On the podcast we talk with Chris about how to do freemium the right way, drafting a customer “Bill of Rights” to guide product decisions, and why blindly following A/B test results can lead to short-term gains but undermine your business long-term.

Top Takeaways:

🧮 Data has limits
Short-term data can lie. When every experiment looks like a win in isolation, it’s easy to miss the slow erosion of trust happening in the background. Real harm often builds quietly and cumulatively — too subtle for A/B tests to detect, and too long-term for analytics dashboards to surface.

🧊 Freemium is a strategy, not a stepping stone
Free users aren’t just a growth channel — they’re often the foundation of retention, virality, and brand. The key is not just giving something away, but building genuine value into the free tier while monetizing a clear, meaningful upgrade. Trying to monetize too early or too aggressively risks killing long-term compounding benefits.

🚪 Fake doors, real insights
Not every test needs statistical significance. Especially in the early stages of validation, it’s better to move fast, fake the backend, and just see what people click. When the goal is to gauge interest, not measure retention, scrappy beats precise.

🛑 Dark patterns don’t scale
Stacking minor friction points, misleading CTAs, or unclear pricing might bump conversions — but it quietly breaks trust. Even if the data looks fine, something more critical is breaking: your brand. When users stop recommending you, you’ll realize those small wins were expensive.

📐 Principles over process
When companies scale, the instinct is to build more process. But sometimes the best way to maintain speed and quality is through shared principles. A clear set of product values — what won’t be touched, how users are treated — provides clarity, autonomy, and momentum across teams.

About Chris Hulls:

👪 Founder and CEO of Life360, the family safety platform used by over 80 million active users worldwide.

🔒 Chris is passionate about building products that offer real daily utility while protecting user trust, focusing on long-term value instead of short-term growth hacks.

💡 “The core has to give real value to our customers, not kind of fake value. Like real, real value forever for free, period.”

👋 LinkedIn

Follow us on X:

• David Barnard - @drbarnard
• Jacob Eiting - @jeiting
• RevenueCat - @RevenueCat
• SubClub - @SubClubHQ

Episode Highlights:

[1:33] A niche market: How the Life360 team found success by building an app in an under-served vertical.

[7:55] Free vs. paid: Striking the right balance of free versus paid features in a freemium app.

[11:37] A strong constitution: Why Chris and the Life360 team wrote a customer “Bill of Rights.”

[15:59] Data-driven: Why you may not always need to run tests on a large percentage of your users to get helpful results.

[22:17] Value ad(d): Creating helpful — not annoying — user experiences in ads and brand deals.

[29:12] Moving target: User privacy and the ethics of selling users’ raw versus de-identified versus aggregated data.

[38:31] The long haul: How to stay energized and excited working on the same product for multiple years.

[44:28] Unbreakable: Exercising caution with mission-critical features to maintain user trust.

[53:35] Future-proof: How Life360 is growing and expanding in 2025 and beyond.

On the podcast, I talk with Daphne about why skipping user interviews is costing you growth, how to bring your product’s ‘aha moment’ forward into your marketing, and why your assumptions about why people use your app might be wrong.
Top Takeaways:

🎯 Your app is a means to an end

Users don’t care about how many features you have — they care about achieving something in their lives. Apps that focus on the user’s goal, rather than their own functionality, become essential. Instead of selling the tool, sell the transformation: what life looks like after the user succeeds.

🧠 Talking to users beats guessing
Surveys are useful, but user interviews and review mining are goldmines for finding the “why” behind behavior. Understanding what users were doing before your app, how they discovered you, and what outcome they hoped for leads to sharper messaging, better onboarding, and stronger products.

💡 Emotions drive retention

Functional goals matter, but emotional and social motivations are often what bring people back. Whether it’s the satisfaction of consistency, the joy of social encouragement, or the comfort of belonging to a community, understanding these deeper drivers can differentiate apps and supercharge retention.

🚧 Activation is about showing early progress

The faster users feel they’re moving toward success, the more likely they are to stick around. That first “win” doesn’t have to be a full result — even completing onboarding, customizing a plan, or getting a small early insight can be enough to hook users into a habit loop.

📈 Monetization follows real value

Users are willing to pay more when they perceive clear, life-improving value. Understanding the different jobs users are hiring your app to do can unlock smarter pricing, better feature tiers, and easier upsells. The closer you align pricing with meaningful outcomes, the more sustainable your growth.

About Daphe Tideman:

📈 Freelance growth advisor and consultant helping subscription app businesses navigate various growth challenges.

