GTM Sauce

Grindr · B2C · gay dating app

Add a several-hundred-dollar monthly AI tier that does the swiping and matching

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What they did

Dating app offers an AI that swipes and makes matches for you at several hundred dollars a month. Not aimed at the average user; aimed at the ~1% willing to pay for outcomes rather than product access, to narrow consumer surplus.

In their words

The Boom In Non-Game App Revenue And What's Driving It – Olivia Moore, Andreessen Horowitz

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David Barnard… introduced ads, so hybrid monetization is a big part of this growth as well is that you are seeing more consumers willing to pay. But we're finding better ways to monetize those users who are willing to pay, better meet the demand curve and back to good old ads to monetize those who aren't willing to pay. So it does seem like the revenue potential is pretty broad base and it's not just subscriptions, it's not just ads, it's a pretty healthy mix.

Olivia MooreYes. This is a topic I'm fascinated by, which is that as an econ major, we are getting closer to being able to perfectly price segment users and hypothetically narrow consumer surplus and increase the value that these products could capture. Ads versus subscriptions is one example. I tweeted the other week about Grindr now has a several hundred dollars a month for an AI that swipes and makes matches for you. Is the average user going to pay for that? No, not at all, but 1% of users will, and you're now able as an app to capture so much more value from what you provide than what was possible pre AI, because you're essentially serving not just the product anymore. But you can serve outcomes if people are willing to pay for them

David BarnardRight. And specifically on price, and you kind of already touched on it, but anything else to dive into related to just the increase average revenue per user, the increase in spending?

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Tags: premium-tier, whales, ai-agent, price-segmentation