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• Buying vs. Building: Scaling Beyond a Single App — Josh Peleg, BlueThrone

  On the podcast I talk with Josh about red flags that tank app valuations, why subscription-only apps are leaving money on the table, and how bootstrapped founders are cashing out for millions in months, not years.Top Takeaways:🎯 Build to sell, but build smartFlipping an app in under a year is still possible, but the skill that matters most now is marketing. With AI lowering the barrier to development, distribution has become the real differentiator. Founders who master organic channels, community, and creator-driven marketing are the ones who land meaningful exits.💰 Predictability drives valueBuyers pay more for revenue they can trust. Apps built on recurring subscriptions with strong retention and low churn are far more attractive than those relying on ads or one-time purchases. Predictable cash flow isn’t just safer, it’s worth a higher multiple.🚩 Short-term tricks destroy long-term valueArtificially inflating numbers before a sale, such as pushing lifetime deals to boost revenue, can quickly kill a deal. Serious acquirers look for sustainable metrics, not spikes. Authentic growth, honest reporting, and healthy retention are the hallmarks of a business built to last.🔄 Fewer and deeper betsThe age-old quality-over-quantity principle still holds. After buying nearly a hundred small apps early on, BlueThrone learned that broad portfolios don’t win. Their new playbook focuses on a handful of apps with real product-market fit, strong organic traction, and teams ready to scale into category leaders.💡 Hybrid monetization unlocks new growthBorrowing tactics from gaming, like consumables, day passes, and rewarded ads, helps subscription apps reach more users and capture more value. These models make spending feel flexible and fair, turning a single price point into an entire revenue spectrum.About Josh Peleg:  📈 Head of Business Development and M&A at BlueThrone, one of the world’s leading app acquirers.💡 Josh helps founders scale and exit their apps, guiding deals that range from six to eight figures.🎮 Before joining BlueThrone, he led mergers and acquisitions in the mobile gaming industry, giving him a front-row view of how distribution and monetization strategies evolve.🗣 “The best apps today aren’t just great products—they’re great stories. Marketing and distribution are what turn a good idea into a real business.”👋 LinkedInFollow us on X: David Barnard - @drbarnardJacob Eiting - @jeitingRevenueCat - @RevenueCatSubClub - @SubClubHQEpisode Highlights: [0:00] Lesson learned from BlueThrone’s early “go-wide” strategy [6:20] Why founders have to be more than great builders [8:19] The pieces that lead to higher valuations[12:37] Five signals that can kill a deal[18:12] When (and when not) to raise[24:33] Shifting from a broad portfolio to a few deep bets [33:15] The future of monetization[45:07] What drives the best exits in today’s acquisition market[52:00] How founders can position themselves for life-changing exits 

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• What Subscription Apps Can Learn About Monetization From Gaming — Mathias Gredal Nørvig, Subway Surfers

