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 - @drbarnardJacob Eiting - @jeitingRevenueCat - @RevenueCatSubClub - @SubClubHQEpisode 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