GTM Sauce

Practitioner pattern · Josh Peleg (Heads M&A at BlueThrone, an app acquirer he pitches as a buyer for founders during the episode)

Use weekly plans for apps people need for a short time, like dating

Works well in dating and follower-tracking apps; fine for cash flow, weaker for an exit

Mixedpricing

What they did

Weekly subscriptions perform well where users want the app only briefly: dating apps (people want off quickly) and Instagram follower/unfollower tracking apps used for a week after a breakup. Weekly gives cash up front, but retention-driven acquirers value it less than sticky monthly/annual revenue.

What happened

Strong in short-duration categories; not a good long-term strategy for an exit.

In their words

Josh Peleg - $172M of App Building Advice in 50 Minutes

Play from 31:01
30:37

Joseph ChoiI I want to ask also about this slide. So $19.99, like $20 a month is sort of like the the price that consumers are anchored on because of ChatGPT. But I've seen a lot of apps recently doing weekly versus annual pricing. So do you still see like seven, eight-figure acquisitions on apps that are doing monthly pricing, or are people doing like weekly, annual?

31:01

Josh PelegIf the weekly is sticky enough, it works. But weekly tends to work in certain categories. Like, for example, dating can be very strong with weekly, because people ideally don't want to be on a dating app for like two or three months. They want to be on it and then off it as soon as possible. So if they can just do it for weekly, it's much better. The other categories where I saw weekly performing really well, in a nutshell, it's apps that you need for a short period of time. There's a bunch of apps now where you can like track people's Instagram actions, like who they're following, who's unfollowing them, who's stalking them, etc. A lot of people use these apps to like stalk their exes.

31:31

Josh PelegThey don't want to be stalking their ex for like three months. They want to do it once, maybe over a week, maybe after a breakup, or when they think someone's cheating or whatever, and then get rid of it. So in these short-duration apps, weekly works, but weekly tends not to be as good of a long-term strategy.

31:47

Joseph ChoiSo if you're doing weekly, you're probably in a category that is not even a good acquisition target, is that what you're saying? Cuz from the previous rule, like you want sticky revenue. You don't want like short, like weekly revenue.

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Tags: weekly-plan, short-use-apps