💼 Daphne helps startups improve their activation, retention, and monetization strategies with the jobs-to-be-done framework.

💡 “So many apps are constantly talking about, ‘we have this feature, that feature…’ — but that's not why people use your app.”

👋 Website

Resources:

• Improve your Conversions by Finding Message-Market Fit (Webinar)

Follow us on X:

• David Barnard - @drbarnard
• Jacob Eiting - @jeiting
• RevenueCat - @RevenueCat
• SubClub - @SubClubHQ

Episode Highlights:

[0:48] Job done: How the jobs-to-be-done framework should frame your product development.

[3:04] Survey says: Why the most valuable feedback about your app comes from your most engaged users.

[7:06] Emotional impact: Why appealing to users’ emotional and social needs is a better driver of conversions and retention than describing app features.

[11:07] Good communication: How the jobs-to-be-done framework can (and should) influence your app messaging strategy.

[16:16] Personal touch: Developing user personas, creating individualized onboarding experiences, and testing ad copy in Meta.
[35:56] Removing blockers: Why the up-front cost and time commitment of user interviews can save you money in the long term.
[43:25] Active users: How understanding your users’ jobs to be done can influence your activation, re-activation, and retention strategies.
[54:55] Show me the money: Identifying the jobs-to-be-done of high-paying users can help you improve user LTV and develop appropriate pricing packages.

On the podcast, I talk with Dan about estimating the ROI of product changes before building them, calculating your subscription app's growth ceiling, and why you shouldn’t make assumptions about what is and isn’t working in other apps.

Top Takeaways:

💸 ROI-first thinking helps teams prioritize what actually moves the needle
Every project has a cost - whether or not you calculate it. Estimating the ROI of a sprint, even with rough assumptions, can reveal when you’re investing $50K of dev time into a feature with minimal upside. It’s not about forecasting with precision, it’s about using basic math to avoid chasing ideas that won’t pay off.

⚾ Big swings take more than one try
Launching a major feature is rarely a one-and-done success. The biggest wins often come after multiple iterations - refining the UX, testing variations, learning from early data. Too many teams ship once and move on. But if there are signs of life, sticking with it for a few rounds is often where the real gains are made.

⏳ Churn math reveals the ceiling on your growth
If you’re adding 500 users per month and churn is 10%, your max subscriber base is 5,000. It’s simple math, but easy to overlook when topline numbers are growing. Looking at cohorts and long-term retention curves helps you spot when you’re approaching that ceiling - and whether you’re building a durable business or just replacing churned users.

🧵 Small UX improvements can beat big features
Rewriting confusing checkout error messages took just two days and lifted revenue by 1%. Polishing key flows like onboarding or paywall views often delivers a better return than shipping something new. If every user hits a flow, making it smoother can have an outsized impact on conversion and retention.

🚀 The fastest team wins, not the most secretive
Worried someone will copy your idea? Don’t be. The teams that win are the ones who move faster, not the ones who keep ideas hidden. Speed matters more than secrecy. Whether you’re validating a viral feature with TikTok mockups or running a rough A/B test, moving quickly lets you learn, adjust, and stay ahead.

About Dan Layfield:

✍️ Founder of Subscription Index, a blog that breaks down the strategy, math, and real-world lessons behind successful subscription products.

🧠 Dan helps startups grow revenue by optimizing retention, reducing churn, and making smarter product bets rooted in ROI.

💡 “Your company will not be profitable ever if the output of your sprints doesn’t exceed the cost of your sprints.”

👋 LinkedIn

Resources:

The Hidden Math of Churn: Why You Can’t Scale Past $1M — Subscription Index blog post

Follow us on X:

• David Barnard - @drbarnard
• Jacob Eiting - @jeiting
• RevenueCat - @RevenueCat
• SubClub - @SubClubHQ

Episode Highlights:

[1:03] Over/under — The importance of estimating the ROI of your product development efforts in advance.

[6:39] Making a splash: The pros and cons of building features in order to get attention on social media or in the press.

[12:49] Sweat the small stuff: Why fixing “small” issues with your user experience can lead to big payoffs.

[19:41] Hitting a ceiling: How to calculate your company’s maximum subscriber base based on your monthly new users and churn rate.

[24:03] The long game: Accounting for long-term users (“locals”) versus short-term users (“tourists”) in your growth ceiling estimates.

[32:11] Good use: How the degree of product-market fit for your app affects your churn rate.

[37:40] User activation: Mitigating churn by providing a great onboarding experience and giving users early wins.

[39:21] Money talks: Why auditing your pricing tiers and payment processing systems can significantly bolster your bottom line.