An AI website builder · B2C · company the guest knows
Make free users pay before they can fix their buggy first build
Frustrated users complained publicly on Twitter
Failedpaywall
What they did
An AI website builder could not afford to let freemium users debug their initial builds, so users who prompted a buggy site were pushed into a subscription before seeing a working result.
What happened
Users were frustrated and complained on Twitter; guest would instead give paying users full access to the best working product.
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · How a Single Paywall Experiment Generated $50M – Jeff Morris, Chapter One, Ex-Tinder“And they actually couldn't afford to let their freemium users debug the initial builds. And so if you look at Twitter for that product, people were really frustrated”
Related topics
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More from this episode
- Tinder: Put a toggle in the top bar that opens a new paid tierAbout $50M in revenue from one small A/B test
- Tinder: Limit free swipes per day and charge for moreStopped mass-swiping and auto-swipers; turned into a strong revenue driver (no numbers)
- Tinder: Give each paid feature its own paywall and check its sales every morningShowed 2-3 features drive most new subs; weak ones were made free
- Tinder: Offer several paid tiers, from cheap starter to big spenders at $50K a yearGuest's biggest revenue unlock at Tinder; no numbers given
- Tinder: Set different prices by country, starting with fast-growing markets like India
- Tinder: Polish the paywall like a core feature, e.g. add a gold shimmerGuest says it showed users they cared; no numbers
- Tinder: Ask for payment only after a user gets a match and starts chatting
- Tinder: Build engagement and retention first; push monetization only years laterReached 30-40M monthly users before revenue became a focus in years 4-5
- Tinder: Create a revenue team with its own iOS and Android engineersGrew from 6 engineers in 2016 to 40+
- Flighty: Give the first flight free with every pro feature, then lock some
- Supabase: Ship a new feature every single dayBecame the default database for most major website builders