largest friendship discovery and social metaverse platform with more than 7M MAU.
In this episode of Subscription League Podcast, we sit down with Jenny to talk about her advice on how app developers and marketers can leverage quantitative and qualitative user research to guide the product roadmap and monetization strategy. Listen to the full episode to find out about her 4-step user research framework and all her pro tips on user research.
For noteworthy quotes and key takeaways from the episode, read the article -
Day in the life of a lead subscription monetization manager at Together Labs
Subscription tiers and user personas of IMVU explained
The value of listening to your community
User research: qualitative vs quantitative
Jenny's four-part framework for user research
Advice to start-ups for managing data
How to have great user interviews
More about Jenny Kay Pollock
Jenny Kay Pollock leads monetization at Together Labs, where she focuses on strategies that help keep IMVU a top 5 social app by spending in the US. Jenny routinely speaks on mobile monetization, women in the workplace, and building a tech career. She has published on these topics in outlets like Forbes and Ellevate. Find her discussing all things tech on Twitter at Jenny’s Links
Appic - All about subscription app onboarding with Tobias Boerner
Episode 15
Wednesday, December 7, 2022 • Duration 25:08
Tobias Boerner, now Chief Marketing Officer & Co-founder of a Luxembourg-based app aggregation company, Appic, has been laying a series of remarkable stepping stones in his career. The most noticeable are his achievements at LOVOO, one of the biggest dating apps in Europe which he made an exit for about $70 million, and Fastic, a five-star intermittent fasting app used by over 26M users worldwide, 92% of whom are happy customers. The Fastic app is also looked upon by many subscription apps and marketers for its exemplary onboarding process and its approach to building users’ trust and satisfaction with consistent delivery of personalized experiences.
For the Subscription League Podcast episode 15, we sat down with Tobias to discuss the nitty-gritty of how the Fastic app differentiates itself from other fasting apps with its extraordinary onboarding strategy.
For noteworthy quotes and key takeaways from the episode, read the article -
Tobias is a serial entrepreneur and Angel Investor. His passion is growth, product marketing and UX/UI. In his previous roles as a CMO and Co-Founder of LOVOO, Tobias was part of 2 exits worth 70M$ and 500M$.
After this almost 10-year journey in the dating environment, he started a new chapter as co-founder and growth officer for Fastic and helped them grow into one of the leading brands for well-being. Besides his passion for marketing, Tobi has made it his mission to be ahead of the times in market developments in the tech environment. With Admiral Studio he founded a collective in the NFT & Web3 space. Tobi is the CMO & Co-founder of App Aggregator Appic since 2022 where he is building a powerhouse for global mobile apps.
MobileGroove - The Subscription Model - the State, Benefits, and Success Tips by Peggy Anne Salz
Episode 14
Wednesday, November 23, 2022 • Duration 36:22
We are steering down the barrel of recession, but consumers’ appetite for subscriptions will likely continue to develop, and an increasing number of subscription businesses will share the pleasure.
Subscriptions account for 82% of revenue regenerated on average by non-gaming apps.
In the U.S., the annual spending on top subscription apps in the Apple App Store increased by ⅓ over a year, reaching 6 billion in 2021. Revenues on Google Play also rose a massive 78% to reach 2.5 billion the same year.
What’s driving the rise of Subscription models?
For consumers, it promises lower barriers to entry, convenience to purchase, and access to novel and curated content.
For app businesses, it promises monetization and security.
Despite the proven benefits, there are still many challenges that apps struggle with such as the notorious “subscription fatigue.”
Listen to the full episode to learn about the state of the subscription economy, and success strategy recommendations by Peggy Anne Salz, a leading mobile marketer, and the chief analyst and founder of MobileGroove.
For noteworthy quotes and key takeaways from the episode, read the article -
As the chief analyst and founder of MobileGroove — a top 50 ranked destination providing analysis, custom research, and strategic content marketing to the global mobile industry, and mentoring and consulting to tech startups — Peggy Anne Salz is recognized as one of the leading experts shaping the mobile world.
