Watch the video version of this show on YouTube » Alex Ross is the co-founder & CEO at Gregarious, Inc. Gregarious is the company behind Greg, an app dedicated to helping people grow healthier and happier plants. Greg’s community has grown from 100 beta users in August 2020 to over 50,000 monthly active users today. Alex graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, and studied data science and statistics at MIT. Alex has worked for companies such as Cisco, The Daily Aztec, and C...
Jul 14, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 19
David Smith is a full-time independent app developer. Since 2006, David has owned and operated a small company focusing on creating applications for the iPhone and Apple Watch. David has built many successful apps over the years. His most recent app, Widgetsmith, went viral and hit #1 on the App Store. It has over 50 million downloads. David’s other successful apps include Watchsmith, Pedometer++, and Sleep++. David also co-hosts a weekly podcast called Under the Radar, where he and his co-host ...
Jun 30, 2021•57 min•Ep. 18
Our guest today is Ben Bajarin , CEO and Principal Analyst at Creative Strategies . For the past 20 years, Ben has been studying the consumer tech market and providing actionable insight and strategic recommendations to many of the top technology companies in the world. In this episode, you’ll hear about: The results from Ben’s survey of iOS developers Why positive developer sentiment is invaluable to platform owners How much developers think is fair for Apple to charge Follow Us: David Barnard:...
Jun 23, 2021•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 17
In this episode, you’ll hear about: The pros and cons of selling an app on your own versus going through a broker What to watch out for during negotiations What to expect after selling your app Follow Us: David Barnard: https://twitter.com/drbarnard Jacob Eiting: https://twitter.com/jeiting Eric Owens: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericowens/ Here’s the Outline of Our Interview with Eric: (1:00) Eric and David have worked together before! (1:25) How Eric became an app broker. (5:09) The top reason...
May 19, 2021•56 min•Ep. 16
Our guest today is Leon Sasson , Co-Founder & CTO at Rise Science , a company dedicated to helping people overcome sleep challenges, feel better, and be more productive. Since its inception in 2014, Rise has primarily focused on elite athletes, helping some of the top NFL, NBA, and college football teams with their sleep. But in 2019 they decided to enter the consumer subscription space, which became even more important in 2020 as COVID challenged their B2B model. Leon and the team at Rise w...
May 05, 2021•52 min•Ep. 15
In this episode, you’ll hear about: Why most apps should do at least some paid user acquisition How paid user acquisition has evolved over the past decade How to think about marketing in the post-IDFA era
Apr 22, 2021•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 14
Our guests today are Majd Taby and Jasper Hauser , co-founders of the Apple Design Award-winning app, Darkroom . Prior to founding Darkroom, Majd spent time at Apple, Facebook, and Instagram working as a product-focused engineer. Alongside Darkroom, Majd has also published a photobook documenting the Syrian Refugee Crisis. Jasper is a 3-time Apple Design Award winner, with 18 years of industry experience in creating digital products and mentoring people. Prior to founding Darkroom with Majd, Jas...
Apr 08, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 13
Our guest today is Ryan Jones, long-time indie developer of Weather Line and Flighty. Before going full-time on his apps in 2019, Ryan spent time in operations at Apple and as Entrepreneur-in-Residence at McGarrah Jessee, a full-service product marketing agency. In this episode, you’ll hear about: (3:53) Ryan’s background in mechanical engineering and the oil industry. (6:35) Ryan’s first app, Weather Line, hit #12 in the App Store (11:09) Weather Line’s Super Forecast (16:21) Networking with fa...
Mar 24, 2021•54 min•Ep. 12
Our guest today is Ed Zitron, the founder and CEO of EZPR, a media relations company based in San Francisco. Ed has worked with everyone from drone-maker Skydio to game-maker PUBG to app-maker SmartNews. He has a unique approach to media relations and is quite effective at helping his clients get results. In this episode, you’ll hear about: (4:41) Why PR is so much more difficult these days; Facebook ; Cambridge Analytica ; Theranos . (11:37) Joanna Stern may be the best tech journalist working ...
Mar 10, 2021•51 min•Ep. 11
Our guest today is Faye Keegan , co-founder and CTO of Dipsea . Part technology company and part story studio, Dipsea is the first audio platform for women's sexual wellness. Prior to founding Dipsea, Faye spent time at Neighborly as a software engineer and Bridgewater as an investment associate. With a background in economics and investment analysis, Faye isn’t your typical startup CTO. In this episode, you’ll hear about: (4:16) The growing popularity of audio as a medium; Headspace ; Calm . (1...