  On the podcast we talk with Mathias about running Subway Surfers' marketing machine on salaries, not ad spend, leaving money on the table to protect player experience, and why more apps should try rewarded ads, season passes, and other tactics from gaming.Top Takeaways:🎨 Viral flywheels can out-perform massive paid campaignsRelying on salaries instead of ad budgets, a lean team can ship constant creative that rides cultural waves. Most experiments flop quietly, but the occasional viral hit fuels downloads across platforms and even influences app store featuring. The lesson: volume, autonomy, and cultural fluency can rival—or surpass—big-spend marketing.🛡️ Protecting user experience is a growth strategyIt’s tempting to squeeze harder on monetization, but avoiding overly aggressive tactics can pay off longer-term. By keeping the core product endlessly playable and resisting short-term optimization, teams can build evergreen engagement that compounds for over a decade. Sometimes the best ROI comes from not chasing every last dollar.🎁 Rewarded ads expand who you can monetizeGiving users the choice to watch ads in exchange for perks isn’t just a gaming trick—it’s a fairness mechanism. It allows players in tier-two and tier-three markets, who may never subscribe, to still contribute value. Apps beyond gaming can borrow this playbook to reach broader audiences without alienating core users.⏱️ Season passes deliver transparency and trustUnlike recurring subscriptions, passes offer clear value over a fixed time window: pay once, play (or use) for the season. This structure avoids the “forgotten subscription” resentment while still generating meaningful revenue. It’s a model that translates well to utilities and lifestyle apps where usage is bursty or seasonal.🤝 Collaborations multiply reach without heavy spendCrossovers between brands or products can reactivate lapsed users and bring in new audiences, even when no money changes hands. Like the music industry learned with features, one plus one can equal three when two strong IPs join forces. Subscription apps in adjacent niches can create the same effect.About Mathias Gredal Nørvig: 👨‍💻 CEO of SYBO, the company behind the smash hit mobile game Subway Surfers.📈 Mathias and the small-but-mighty SYBO content marketing team have built a freemium mobile app with serious staying power.💡“How do we entertain as many players as possible with something as available as possible, but also allow those who want to spend … money to progress or get more content to do so — without the expense of ruining the fun for the majority?”👋 LinkedIn Follow us on X: David Barnard - @drbarnardJacob Eiting - @jeitingRevenueCat - @RevenueCatSubClub - @SubClubHQEpisode Highlights: [1:01] Staying power: How a subscription app like Subway Surfers achieves longevity with over 4.5 billion downloads.[4:30] Surfing the waves: How the Subway Surfers in-house creative marketing team creates and rides virality waves.[8:50] The content flywheel: How subscription apps can become self-sustaining with organic marketing.[16:27] Cash flow: What subscription apps can learn from the mobile gaming industry about alternative monetization strategies.[19:51] Paying the piper: How to balance a good user experience with when and how to require payment.[25:30] A watchful eye: The challenges of preserving brand reputation and protecting underage users in a freemium app that serves ads.[28:48] Teaming up: Avoiding cannibalization and partnering with competitors in the free-to-play space.[41:17] Day pass: How apps can experiment with consumables, day passes, and season passes to unlock new revenue opportunities.

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• Value-Driven Growth: LinkedIn's Billion-Dollar Subscription Strategy — Ora Levit, LinkedIn

  On the podcast we talk with Ora about LinkedIn’s value-driven growth philosophy, how they personalize experiences and plan offerings based on user intent, and the complexity of running over a thousand experiments a year.Top Takeaways:🌱 Growth follows valueThe surest path to long-term growth is adding features and benefits that genuinely help people achieve their goals. Growth tactics may bring a spike, but sustainable revenue comes from a product that keeps evolving so members find new reasons to return. When value creation is continuous, acquisition and retention become self-reinforcing.🎯 Personalize by intentNot all users are looking for the same outcome. Job seekers, small business owners, and learners need different experiences. Matching plans, features, and paywalls to their specific intent—whether expressed directly or inferred from behavior—makes the product feel relevant and worth paying for. The alternative is irrelevance, which guarantees churn.📊 Test like a scientistScaling experimentation changes the culture: debates give way to data. By running over a thousand tests a year, teams learn faster, spot what actually resonates, and avoid relying on intuition alone. The goal isn’t just to optimize pricing or layouts—it’s to build a habit of constant learning that compounds into growth.🔄 Retention isn’t linearChurn doesn’t always mean goodbye. Many users return months or years later when their needs change—“boomerang” behavior that can become a meaningful revenue stream. Win-back offers, refreshed trials, and simply continuing to add new value all help capture these returning customers and turn them into long-term loyalists.🤖 AI is a tool, not the storyArtificial intelligence should quietly power better outcomes, not become the headline. Helping users write a stronger profile, find the right lead, or save time drafting a job description creates tangible value. Positioning AI as a behind-the-scenes helper keeps the focus where it belongs: solving the user’s problem.About Ora Levit: 👨‍💻 Vice President of Product Management at LinkedIn.📈 Ora manages LinkedIn’s billion-dollar online subscription businesses, growing both the free weekly active user base and adding value for LinkedIn Premium subscribers.💡“Our offering changes over time, and as I mentioned, we believe in value-driven growth. We add a lot of value. And so the Premium that you've seen if you subscribed two years ago is not the Premium of today. It's a very different product, and I want you to try it out.”👋 LinkedInFollow us on X: David Barnard - @drbarnardJacob Eiting - @jeitingRevenueCat - @RevenueCatSubClub - @SubClubHQEpisode Highlights:[0:00] Value add: How LinkedIn centers value-driven growth in their product development.[8:40] The long game: The importance of optimizing for and measuring long-term revenue.[9:57] Pay to play: Where to draw the line between free and paid features.[17:59] Put it to the test: Ora and her team prioritize A/B testing and user feedback over internal debates about feature ideas.[23:32] Take it personally: The role of AI and LLMs in personalizing in-app experiences.[27:47] Here today (and tomorrow): Strategies for retaining users in the long term and winning back churned users.[34:52] The AI touch: LinkedIn’s philosophy on incorporating AI features to add value to their product.[39:44] Two (or three) for one: Leveraging strategic partnerships to add bundled perks to a premium subscription offering.[41:43] Pulse check: Monitoring earnings calls, reports, books, and podcasts to stay in step with the current state of the subscription app industry.

