Coconote · B2C · AI lecture note-taker
Charge students $99/year and push the annual plan
~80% chose annual
What they did
What happened
- Stage
- launch
In their words
Bootstrapped to $6.7M ARR and an Exit to Quizlet in 2 Years – Brett Bauman & Zack Hargett, Coconote
Brett BaumanYeah, great question. Definitely did a lot of experimentation. I think we've tried to always have something running. Even at launch, we were testing should there be a free trial or not? The college student archetype, I would say, didn't really get to us. We didn't want that to limit us from charging a lot of money. We wanted to be a premium product and be seen as a premium product.
Brett BaumanI think that Zack and I kind of just are product builders who feel like we want to put something out that has a lot of craft and charge for it is part of it. Probably also not knowing what our costs would be was also part of it. So we put the app out charging $99 per year and $19.99 per month.
Brett BaumanI think around 80% of people subscribe to the annual tier, so we push that pretty hard. And I think part of the price too is we want to be seen as premium so that we also are seen as reliable. I kind of talked about it a little bit earlier, but there's a huge amount of trust you have to gain to get someone to stop writing their notes and instead trust that you will take care of it, because they're going to have to take an exam on it either way. And I think that the premium feeling helps with that to believe that we're not going to lose their recording.
Jacob EitingYeah. I mean, I don't know, David, you probably have a better sense, but just in terms of the utilities for students, not that, that's full what you guys are, but that's a high price point. I think if the ones in my head I can think of off the top, it's like third of that maybe for an annual, right? 50 would be high, which I don't know. If it works, it works.
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More from this episode
- Launch a basic version fast and charge from day one$100K ARR in 45 days, $1M in 4 months
- Hire creators with 5-10K followers, found via the Gmail in their bio3 of ~30 made a huge difference; main engine to $1M ARR
- Have one hired creator run the brand's main video accountHundreds of millions of views
- Tell creators to show the app as a fix or identity, not a noveltyConverted best, per the founders; no numbers
- Launch a viral 'PDF to brain rot video' side site to funnel users~41M views on one video, but no paying users; shut down
- Aim videos at the parent who pays, not just the studentMany viral Instagram videos used this angle; later scaled back
- Ask customers to describe the app; put their words in the first screenshotFounders call it one of their best moves; no numbers
- Raise the annual price from $99 to $129More users and more revenue at the same time
- Give one free note, then require a free trialCredited with early cash flow; no numbers
- Run paid ads cut by an agency from creators' raw footageBeat boosting viral posts, but never profitable; stopped
- Double onboarding to ~15 screens with more questions and social proof+16% trial starts
- Ask people to log in after the paywall, not on the first screenBiggest onboarding win; removed ~10% drop-off
- When people cancel, offer 7 more free days instead of a discountSaved 25% of cancellers; beat a 30% discount and a 3-month pause
- Put in ~$10K each and reinvest revenue into creatorsCash-flow positive throughout; no outside funding
- Hire a banker to run a buyout so the founders keep buildingSold to Quizlet; revenue roughly doubled during the process
Tags: premium-pricing, annual-plan, students