Opal · B2C · screen time app
Judge everything by 8-day ad return; raise spend weekly while above 100%
Near zero to $5M ARR in about a year, no separate marketing budget
Workedpaid-socialanalytics-attributionexperimentation
What they did
Paid ads (with a paywall and RevenueCat) from the first week on the App Store to get a steady ~100 downloads a day. Dropped other goals and focused on one metric: Day 8 ROAS, chosen because the 7-day free trial converts by day 8, so a change shipped Monday is readable 8 days later. Tested with small spend until there was a path to 100%, then scaled. Every week review last week's D8 ROAS: above 100% expand budgets, below 100% cut back until back at 100%. No growth target or marketing budget: revenue reinvested on the 8-day cycle. Started with simple spend this week vs revenue 8 days later; moved to install-week cohorts (D8 and D30) once late conversions skewed numbers.
What happened
Went from almost zero to $5M ARR in about a year while operating above 100% D8 ROAS.
- Stage
- Scale (launch to $5M ARR)
- Effort
- Core operating model for 2.5+ years
“the main metric of success for us has been D8 return on ad spend”
“Like every week, we look at what was the, you know, ROAS of the previous week, are we able to expand budgets, or we have to lower them. If we're below 100%, we just basically cut back to get back to 100%.”
“So basically, we don't have a marketing budget, like we're only reinvesting with an 8-day cycle.”
“so now we look at cohorted based on install. So someone who installs the app within that week, and then we look at the revenue they generate 8 days from install. We also look at Day 30.”
Related topics
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