RevenueCat

Today you'll see exactly which numbers move an app's valuation, and by how much. Sub Club Live is on at 9am PT / 12pm ET / 6pm CET, and a founder is bringing his real books — revenue, retention, acquisition cost, the whole picture. Josh Peleg VP of business development and M&A at Bluethrone, runs it through the same model he uses on real deals and arrives at a number, live, with the founder able to push back on every assumption. Because the founder agreed to share the actual figures, you get to watch the mechanics rather than the conclusion: what a conversion rate does to the multiple, what happens when growth is bought instead of organic, which risks take money off the table before anyone makes an offer. Last week Josh laid out the framework — why valuation is a range set by risk rather than a multiple you look up, and why selling at your peak gets you less, not more. Worth 10 minutes first if you missed it: https://lnkd.in/eNcZaGb9 We're not saying whose app it is until we go live. Bring your questions for the Q&A: luma.com/sub-club-live Watch live on YouTube: https://lnkd.in/eEGk5Fdi

Are you worried about AI apps replacing yours? You’re not alone. The good news? AI isn’t what’s making your app replaceable 👀 What should be keeping you up at night, is that blank LLM chat window. Because if your app’s value fits in one prompt and reply, you’re in the blast radius 💥 The apps that will survive need to offer value that a chat window can’t replicate. Here’s Daphne Tideman’s 6 ways to set your app apart from AI copycats: 1️⃣ Structure An opinionated, visual workflow is what people pay for (not the content) 🍜 Example: Mob Kitchen’s weekly recipe plan with sleek visuals 2️⃣ Memory Value compounds when an app remembers and improves over time ✏️ Example: Rosebud’s journalling feature that learns from your entries to ask better prompts 3️⃣ Habit Built-in accountability (streaks, nudges, gamification) drives behavior change an LLM can explain but can’t enforce 🔥 Example: Duolingo’s leaderboards and streaks 4️⃣ Precision A narrow, deeply-trained dataset beats a general model’s accuracy 🐦 Example: Merlin Bird ID's curated bird sound library from 10 million users 5️⃣ Connection Trust, personality, and belonging is what retains users, not a simple reply 🏃♀️➡️ Example: Strava’s run clubs that bring users together 6️⃣ Digital <> physical Trying real-world sensors or physical inputs delivers value a chat box can’t replicate 🪴 Example: Willow’s use of your phone camera to assess houseplant health Yes, some of these can be recreated with AI. You can ask ChatGPT to build you a weekly meal plan and find the recipes. But will it beat an app’s intuitive shopping list UI and delicious food photography that hooks you in? Probably not in the long-term. AI is a tool, not an outcome. AI copycat apps aren’t a threat if you can demonstrate your app’s ongoing value and sell its impact. Check out Daphne’s full article for real app examples of the six differentiators, plus a two-minute test to see if your app’s replaceable with an LLM chat. https://lnkd.in/emq9xe7n

BoldVoice is at $10M ARR with a team of 10. One of the decisions behind that was made in its first weeks: charge from the start, and let willingness to pay tell you who your customer is. In this clip from Sub Club, Anada Lakra, co-founder and CEO of BoldVoice explains why the team charged from its first release, in the early weeks of Y Combinator, with a simple $10-a-month plan and a one-week trial. 👉 Key takeaway: charging early filters your feedback. Willingness to pay correlates with the problem resonating, so the team could hyper-focus on one ICP instead of chasing feedback from people who were never going to convert. The same logic is why BoldVoice never adopted the Duolingo freemium playbook. A huge free base makes sense when you're teaching beginners the basics. It doesn't when your customers are professionals who would otherwise pay for one-on-one coaching. Anada's warning: the worst strategy is a mishmash of playbooks from apps with different ICPs. The full episode with David Barnard covers the rest: net revenue after refunds as the paywall metric that matters, two user interviews a week for every employee, and annual-first pricing. 📺 Watch the full conversation: https://lnkd.in/eb7h5mf9

