Visible · B2C · wearable for pacing chronic illness
Stay cash-flow positive to $7M revenue, then raise a small, quiet Series A
Raised at ~$7M revenue from an aligned investor; funds data science and product
Workedfinancing
What they did
Raised only a small pre-seed before product, grew to ~$7M revenue cash-flow positive, then took a small Series A from an aligned investor at the start of the year. Didn't publicize it since consumer members don't care and press coverage could confuse people searching for the product. Money went to data science and core product.
What happened
Funded data science and product work that monthly cash-flow targets had limited.
- Stage
- scale
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · $10M ARR Without Ever Testing A Paywall — Luke Martin-Fuller, Visible“So we did a very small by industry standard Series A at the beginning of the year from a super aligned investor, someone that understood what we were all about. And we decided not to publicize that.”
“I think it makes sense for B2B companies, but I can't see why it would ever make sense for a consumer company”
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More from this episode
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- 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
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- 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