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• The Post-Attribution Playbook for Growth — Eric Seufert, Mobile Dev Memo

  On the podcast I talk with Eric about how measurement dysfunction paralyzes growth, why diversifying channels for the sake of diversification actually hurts performance, and the futility of trying to interpret why ads win.Top Takeaways: 📊 Broken measurement kills growthThe biggest pitfall isn’t creative or channel choice—it’s disorganized measurement. When finance, product, and UA each use different models, growth stalls. The fix isn’t another dashboard; it’s alignment. Build one coherent, incrementality-aware framework everyone trusts, with clear definitions of success and outputs that meet each team’s needs.🌊 Don’t diversify just to diversifySpreading budget across more channels feels safer but often reduces performance after integration, creative, and reporting overhead. Start with a waterfall method: max out your primary channel until ROAS hits your threshold, then move to the next. Diversify for scale or cross-channel effects—not optics.🎲 Stop asking why an ad workedWinners often defy tidy explanations. Treat individual ad outcomes as stochastic and largely uninterpretable. Put your energy into the system: feed diverse concepts, automate prospecting/synthesis, and measure whether your process is increasing the rate of wins over time. Learn from inputs and process—not post-hoc stories about outputs.⚡ Ship speed over certainty earlyYou won’t have fully baked LTV or incrementality in week one. Push spend methodically: kill obvious losers immediately, let plausible winners age, track cohort ROAS at day-7/30/60, and widen budgets as curves support it. Iterative frontier-pushing beats premature “terminal LTV” guesswork.🧩 Engineer better signalsAlgorithms optimize to the signals you send. Create intentional, high-intent events (light “hurdles” that correlate with LTV) and send those back to platforms. Better signals shift spend toward durable users and compound efficiency, especially as automation on major platforms accelerates.About Eric Seufert: 👨‍💻 Quantitative marketer, media strategist, investor, and author.📈 Eric shares expert advice on the Mobile Dev Memo blog and is an investor at Heracles Capital.💡 “The way I approach creative testing is trying to identify losers as quickly as possible. The winners take time to prove out, but the losers are pretty quick to prove out.”👋 LinkedInFollow us on X: David Barnard - @drbarnardJacob Eiting - @jeitingRevenueCat - @RevenueCatSubClub - @SubClubHQEpisode Highlights: [1:00] Intelligent design: How to effectively incorporate AI into your business strategy.[4:52] I, Robot: Machine learning =/= generative AI.[8:36] AI Pitfalls: AI works best for automating tasks and coming up with ideas — not generating brilliant creative assets.[17:29] Predictive AI: Brand-specific, full-fidelity video ads generated by AI could be a reality within 18 months.[33:25] Risky business: How to effectively diversify across advertising channels to optimize ROAS-adjusted spend.[37:43] Measure of success: Above all, make sure your measurement system is coherent and has cross-team alignment.[42:04] Tortoise vs. hare: To balance speed and efficiency, identify your ad “losers” as quickly as possible.[44:43] Missed opportunity: Good marketing comes down to embracing some uncertainty and minimizing the rest.[49:23] Human touch: Why generative AI creative tools probably aren’t a worthwhile investment right now.

