BoldVoice · B2C · accent coaching app
Let people who close the paywall use day one free, then ask for a trial
Founder calls it a good middle ground; no numbers
What they did
What happened
- Stage
- growth
In their words
Why BoldVoice Charged From Day 1 and Ignored the Duolingo Freemium Playbook — Anada Lakra
David BarnardSo how does it work now? You said you tested a fully hard paywall and then you tested the X to a fully hard paywall with a discount. What happens now if they X out of the paywall? Because you said you don't really have a freemium experience.
Anada LakraWe have a very limited freemium experience. So if you X out of the paywall, you're taken to the speech assessment, you'll be able to speak, you'll still see the assessment results. We'll break down all the things that we heard. It's already a pretty valuable experience. Some people work with coaches to just get that assessment, so we give that for free. And then you can also access the rest of the day one experience and do a practice set and I believe also coach video for free. And then only on day two, you can start a trial at that point, if you wish to continue.
Anada LakraSo we've kind of found the middle ground and let's give some of the product experience, but we also have an experience where ... We have daily plans. So it's easy to say, "Okay, the first daily plan for free on us. After that ... Again, you don't have to pay right away, but you have to start a seven-day trial to continue."
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More from this episode
- Charge $10 a month with a 7-day free trial from launch dayFounder says it filtered out non-buyers and freed time for the product; no numbers
- Judge paywall tests on revenue after refunds, waiting 3+ weeks past trial startCaught two trial-start 'wins' that lost money once refunds came in
- Remove the close button so users must start a trial to continueTrial starts rose, but refunds rose by more; net loss
- When users close the paywall, show a discount trial they can't closeTrial starts rose, but refunds rose by more; net loss
- Show the ~$150 annual plan first so ad spend pays back when trials endCash lands 7 days after install, so each channel's ROI is known at once; no numbers
- Market to international college students firstWeak fit: lower willingness to pay and less urgency; moved to professionals
- Sell to working professionals with good English, and skip beginners entirelyFounder credits this focus for ~$10M ARR; no split by segment
- Auto-invite users to 15-minute calls booked with whoever on the team is freeEvery employee, engineers included, does 2+ user calls a week
- Have engineers demo unreleased features to power users on weekly callsFounder says it validates complex features before shipping; no numbers
- Ask unhappy users three questions by email they can answer by replyingOffsets the happy-user bias in interviews; no numbers
- Build a free web tool that guesses where you're from after 10 seconds of speech~100K people in Korea tried it the day after one investor posted it
- Add city-level results to the free accent tool to spark a new viral waveProduced another viral boost; no numbers
- Show a sample of the full in-app results to push web users to the appFounder says it boosts web-to-app conversion; no numbers
- Ride a TikTok trend of people crying over their low app scoresOne creator got ~300M views in a few months, no ads; lower intent than paid
- Grow from accent training into overall spoken-English fluency after raising a Series A
- Hire self-driven founder types and hold just one team meeting a week, on Mondays~$10M ARR with 10 people; founder credits hiring first
- Get everyone, even the non-technical CEO, shipping code with ClaudeRoughly doubled team productivity, per the founder; her biggest win of the year
- Recruit a Hollywood accent coach and run a manual email pilot with 12 usersLed to a ~$500K term sheet and YC; the coach still works with them
- Show a countdown of free scans left before the paywall appears
Tags: reverse-trial, freemium, free-taster, speech-assessment, daily-plan