Subversive
by Phil Carter
Latest episode
How Rise Turned “Sleep Debt” Into a 10M+ User Sleep App
How Rise Turned “Sleep Debt” Into a 10M+ User Sleep App
About this podcast
Subversive is a podcast dedicated to sharing stories from the best consumer subscription apps in the world. We'll bring you lessons for how to grow your consumer subscription business, including insights and inflection points that led to exponential growth from leaders at category-defining companies and innovative startups.
Episodes
The newest 20 of 48 episodes
- How Rise Turned “Sleep Debt” Into a 10M+ User Sleep App · 1 h 0 min · Season 1 Episode 48“Sleep is a waste of time.” That was Leon Sasson’s mindset in college until he partnered with classmate Jeff Kahn to start researching sleep with Northwestern’s sports teams and…
- How Tolan 3X'd Subscriber Conversion after Shifting to Freemium · 1 h 2 min · Season 1 Episode 47“We weren’t giving the user a real reason to upgrade.” That’s how Ajay Mehta, cofounder and president of Tolan, describes the first version of the free tier for his company’s AI…
- DoorDash's Playbook for Scaling DashPass to 35M+ Members · 56 min · Season 1 Episode 46DashPass has stayed at $9.99/month since its launch back in 2018, a choice the person who built it believes is exactly right: Jimmy Liu, the original creator of DashPass. He…
- Edward Tian on Building GPTZero, Scaling to $30M+ ARR, and the Superhuman Acquisition · 55 min · Season 1 Episode 45As AI-generated content floods the internet, how do you know what's still human? Weeks after ChatGPT's release, Edward Tian built the first version of GPTZero from a cafe in…
- How Zero Built the World's #1 Fasting App and Hit $5M ARR in 6 Months · 1 h 0 min · Season 1 Episode 44In the crowded subscription app economy, building a great product is no longer enough. As AI has made software significantly faster, easier, and cheaper to build, the primary…
- Apt's CEO on the AI Career Tsunami, Freemium, and Application Layer Defensibility · 1 h 9 min · Season 1 Episode 43Every single person alive has asked themselves the same question: "What should I do with my life?" Tomas Hoyos, cofounder and CEO of Apt, is building an AI-powered career…
- How Pok Pok Doubled Revenue by Doubling Its Price | Melissa Cash · 60 min · Season 1 Episode 42When Melissa Cash and her cofounders looked at children's apps, they saw two extremes: addictive games designed to maximize screen time and educational apps built around rote…
- How beehiiv’s Referral-Powered Growth Engine Propelled It to $30M+ ARR · 1 h 2 min · Season 1 Episode 41"If you wait until it's perfect, you're too late." This was Tyler Denk’s attitude when he took the growth engine he had built as employee #2 at Morning Brew - the newsletter he…
- How Purpose Hit $1M in ARR Two Weeks After Launch · 51 min · Season 1 Episode 40Most AI coaching apps are just ChatGPT wrapped in a personality. Raj Singh and Mark Manson built Purpose to prove there's a better way. Raj, cofounder and CEO of Purpose and…
- How ClassDojo Built Network Effects to Reach 95% of US K-8 Schools · 59 min · Season 1 Episode 39Sam Chaudhary is the cofounder and CEO of ClassDojo, an education platform used in roughly 95% of US K-8 schools and by tens of millions of children across 180 countries around…
- How StudyFetch Used Creator-Led Growth to Hit $10M+ ARR in 3 Years · 51 min · Season 1 Episode 38Esan Durrani is the cofounder and CEO of StudyFetch, an AI-native learning platform used by more than 7 million students worldwide. Esan launched StudyFetch in 2023 with his…
- How Wabi is Building “YouTube for Software” with a Platform for Creating Mini Apps · 56 min · Season 1 Episode 37Eugenia Kuyda is the founder and CEO of Wabi, an AI-powered personal software platform that lets anyone create, share, and remix mini apps in minutes. Before Wabi, Eugenia…
- How Cal AI Hit $50M ARR in 2 Years by Nailing Product/Channel Fit on TikTok · 52 min · Season 1 Episode 36Daniel Heintzman is Head of Product at Cal AI, an AI-powered calorie tracking app that grew to over $50M ARR in under two years before being acquired by MyFitnessPal in December…
- How Suno Grew to $300M in ARR by Democratizing Music Creation · 51 min · Season 1 Episode 35Mikey Shulman is the cofounder and CEO of Suno, an AI music generation platform that allows anyone to create full songs with lyrics, vocals, and instrumentation from a simple…
- How Discord Completely Redesigned its Mobile Apps · 55 min · Season 1 Episode 34Francesco Polizzi is the former Head of Core Experience at Discord, where he led a complete overhaul of the company’s mobile apps. He has also held roles as the Head of Product…
- How ElevenLabs is Building Consumer Apps on its $11B Voice AI Platform · 53 min · Season 1 Episode 33Jack McDermott is a growth lead at ElevenLabs, where he leads growth for its mobile products — including the ElevenLabs app and ElevenReader, a consumer app built on top of the…
- Insights from RevenueCat’s 2026 State of Subscription Apps Report · 54 min · Season 1 Episode 32Rik Haandrikman is the VP of Growth at RevenueCat, the world’s largest SaaS platform for subscription apps that need help powering in-app purchases, managing customer data, and…
- How SuperMe is Building the Professional Network for the AI Era · 1 h 5 min · Season 1 Episode 31Casey Winters is the cofounder and CEO of SuperMe, an AI-native company that is designed to be the professional network for the AI era by connecting users with AI avatars of…
- How GameChanger Became the World’s #1 Youth Sports App · 60 min · Season 1 Episode 30Sameer Ahuja is President of GameChanger, which he originally joined as VP of Finance and Analytics in 2017 before being promoted multiple times. He is also an SVP of Dick’s…
- How Speak Built a $1B AI Language Learning App · 46 min · Season 1 Episode 29Connor Zwick is the cofounder and CEO of Speak, a billion dollar app that is reinventing digital language learning by getting users into real conversations with AI-powered…