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• Signal Engineering: Strategic Data Filtering for Better Ad Performance — Thomas Petit, Independent Consultant

  On the podcast I talk with Thomas about using signal engineering to optimize ad spend, how AI is changing creative testing, and why most people should avoid app2web… for now.Top Takeaways:🧠 The biggest AI opportunity in ads is smarter analysis, not faster productionAI is now good enough to produce ad-quality video and variants at scale — but that’s where 95% of the industry focus stops. The underused frontier is AI for analysis: spotting winning hooks, predicting performance, and even pre-testing creatives with “AI humans” before spend. The teams that combine rapid AI production with AI-driven analysis can iterate faster and scale what works more reliably.🔍 Signal engineering starts with fixing broken dataIf the events you send to ad networks are inaccurate or poorly mapped, you’re sabotaging the algorithms. First step: make sure event counts match internal analytics within ~5–10% (not 30–50%). Then move from “normal” to “sophisticated” by filtering for quality — for example, optimizing to high-LTV trial signups instead of all trials — and sending value-adjusted revenue that reflects predicted LTV, not just day-one spend.⚖️ Balance exploitation of winners with exploration of new conceptsWhen a creative crushes it, it’s tempting to flood your account with variations. But over-reliance on a single concept speeds fatigue and leaves you exposed when performance drops. Keep iterating on winners and testing new hooks in parallel — especially on fast-moving platforms like TikTok, where trends expire in weeks.🌐 App-to-web works best for big brands with deep resourcesMoving checkout to the web can bypass app store fees, but it’s a high-commitment experiment. Success usually requires brand trust, team bandwidth, and a well-tested flow — often with different plan structures than in-app. For most smaller teams, the opportunity cost outweighs the benefit. “Saying no to good ideas” is often the smarter prioritization.💳 Hybrid monetization is powerful, but not plug-and-playCombining subscriptions with one-time or usage-based purchases can capture more revenue from different segments — especially for AI-powered apps with real compute costs. But designing it to avoid cannibalizing subscriptions is complex. Treat hybrid as a later-stage lever: exhaust easier wins in pricing, packaging, and paywall optimization first, then experiment, possibly starting with Android or non-US markets. About Thomas Petit: 👨‍💻 Independent app growth consultant helping subscription apps like Lingokids, Deezer, and Mojo.📈 Thomas is passionate about helping subscription apps optimize their ad spend and increase ROI through smarter testing.💡 “The whole idea of signal engineering and optimization of the data that you're sending back is: send the network something better, and they're gonna do a better job. They are doing a better job — it's you who are not doing yours.”👋  LinkedInFollow us on X: David Barnard - @drbarnardJacob Eiting - @jeitingRevenueCat - @RevenueCatSubClub - @SubClubHQEpisode Highlights: [1:21] Testing smarter: How AI may be changing the game for testing ads.[13:09] Untangling the web: App-to-web can work for some, but it’s not a slam dunk.[21:19] Hedge your bets: The benefits of moving away from subscription-only and embracing hybrid monetization strategies.[26:50] Going global: When and why to consider experimenting with hybrid monetization outside the US.[31:15] Signal vs. noise: The signal engineering framework for sending the most valuable user interaction data to ad platforms.[44:47] Multi-platform: Optimizing your data and event mapping for multiple ad networks.[53:01] Low-hanging fruit: Scoring easy wins with signal engineering.[1:08:04] Hands-off: Why ad networks likely won’t (and maybe shouldn’t?) implement built-in signal engineering tools for app marketers.[1:14:05] Going deep: Advanced signal engineering techniques.[1:26:09] Volume vs. quality: Why sending fewer events to ad networks may actually yield better results.

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