Visible · B2C · wearable for pacing chronic illness
Offer a free app without the wearable so people can try before buying
A big chunk of acquisition, all word of mouth; barely promoted
Workedproduct-activationword-of-mouth
What they did
Hardware rules out a free trial, so the free app (no wearable; HRV scan via finger on the phone camera) lets people feel the product's quality first. It's barely promoted: a tiny section on the website. Everyone takes a PMF survey; wearable members score far higher than free users.
What happened
Free app ends up a really big chunk of acquisition; main way the hardware purchase is de-risked.
- Stage
- monetization
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · $10M ARR Without Ever Testing A Paywall — Luke Martin-Fuller, Visible“So what we do have is I guess the free app as an opportunity. It's still there. There's still some amazing value in it. You just don't get a wearable”
“And that ends up being a really big chunk of our acquisition. And we really don't push the free app at all.”
Related topics
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More from this episode
- Visible: Put up a site with a 3D mock-up and a waitlist before building anything5,000 waitlist signups in about a week
- Visible: Start with a free app and 100 waitlist users in a Facebook groupFree app grew to ~50K users by word of mouth before any wearable
- Visible: Send 100 free wearables to users and iterate before charging anyoneCharged only after over a year; then $1M to $10M ARR in two years
- Visible: Let users opt in to share anonymized data with university researchersPapers in Nature and with Mount Sinai; builds trust when buyers research; no revenue number
- Visible: Buy Polar's heart-rate sensors retail, then wholesale, then co-design a custom bandReal-time data other wearables couldn't give; guest calls it a productive partnership
- Visible: Sell the band at cost (~$80) and charge $20 a month for the appLowers the barrier to buy; host thought $80 looked too cheap to be good
- Visible: Run only Meta ads with customer videos, and earn back each dollar the same day$1M to $10M ARR in two years, cash-flow positive; ~50% of customers from paid
- Visible: Recruit members to film ad videos; pay a flat cash fee per video usedMain source of Meta ad creative; run by a team of two
- Visible: Test each member video with a small ad budget; scale only the winnersOnly 1-2 videos a week ever get scaled spend
- Visible: Hire a chronic-illness creator you paid for a video as social media managerKickstarted outreach to the right creators; founder says it helped, no numbers
- Visible: Use a web quiz that tells poor-fit visitors the product isn't for themSame quiz since launch; guest says it protects retention; untested
- Visible: Sell on the web so buyers can pay with HSA or FSA moneyAdds payment options, better ad signals and no 30% app store fee
- Visible: Move the web funnel off a flaky no-code tool so you can test itGuest's biggest win of the year; test results still to come
- Visible: Launch an AI feature that explains your health data in plain languageEarly-access users hated it; back to the drawing board
- Visible: Test new features with an early-access group, then explain changes with resultsKept a failed feature away from most users; eases resistance to change
- Visible: Stay cash-flow positive to $7M revenue, then raise a small, quiet Series ARaised at ~$7M revenue from an aligned investor; funds data science and product