Monarch Money · B2C · personal finance and budgeting app
Charge users a subscription instead of running ads, so users are the customer
Founder says it keeps the product improving; no numbers
Workedpricingpositioning-niche
What they did
Chose a direct subscription model from day one rather than Mint's free, ad-supported model, where the real customer was the advertiser and product fought revenue over how many offers to show per session. Subscriptions reward ongoing product improvement.
What happened
Host, a customer, feels like the customer and sees fast feature releases; no business numbers given.
- Stage
- founding
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · Learning and Profiting from Black Swan Events — Val Agostino, Monarch Money“And so, just as a lifelong product guy, I want to build the best product we can for our customers and I love these direct models, and especially subscriptions, because it reinforces the ongoing evolution of the product.”
“And we're just really religious about trying to build the best product for the end user and so it felt obvious that, like, a subscription was the right way to do that.”
Related topics
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More from this episode
- Monarch Money: Let users vote on your roadmap from a Feature Requests link in settingsOver 15,000 votes and long comments that guide what gets built
- Monarch Money: Show clickable prototypes to the users who voted for a feature before buildingSlower up front but fewer release cycles; founder's claim
- Monarch Money: Ask 'why' 3-5 times about requests to find the real emotional needFound users want a sense of control; marketing changes still to come
- Monarch Money: Define user types, from students to retirees, and choose which to targetFounder says it helped decide focus and messaging; no numbers
- Monarch Money: Run a year-long private beta with a few hundred power usersPublic beta followed in early 2021; growth took off from there
- Monarch Money: Publish a founder blog post the night a rival's shutdown leaks, with an importer readyDaily signups jumped 20-30x and stayed there (shutdown itself drove most demand)
- Monarch Money: Talk candidly on Reddit to a closing rival's users about your plans and gapsFounder says users found it authentic and trusted them; no separate numbers
- Monarch Money: Pause promised features and re-rank everything when a sudden opportunity hitsNew import extension shipped in ~48 hours vs 6+ weeks for rivals; ~70 minutes downtime
- Monarch Money: Grow the support team from 3 to 20+ people during a signup surgeBacklog of days to weeks at first; now back to 24-hour replies
- Monarch Money: Open Canada in beta after Canadians fake their location to sign upMixed: weaker bank connections frustrated some users, who were offered refunds
- Monarch Money: Build a content team teaching the personal finance basics schools skip
- Monarch Money: Keep the team small and aim for break-even even after raising VCTeam of 13 was ready when demand spiked; no financial numbers
- Mint: Offer a free finance app paid for by credit card offersLost money on every user due to data costs; offers hurt the product
- Monarch Money: Keep an 'open role' on your jobs page for people who don't fit a listingNearly half the team was hired this way