Burner · B2C · second phone number app
Judge paywall tests by projected customer lifetime value from day-8 and day-30 data
What they did
- Stage
- growth
In their words
Pivots, Funding, and Building Apps That Last – Greg Cohn, Burner
Greg Cohn… and this has been true since early on. And the thing you don't want to do, I guess, is try to solve a problem that's good enough for everyone, but great for no one, right? And so, there is a set of users who just wants to get in and out, and there's a different set of users that needs a number for a long period of time and is going to be price sensitive in a different way. They're going to be thinking about how much it costs them per year.
Greg CohnWhereas you were talking about paid downloads, people are thinking about that as a one-time expense, right? So, balancing those things, really cohort LTV is probably the true north, but within that, you can't wait for those metrics to mature. So, you have to project based on things that are happening at day eight or day 30. We have a three-day trial, we have a 7-day trial treatment, and so there are different things that you will get bucketed into depending on which cohort you're in.
David BarnardSo, with the cohorting, I imagine you're not just cohorting by time. Are you cohorting by answers to onboarding questions? Because it sounds like you're not just cohorting broadly, but you're trying to find... And you and I have talked about this before, Eric Crowley, the tourist versus locals. For those of you listening to the podcast, if you haven't heard that episode, go back and find it because it's really great.
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More from this episode
- Test a throwaway phone number by posting it in real Craigslist adsFlood of calls and 10-100x the response of the old app; confirmed a real problem
- Demo the unreleased app to people at SXSW and collect a waitlistNew York Times interview and a panel slot; $50K revenue on launch day
- Charge $1.99 upfront and price credit packs to cover phone costsAbout $50K revenue on launch day
- Drop the $1.99 download price once there is money to cover free users
- Try a freemium version of an app where every free user costs moneyDidn't scale without lots of capital; stayed a premium, paid-first app
- Skip the next VC round and run the app at breakeven insteadBreakeven or profitable for 6-8 years, grew past $10M a year
- Add a monthly and annual plan with unlimited texts, calls and photosBiggest single jump in revenue in company history; subscriptions now 90%+ of revenue
- Phase out one-off credits so everyone goes through a subscriptionFairly high churn from short-term users; founder now thinks credits might have fit them better
- Capture people already searching for a second phone number instead of running brand adsSeveral million downloads a year of high-intent users; press-driven users didn't convert
- Add caller lookup for unknown numbers to the premium planVery popular and a driver of premium upsells; founder didn't expect it to win
- Offer 8 plans so short-term and long-term users pick what fits
- Let people choose on the paywall whether to take a free trialVery positive A/B test result; no numbers given
- When someone deletes their number, offer them a new oneRetains some users into a second number; 20-30% of new subs are returning users
- Add a white-label VPN inside the main app's premium planDrove a lot of premium-tier growth, but cost more to build than it should have
- Launch separate robocall-blocking and business-number appsNeither got real traction; one was killed by an Apple feature
- Use paywall tools so the product team can launch tests without engineersFrom 1-2 paywall tests a month to several times that; about 1 in 4-5 wins
- Buy small apps that fit your users' needs and sell them inside your main app
Tags: cohort-ltv, early-signals, trial-length