Sub Club by RevenueCat · 2026-03-18
Bootstrapped to $6.7M ARR and an Exit to Quizlet in 2 Years – Brett Bauman & Zack Hargett, Coconote
Coconote co-founders Brett Bauman and Zack Hargett on bootstrapping an AI lecture note-taking app for students to $6.7M ARR in ~2 years and selling to Quizlet. Growth came from a small team of hired short-form content creators (not influencers), framing the app as a solution rather than a toy, premium pricing ($99-129/yr), a longer onboarding (+16% trial starts), moving login after the paywall, and a web cancel flow where a 7-day trial extension beat discounts and pauses. Paid ads never reached first-purchase profitability.
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Numbers mentioned
| Subject | Metric | Value | Quote |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coconote | arr Stated by David in the setup and in the episode title; guests did not restate it | USD 6.7M approximate | “got it to 6.7 million in ARR and then just sold to Quizlet” |
| Coconote | arr | USD 100K approximate | “Within 45 days, we had crossed 100,000 ARR.” |
| Coconote | arr | USD 1M approximate | “Within four months, we crossed a million.” |
| Coconote | arr | USD 2M approximate | “And then within five months, we had crossed two million.” |
| Coconote | funding raised Founders' own money put in upfront, not outside funding | USD 10Kper founder /one-time approximate | “it was around 10,000 maybe each that we had to invest upfront to get things off the ground” |
| Coconote | margin EBITDA margin, roughly every month from inception to acquisition | 50%/month approximate | “pretty much every month from inception to the acquisition, we were around 50% EBITDA margins” |
| Coconote | count Content creators worked with in the first two months; 3 of them 'made a huge difference' | 30 creators approximate | “we worked with easily 30 content creators of various types in the early days, I would say in the first two months. And really, three of them ended up making a huge difference.” |
| Coconote | views Main Coconote.app account run by one hired creator | hundreds of millions approximate | “One of them in particular ran the main Coconote.app account and generated hundreds of millions of views.” |
| Coconote | team size Part-time contractor content creators | 25 creators approximate | “today, our content team is about 25 people, 25 part-time creators that are all contractors” |
| Coconote | team size Content creator team size, usually 5-10, max 12 | 5–12 creators approximate | “Throughout the lifespan of Coconote pre-acquisition, we were between 5 and 10. Maybe at the very most, we had 12 content creators.” |
| Coconote | views Typical top viral video used to measure downfunnel impact | 20M–30M viewsper video approximate | “when you have a video getting 20, 30 million views, you know what impact it has because you know exactly when it's going viral” |
| pdftobrainrot.com | views Viral pdftobrainrot video that did not convert; Zack explained why without restating the number | 41M viewsper video approximate | “There's one video that got 41 million views, four and a half million likes, massively viral video, but that didn't convert.” |
| pdftobrainrot.com | count Likes on the same non-converting video | 4.5M likesper video approximate | “There's one video that got 41 million views, four and a half million likes, massively viral video, but that didn't convert.” |
| Scout | views Scout's first-ever TikTok on a new account | 8M viewsper video approximate | “our first TikTok got eight million views” |
| Scout | users Website signups over 2 days driven by that one TikTok | 150K signups approximate | “It drove 150,000 signups over a two-day period.” |
| Coconote | price Annual plan at launch | USD 99/year | “we put the app out charging $99 per year and $19.99 per month” |
| Coconote | price Monthly plan at launch | USD 19.99/month | “we put the app out charging $99 per year and $19.99 per month” |
| Coconote | share plan mix; Share of subscribers choosing the annual plan | 80% approximate | “I think around 80% of people subscribe to the annual tier, so we push that pretty hard.” |
| Coconote | price Price after early increase test; 'where we've been for most of it'. Period inferred (David cites $130 a year). | USD 129/year | “one of our earlier tests was raising it to 129, and we saw the magical more users and more revenues at the same time” |
| Coconote | revenue Result of raising price to $129 | more users and more revenue at the same time approximate | “one of our earlier tests was raising it to 129, and we saw the magical more users and more revenues at the same time” |
| benchmarkTypical annual price of student utility apps (Jacob's impression) | price 'third of that maybe for an annual... 50 would be high' | USD 33–50/year estimate | “it's like third of that maybe for an annual, right? 50 would be high” |
| Ladder | price | USD 130/year approximate | “Ladder in the health and fitness industry, they're charging $130 a year” |
| Coconote | count Onboarding length after doubling it | 15 screens estimate | “I think our onboarding is 15 screens or something.” |
| Coconote | trial starts Lift from roughly doubling onboarding length | +16% | “it increased our trial start by 16%” |
| Coconote | drop off Share of new users lost at a forced login/account-creation first screen, before moving login after the paywall | 10% approximate | “I think we were seeing 10% drop off by having login being the very first screen.” |
| Coconote | conversion rate Web cancel flow save rate: share of users attempting to cancel who were retained | 25% approximate | “we were able to retain 25% of people from canceling, which we felt like was pretty big” |
| Coconote | growth rate Revenue growth during the ~1-year acquisition process | +100%/year approximate | “revenue grew quite a bit, I would say roughly doubled throughout that time” |
| aggregateCoconote clones (e.g. Coconoter) | count Number of Coconote clones | hundreds estimate | “There's got to be hundreds.” |
| Quizlet | revenue Size of wins from paywall experiments at Quizlet's scale (recruiting pitch) | +USD 1Mper experiment /year approximate | “We can run experiments that add a million dollars of revenue per year” |