(Re)Introducing Refund Control! Some background; on iOS, Apple approves every refund request unless you respond to the notification they send. RevenueCat responds for you, and for a long time one of the options was "always decline". We removed it. Declining every request regardless of the reason pushes users into chargebacks, and Apple doesn't love that. Some of you were not happy about this. Refund Control is the version we should have shipped instead. Rather than one setting for every request, you write policies powered by Audiences. Prefer to decline for users who've been active for weeks. Approve for someone who bought by the app by accident and never used it. You decide! We match each request against your policies in order and send the answer to Apple or Google for you. If a refund goes through, entitlements are updated automatically. Find this feature in the Lifecycle section of your dashboard Demo below 👇

Nothing stalls Shipaton momentum like a rejection email. App Review can cost you days — sometimes weeks — right when you can least afford them. So we're going live to make sure that doesn't happen to you. Join the RevenueCat team for a walkthrough of: → The most common reasons apps get rejected on the App Store and Google Play → How to avoid them before you hit submit → What to do if it happens to you anyway Then stick around for live Q&A. Bring your publishing questions and we'll answer them on the spot. 🗓 Tuesday, September 15 🕘 9AM PT / 12PM ET / 6PM CEST Watch on YouTube: https://lnkd.in/eTZ7FhBe

Are your Meta ads actually driving subscriber growth — or just installs? Join RevenueCat's Matt Berry and Lucas Moscon, founder of Appstack, for a Shipaton session on scaling Meta ads for subscription apps. We'll cover: → Attribution and the conversion signals that actually matter → How trials and purchases feed back into campaign performance → Reading payback, and knowing when to scale spend Stick around for the live Q&A to get your questions answered on the spot. Friday September 11, 9am PT / 12pm ET / 6pm CEST Watch on YouTube: https://lnkd.in/es8Bwb_w

“The moment a user converts is also the moment many of them start drifting toward cancellation.” POV: you’ve been lovingly nurtured towards a new subscription, you click ‘upgrade’, then suddenly… the app goes quiet. For app teams, that silence feels logical. They’ve paid, they’re engaged, why interrupt? But for the user, this is a drastic 180. And subscribing ≠ mean understanding. Here’s the main scenarios: 1️⃣ New users convert based on a great ad, a glimpse of a specific feature, or a discount they can’t pass up. But they haven’t meaningfully experienced the app yet. They haven’t had its value proven. 2️⃣ Existing users who upgrade know how to use the FREE version of your app. They’ll keep using it that way, unless you show them the premium value. Eventually, they cancel, feeling like they never got much value when they started paying. That silence post-subscription is where early churn takes root. The fix? Not more noise, but the right nudge at the right time ⏱️ Nudge users towards a premium win. One thing they can do now that they couldn’t before, that builds on the habit they’re already building: 🏃♂️➡️ Strava unveils your training insights 🎓 Quizlet gives access to test what you've learnt 💤 Calm unlocks a full meditation course To start filling the silence and closing that post-subscription gap, here’s three questions you should answer quickly: → Where are the premium features? → How do I use them? → Did I make the right call? Define your premium win — the one concrete moment that proves the subscription was worth it, showcase the paid value, then point to first action. Get someone from "I paid for this" to "I just did something I couldn't do before" before buyer's remorse has a chance to set in. Check out Alice Muir Kocourková's full framework, including examples from Slack, Duolingo, and Dropbox: https://lnkd.in/efANK3c6

Happening TODAY. David Barnard and I will spend 60 minutes teaching you how BlueThrone values apps. - We're going to give you the theory of how buyers analyse apps - Show you the easiest ways to increase the valuation of your app - Take real data from real apps and show you how they impact valuation RevenueCat Link in the top comment.

We’re heading to NYC for Business of Apps on September 17! Catch us at the conference, and we’d love to see you afterwards for our Happy Hour 🍹 Join RevenueCat and friends Vibe.co and Adjust on one of Midtown’s iconic rooftops for laid-back drinks, conversation, and sunset views 🌇 Space is limited, so register now: https://luma.com/6hd1assi

Apple's App Store submissions are open for iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, tvOS 27, visionOS 27, and watchOS 27. Here's what needs your attention: 👇 → Mark your calendar: April 2027 is when the new SDK requirement kicks in. After that, new apps and updates need to be built on the matching new SDK for each platform. → Building anything with social features? You now need to flag it in your App Store Connect age-rating answers, so Apple can slot it into the new parental Time Allowances. → New App Store assets are coming: product page headers, new search result assets, and a product page preview tool in App Store Connect.