20Growth: The 7 Core Levers to Win at Consumer Subscription: Growth Loops, CAC + LTV Benchmarks, Pricing, Packaging, Notifications, Discounts, Paywalls | The Breakdown with Phil Carter

"As discussed during the podcast, 'Anytime you increase the number of notifications or emails you send, in the short term, it's like the sugar high. It’s going to lead to a short-term pop in your metrics. But if you do that too many times, you kill the channel.' This highlights the importance of sustainable engagement strategies rather than quick wins."

"It was pointed out that 'The average consumer subscription app is losing more than 50% of its annual subscribers in the first year and more than 50% of its monthly subscribers in the first three months.' This stark statistic emphasizes the challenges faced by subscription models."

"'So if you want to improve your LTV CAC ratio before your next board meeting, start by heading over to voyantis.ai slash 20VC.' This statement underscores the proactive approach necessary for growth leaders."

"I learned to focus less on these specialized skill sets and more on just finding really smart, hungry generalists who are ready to roll up their sleeves and figure it out."

"They need to be strong generalists. They need to be able to flex to whatever the demands of the business dictate in any given quarter."

"If we just deconstruct that, why are consumer subscriptions easy to launch? They don't require sales teams and they tend to have high gross margins with low marginal costs."

"The average consumer subscription app is maybe $10 a month, $60 to $80 a year versus B2B where you've got contract sizes in the thousands or hundreds of thousands or even millions."

"Consumers are starting to experience some degree of subscription fatigue, and all of that puts a lot of downward pressure on their unit economics and makes it really hard to build a sustainable business."

"I'd emphasize that ARPU tends to be relatively low for consumer subscription apps, and churn tends to be much higher compared to B2B SaaS businesses."

"I want to feel like I've learned something new on Duolingo. Accomplishment. I want to feel like I'm learning the language, and I'm learning it faster and better than my peers."

"There's a little bit of social status, like social influence. So this is where leaderboards come in, right? I want to be viewed as somebody who is one of the best language learners in my language and in my peer set."

"I think there are two things that these companies are doing really, really well to make sure that people continue to use their products over time."

"Luis von Ahn, the CEO there has multiple times talked about their approach to notifications. They are so overused; we have such notification overload. This indicates a need for refinement in how and when we communicate with users."

"If you increase the number of notifications or emails you send in the short term, it's like the sugar high. It's going to lead to a short term pop in your metrics, but if you do that too many times, you kill the channel. This reinforces the idea of sustainable engagement practices."

"On tiers, I think the vast majority of consumer subscription businesses should only have a single tier, at least until they become very large, mature businesses. The implication here is that simplicity can often lead to higher user retention."

"Often, companies don't realize how crucial pricing adjustments are, and many customer subscription apps will set a price and then won't revisit it for years. Famous examples highlight that this lack of revisiting pricing leads to stagnation and potential losses in revenue."

"Consumers have short attention spans, and the more complexity you introduce in the paywall, the worse your conversion rates are likely to be. Simplifying the user experience can lead to noticeably higher conversion rates."

"One thing that's becoming more and more important for any business is understanding how human attention spans are getting shorter. This necessitates that companies focus increasingly on refining their onboarding processes to grab user interest immediately."

"'Quizlet started as a digital flashcards app. When it first launched, that's what it was. Now, many years later, Quizlet's one of the largest online education platforms in the world...' This emphasizes the transformation and growth a startup can achieve by evolving its product offering."

"'What this company, Ladder, figured out over the last 18 to 24 months is they realized their product was perfectly tailored to TikTok...' This highlights the importance of adapting product marketing strategies to specific platforms for optimal growth."

"'A lot of the underlying things that you need to do to be really successful in SEO are the same things that you need to do to be really successful with these LLMs...' This underlines the parallel between SEO strategies and adapting to new technologies like AI."

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