On the podcast: hitting $10M ARR without ever testing a paywall, paying their own customers to help make video ads, and why you might want to turn away some potential customers.

Top Takeaways:

💸 You can reach $10M ARR with the growth playbook still in the box
$1M to $10M in subscription ARR in two years, with no lifecycle email, no paywall test, and no SEO, TikTok, or AdWords. The precondition was over a year of giving the product away first.

🚪 Screening buyers out protects every metric that matters
A web quiz that tells some visitors the product isn't for them caps conversion on purpose, because the wrong subscriber wrecks retention, reviews, and product signal.

🎬 Your own customers can be a creative engine
Members submit an audition tape, get a weekly brief, and receive a flat fee in real money (not credits, not discounts) for any video that’s used as an ad.

🏷️ Where you put the hardware margin is a bet on where the value lives
Sell the band at cost, roughly $80, and the $20 subscription carries the value; charge a premium for the device only if it reads as an object people want.

🆓 Hardware kills the free trial, so the free tier has to do the de-risking
You can't give away a physical device, so the free tier becomes the proof of quality that a trial would normally provide.

🔬 Published research is a moat nobody can clone over a weekend
Opt-in anonymized data sharing, ethics sign-off, and peer-reviewed papers move no revenue number this quarter, but are exactly what a skeptical buyer finds when they research your product.

About Luke Martin-Fuller:
🫀Co-founder of Visible, a wearable activity tracker built for illness, not fitness. Real-time heart rate data and personalized insights help users pace activity within their energy envelope.

👋 LinkedIn

🛥️Visible

🖥️Visible Careers

💬Visible on X

Follow us on X:

• David Barnard - @drbarnard
• Jacob Eiting - @jeiting
• RevenueCat - @RevenueCat
• SubClub - @SubClubHQ

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] From $1M to $10M ARR in Two Years

[01:57] How Long COVID Led to Visible's Founding

[04:18] 5,000 Waitlist Signups for a Product That Didn't Exist

[05:54] Building the Founding 100 With a Free App

[07:33] Raising Just Enough Money to Get Started

[08:27] Why Visible Won't Call Itself a Cure

[11:06] Turning Research Into a Credibility Engine

[16:49] The Stigma Around an Invisible Illness

[19:40] Why Lived Experience Matters for Investors and Employees

[21:57] Why an Existing Wearable Wasn't Good Enough

[24:46] Designing for Brain Fog and Limited Energy

[26:53] Partnering With Polar Instead of Building Hardware

[29:12] The Hidden Complexity of Hardware-Enabled Subscriptions

[30:59] Oura, Whoop, and the Three Hardware Pricing Models

[37:13] From $1M to $10M ARR Without Testing a Paywall

[42:09] Meta, UGC, and the One Paid Channel Behind Growth

[44:37] Paying Customers to Create and Test Video Ads

[47:56] Running an Influencer Program With a Team of Two

[51:21] Why Visible's Funnel Qualifies Customers Before They Buy

[55:24] Why Hardware Forces Visible to Sell Through the Web

[58:49] A 10-Day Journey From Landing Page to Purchase

[1:00:44] Using the Free App to De-Risk a Hardware Purchase

[1:02:08] A Quiet Series A at $7M in Revenue

[1:07:11] Biggest Win: Rebuilding the Web Funnel In-House

[1:08:00] Biggest Fail: An AI Feature Users Hated

[1:09:41] Why Growth Depends on Insurance, and Who Visible Is Hiring Next

On the podcast: crowdfunding millions of dollars to accelerate growth, the two-year subscription that transformed his CAC payback, and why removing signup friction backfired.

Top Takeaways:

💰 Raising money means selling your business
Equity crowdfunding turned 10,000 engaged users into 2,500 investors, and the smartest founders still raise half of what they think they need.

📈 A 2-year subscription can transform CAC payback
Offering 2 years at a ~30% discount ($183 vs. $129/year) pulls revenue forward, funding marketing spend the moment it happens.

🚧 Removing signup friction can backfire spectacularly
Killing account creation looked like a huge win in early tests, but multi-device sync complaints and support grief erased the gains at 100% rollout.

🤝 Not every mouth is worth the same in word of mouth
Instructors and industry insiders who refuse affiliate kickbacks carry more trust than any paid channel, precisely because they aren't sales reps.

🧪 Most startups don't have the sample size to A/B test properly
With a billion users, testing is easy; without them it's dangerously easy to read whatever you want into the numbers while a metric further down the funnel quietly breaks.

