Visible · B2C · wearable for pacing chronic illness
Send 100 free wearables to users and iterate before charging anyone
Charged only after over a year; then $1M to $10M ARR in two years
Workedvalidationfeature-development
What they did
After the free app, repeated the 100-user approach for hardware: shipped 100 wearables free and iterated until it delivered value. Didn't monetize until October 2023, over a year after starting. Deliberately built product first, growth machine later.
What happened
Monetized Oct 2023; later grew $1M to $10M subscription ARR in two years with minimal growth optimization.
- Stage
- Pre-launch (pre-revenue)
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · $10M ARR Without Ever Testing A Paywall — Luke Martin-Fuller, Visible“We did the same thing with 100 users. We sent out 100 wearables and iterated until we thought we had something of value and that was all for free.”
“But yeah, the thinking really was that unless you've got something of value, that it's going to be retaining people and helping them, then there's no point investing in all of that experimentation.”
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: 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: Offer a free app without the wearable so people can try before buyingA big chunk of acquisition, all word of mouth; barely promoted
- 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