Feb 17, 2021•41 min•Ep. 10
Our guest today is Eric Crowley , a tech investment banker with GP Bullhound , focusing on consumer subscription software (CSS), enterprise software, and financial technology. With investments in companies ranging from Spotify to Fishbrain , and clients such as AllTrails , Partnerize , and Motif , GP Bullhound provides transaction advice and capital to many of the leaders in the consumer subscription software space. In this episode, you’ll hear about: (8:52) Prediction: There will be 50 more pub...
Feb 02, 2021•52 min•Ep. 9
Darius Mora is the Chief Marketing Officer at Reflectly , the world’s largest journaling app. Reflectly is consistently in the top 5 Health & Fitness iPhone apps in the US, competing with companies 10X its size. Over the past 6 months, Reflectly has broadened its scope, acquiring 8 new apps in the mental fitness space. Darius has been in the app space for almost a decade and founded 4 app startups prior to joining Reflectly in 2018. He’s been focused on ASO, free marketing, paid user acquisi...
Jan 20, 2021•55 min•Ep. 8
Today on the podcast we have two guests from Big Sky Health : Vu Pham, who works on the product team, and his colleague Nick Robinson, Chief Business Officer. Big Sky Health was founded to help people live healthier, longer lives with the help of technology. They are currently working on 3 apps: Zero , the world's most popular fasting app, Less , an app for more mindful drinking, and Oak , a meditation and breathing app. In this episode, you’ll hear about: (6:07) Zero helped create the “fasting ...
Jan 12, 2021•47 min•Ep. 7
While in college Zach built Hashtag Expert , an app for finding top-performing hashtags. After growing it organically for a bit, he started doing paid acquisition and quickly scaled it to hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in revenue. You can see exactly how much Zach spent to grow Hashtag Expert to that level because he publishes an interactive dashboard that shows the past couple years of income and expenses. Zach is now writing an email newsletter on his process of building a new app bu...
Dec 16, 2020•45 min•Ep. 6
Since Apple’s big announcement about upcoming privacy changes in iOS 14 , mobile app developers have been scrambling to understand how these changes will affect their businesses. With IDFA effectively dead in the water, developers will no longer be able to use device-level attribution and high-resolution tracking to send targeted ads to their users. So what can they do? In this week’s episode, we asked mobile marketing expert Eric Seufert for his take. Eric has had quite a career in mobile. From...
Dec 02, 2020•50 min•Ep. 5
In This Episode Apple recently shocked the App Store developer community with news that small developers with revenue of less than $1M per year will pay a commission of 15% instead of 30%. Within hours of the news dropping, David and Jacob recorded this episode with the hottest of takes, exploring what this means for the future of the App Store. Here's what we cover in the episode: (1:32) Is this a good thing or a bad thing? (For once, David takes the cynical view!) (4:39) 97% of developers usin...
Nov 18, 2020•43 min•Ep. 4
Starting a mobile-first subscription app business can be tough — there are a lot of decisions to make. Should you bootstrap or raise investor funding? How will you classify your business? When is the right time to monetize your app? Fortunately, you don’t have to go it alone! One of the best ways to chart your course is to learn from the experiences of developers who’ve been through the process before. And one of the best ways to do that is to go through an accelerator like Y Combinator. This we...
Nov 13, 2020•42 min•Ep. 3
We’re at an interesting point in the evolution of the subscription app ecosystem. Mass adoption of smartphones, consumers’ increasing willingness to pay for digital services, and a better business model — Personal SaaS — are all coming together to create a huge opportunity for mobile-first subscription app developers. Just how big is this opportunity? (Full disclosure: Nico is so bullish on the future of subscription apps, he recently invested in RevenueCat!) In this episode, you’ll hear about: ...
Oct 30, 2020•52 min•Ep. 2
Welcome to the Sub Club podcast: a deep dive on building and growing subscription app businesses. Hosts David Barnard and Jacob Eiting will guide you through the ins and outs of subscription apps — sharing insider tips, predictions, and insights from industry experts. In this episode, you’ll hear about: (00:58) Meet your hosts David Barnard and Jacob Eiting. (05:11) Sub Club is the first podcast focused on subscription apps. (05:15) Personal SaaS is a nascent industry. (6:18) The first billion-d...
Oct 29, 2020•51 min•Ep. 1