[00:00:37]: Growth of Headway [00:01:04]: Discussion about Headway's global team [00:01:21]: Headway's book summary app and Nibble [00:02:09]: Why offer subscriptions through both web and in-app [00:03:51]: The impact of iOS 14.5 privacy updates on Headway's strategy [00:05:14]: Differences in user behavior between web and app subscriptions [00:07:00]: Benefits of web subscriptions in terms of user commitment and retention [00:08:27]: Targeting different audiences with web and app subscriptions [00:09:54]: User behavior and content preferences on web subscriptions
Episode production by Mobdesign: https://podcasts.mobdesignapps.fr
01:25 What have you learned from startup founders?
02:41 How has the FTX collapse impacted CoinStats?
03:53 Subscription optimization at CoinStats
10:04 Why pricing experimentation is important
15:02 What countries are driving most of CoinStats' revenue?
15:55 How do you set prices per region?
18:19 How to be careful about price discrimination
20:53 What is next for CoinStats?
23:00 Thoughts on the sunk cost fallacy
23:54 Where to learn more
25:00 Thank you for listening!
Transcript
Episode production by Mobdesign: https://podcasts.mobdesignapps.fr
Prior to founding Pollen VC, Martin was CEO at Soniqplay, CEO at Level Four (acquired by clear2pay), and a Director of UBS in London and New York, where he ran the Eurocommercial paper (ECP) trading group and conceived and delivered UBS’ first client-facing electronic debt trading platform.
03:35 What GP Bullhound looks for to invest in companies
05:13 The importance of UX and UI
06:55 The role proprietary data takes in building a business mode
08:41 Transitioning from founder-backed to venture-backed companies
11:20 Post-pandemic subscription net businesses
12:59 Examples of creative ways to engage consumers
15:01 Will the Winner-Take-All trend continue?
16:56 Best success stories
18:24 The digital to analogue transition
19:28 Should funders worry about reaching specific APIs?
21:03 Consumer subscription software conference
23:10 Where to learn more about GP Bullhound
Trancript
Episode production by Mobdesign: https://podcasts.mobdesignapps.fr
More about Sunny Dulay
Sunny Dulay is the Co-founder and CEO of Breakthrough, an App Builder for Wellness Coaches. He is an experienced software engineer, product manager & sales manager. Based on his personal life-changing experience with a single coach-based app, Sunny is a believer in on-demand personality-based coaching through an app. His mission is to help coaches around the world productize and scale their coaching business with an app. The Breakthrough team helps coaches in wellness niches like Yoga, Meditation, Fitness, Nutrition & Sports launch & grow their apps. The Breakthrough platform has generated $2M+ for coaching apps. Sunny lives in NYC!
03:40 Why is there a long onboarding process for Fastic?
05:39 Purpose of the onboarding categories
08:02 What is the ideal onboarding experience?
08:35 Response to very heavy onboarding flow
09:20 Other apps that inspired Tobias
09:54 Absolute don'ts for onboarding
11:28 Advice and tips for onboarding
12:45 Tobias' main struggles with designing onboarding
13:55 Onboarding without A/B testing
14:59 At what point do you not invest much effort anymore?
16:01 The expected effect of good onboarding
16:52 What % does good onboarding convert at?
17:25 The uplifting effect of good onboarding
19:30 Do you recommend a paywall in onboarding?
22:21 Did you run into bugs that helped?
24:01 Counterintuitive learning from Tobias
Transcript
Episode production by Mobdesign: https://podcasts.mobdesignapps.fr
Peggy is also a nine-time author, a frequent Forbes contributor and guest contributor for a variety of leading media outlets — including Harvard Business Review — where she shares her insights on mobile marketing, mobile apps, customer engagement, and business innovation.
Peggy produces podcasts, videos, webinars, and blogs to equip mobile marketers with best practices and growth strategies to power campaigns, brand storytelling, and user engagement. She is also the Chief Content Officer of MMA Germany.