About Jelte Liebrand:
🚀Founder of Savvy Navvy, a marine navigation app that is Google Maps for boats. Charts, tides, weather, and everything you need for sailing and motorboat navigation

👋 LinkedIn

🛥️ Savvy Navvy

🖥️ Savvy Navvy Careers

💬 Savvy Navvy on X

Follow us on X:

• David Barnard - @drbarnard
• Jacob Eiting - @jeiting
• RevenueCat - @RevenueCat
• SubClub - @SubClubHQ

Episode Highlights:

[00:00] Six Days to an Oversubscribed Crowdfunding Raise
[00:36] Introducing Jelte Liebrand of Savvy Navvy
[01:46] A Bad Day at Google and a Yacht Race Sign-Up
[03:09] Plotting Courses by Hand on a Racing Yacht
[05:12] Realizing This Wasn't Just an Ocean Racer's Problem
[06:10] Buying a Clipboard to Research the Boating Market
[08:16] What AI Teaches Us About Shifting Expectations
[13:15] Even Dropping a Pin Is Starting to Feel Dated
[14:31] Sitting Down With VCs and Walking Away
[16:46] What Equity Crowdfunding Actually Means
[20:56] Why VC Only Fits a Narrow Set of Businesses
[24:44] Raise Half of What You Think You Need
[27:31] Inside Savvy Navvy's First and Later Funding Rounds
[29:25] No Preferred Shares and the Same Terms for Everyone
[32:35] Why He Tells Founders Not to Raise At All
[35:42] Setting a Revenue Multiple Instead of a VC Multiple
[39:34] From Just an App to a B2B Platform
[42:27] The Arc Boats Partnership That Opened Doors
[46:50] Spotting Hardware Opportunities Like Tessie and Tesla
[48:30] How the Manufacturer Flywheel Actually Works
[52:57] Instructors, Chandleries, and Trust Without Kickbacks
[57:44] Two-Year Subscriptions and the CAC Payback Win
[01:00:13] Biggest fail of the year: The Anonymous Accounts Experiment That Backfired

On the podcast: why founders belong in the marketing trenches more often, what makes ‘ugly’ ads perform so well, and why stable ad performance is actually a red flag.

Top Takeaways:

🚨 Stable ad performance is a warning sign, not a win
A $30 acquisition returning $50 can feel safe enough to scale, but that comfort may stop the search for the breakthrough creative that halves CPA or triples purchases.

👀 Ugly ads earn the attention that polished ads lose
When every feed looks perfectly branded, an unpolished ad that explains the product in the first second has a better chance of stopping the scroll.

🛠️ Founders cannot outsource market intuition
Sitting in acquisition meetings and developing early creative gives founders a firsthand understanding that no agency or marketing hire can manufacture for them.

🧪 Validate demand before building the product
Selling a PDF, concept, or promise—even if it must be refunded—is a cheaper test than spending months building an app the market never asked for.

🌍 Localization is a testing advantage, not just a translation task
Similar-converting international markets can turn a $1,000-a-day US creative test into a $10-a-day experiment, provided the team still accounts for local culture.

About Yuliya Lennox:
🚀App marketing professional helping apps scale through strategy, experimentation, and deep understanding of user behavior. Experienced in B2C growth, monetization design, and funnel optimization across startups and established teams. Thrives on turning data into actionable insights and collaborating cross-functionally to drive sustainable, user-focused growth.

👋 Linkedin

Follow us on X:

• David Barnard - @drbarnard
• Jacob Eiting - @jeiting
• RevenueCat - @RevenueCat
• SubClub - @SubClubHQ

Episode Highlights:

[0:00] The founder thesis: Why marketing has to be felt, not just understood.

[2:34] Stability is the enemy. Steady CPMs and CPAs mean you've stopped pushing.

[6:54] The case for ugly ads: Why the least polished creative usually wins.

[8:46] Sell before you build a single line of code.

[14:47] No silver bullet: Why founders can't outsource marketing to a hire.

[19:02] The belly fat ad. When brand caution costs you your best-performing creative.

[24:49] When brand actually matters: The Solid Starts backlash that proved the exception.

[26:31] Betting on localization for cheaper testing and bigger markets outside the US.

[32:45] The case for a marketer camp: Why sharing wins beats guarding them.

[40:11] Inside Higgsfield's grind: 17-hour days and an early bet on AI video.

[46:43] Organic growth's double edge. How Replika and Solid Starts hit a ceiling.

[56:14] Hire the obsessed: Why passion beats headcount on a great team.

[1:01:06] The end of black hat growth. Subscription quizzes, regulators, and a reckoning.

[1:06:45] The $1 trial that charged $350, dissected.

[1:10:32] Lightning round: Biggest win, biggest fail, and the red ocean/blue ocean divide.