Subversive

Phil Carter
  • 5.0 (10)
  • BUSINESS
  • UPDATED BIWEEKLY

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.

  1. How Fitbod Uses AI to Hyperpersonalize Strength Workouts

    4D AGO

    How Fitbod Uses AI to Hyperpersonalize Strength Workouts

    Allen Chen is the cofounder and CEO of Fitbod, a strength training app launched in 2015 that has since scaled to $38M in ARR. Prior to Fitbod, Allen started his career as a software engineer building high frequency commodities trading platforms. He holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from UCLA and a partially completed master's degree in mathematics and finance from Columbia University. Key Takeaways: Fitbod was first founded in 2015, after Allen Chen left his lucrative finance career to team up with his former college friend, Jesse Venticinque, to build the strength training app they both wanted for their own workouts.For years, Allen and Jesse kept Fitbod lean and built the product to meet their own needs, choosing to bootstrap the company and focus on building a highly retentive core product before raising outside capital to accelerate growth.Inspired by Nir Eyal's "Hooked" framework, Allen and Jesse built habit loops into Fitbod around natural muscle recovery cycles that bolstered subscriber retention, as well as extrinsic triggers to bring subscribers back to the app more often.Fitbod has grown subscribers exponentially through two primary growth loops: organic word of mouth amplified by viral hooks built into the product experience, and performance marketing through Meta and other paid user acquisition channels, which the company optimizes based on LTV/CAC and payback period.Fitbod is already using AI to hyperpersonalize workouts for its many subscribers, and as AI continues to evolve, Allen expects it to unlock all sorts of additional applications within the fitness category that will further benefit human health.Allen Chen: Website: https://fitbod.me/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allen-chen-17a7748/Phil Carter: Website: https://www.philgcarter.comSubstack: https://philgcarter.substack.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philgcarterX: https://x.com/philgcarterPodcast Production by Podders: https://podders.io

    1h 1m
  2. How Opal Reached $10M ARR with 11 Employees

    DEC 11

    How Opal Reached $10M ARR with 11 Employees

    Kenneth Schlenker is founder and CEO of Opal, which has rapidly grown into the world's #1 screen time app since launching in 2020, reaching $10M in ARR with a team of just 11 employees. After starting his career in Product Marketing at Google, Kenneth has spent more than a decade founding multiple companies, including a private marketplace for private art sales called ArtList, as well as a venture studio called Stellar Base that incubated multiple successful startups.  Key Takeaways:  After spending more than a decade as a serial entrepreneur, Kenneth founded Opal in 2020 with the mission to "align technology with human wellbeing" because he believed it was more important than ever for people to track their screen time and understand the role it plays in their lives.In 2022, when Apple launched its Screen Time API, Opal seized the first mover advantage and used this opportunity to reinvent screen time tracking, propelling itself to $10M in revenue by 2025 despite keeping its team very lean.From early on, Opal was laser focused on D8 ROAS as its primary growth metric, because Kenneth wanted to ensure the company could convince enough subscribers to pay for its product that they could grow reliably through paid ads.More recently, Opal has invested in gamification to boost motivaion and retention, as well as word of mouth and incentivized referral programs to help supplement paid user acquisition with organic growth.AI is making social networks and games even more addictive, which makes Opal even more important than before. Longer-term, Kenneth plans to expand beyond screen time tracking to other use cases that align technology with human health and happiness, and to also market the product to companies, schools, and insurance companies in addition to individuals. Kenneth Schlenker:  Website: https://www.opal.so/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kennethschlenker/ X: https://x.com/kschlenker Phil Carter:  Website: https://www.philgcarter.com Substack: https://philgcarter.substack.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philgcarter X: https://x.com/philgcarter Podcast Production by Podders: https://podders.io

    52 min
  3. How Preply Built the World’s Largest Language Learning Marketplace

    NOV 27

    How Preply Built the World’s Largest Language Learning Marketplace

    Simon Mizzi is currently the VP of Product Growth at Preply, the world’s largest online marketplace for connecting language learners with human tutors. Since joining Preply as a Director of Product in 2021, Simon has been promoted twice from Director to Senior Director to VP. Prior to Preply, Simon spent eight years as a PM and then Director of Product at Agoda, which is an online travel agency that specializes in booking accommodations, flights, and activities, with a strong focus on the Asian market. Key Takeaways: Preply has built the world’s largest language learning marketplace, with an online platform that connects over 100,000 experienced tutors teaching dozens of different languages to millions of learners across the globe.Preply’s human-powered marketplace differentiates it from language learning apps like Duolingo and Babbel that are 100% digital. While scaling to 100,000+ tutors has been difficult, it has also helped Preply boost learner motivation, increase subscriber retention, and ultimately improve learning outcomes.Preply has run hundreds of experiments to optimize its learner onboarding flow, improve its tutor matching algorithm, and accelerate time to value. While these experiments have improved registration, activation, and trial lesson start rates, ultimately Preply focuses on subscriber conversion and retention as the metrics that matter most, because subscriptions are what drive value for the business.In parallel, Preply has invested heavily in maintaining tutor quality as it scales the supply side of its business. This includes surfacing metadata about tutors that build confidence for new learners, as well as imposing policies that encourage tutors to maximize their availability so that learners have a positive experience.While Simon believes language learning is an inherently human activity that will never be fully replaced by technology, he is excited about the potential for AI to boost tutor productivity and hyperpersonalize the language learning experience.Simon Mizzi: Website: https://preply.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-mizzi/details/experience/Phil Carter: Website: https://www.philgcarter.comSubstack: https://philgcarter.substack.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philgcarterX: https://x.com/philgcarter Podcast Production by Podders: https://podders.io

    1 hr
  4. How Calm Added 1.2M Subscribers with Creative Marketing Tactics

    NOV 13

    How Calm Added 1.2M Subscribers with Creative Marketing Tactics

    After starting his career in derivatives trading, Nick Candler pivoted into user acquisition before joining Calm to serve as Director of Growth Marketing during their hypergrowth period from 2019 - 2022. After leaving Calm, Nick started his own performance marketing agency called 10 Scale, and is now a consultant, coach, and advisor supporting products that make a positive social impact. Nick has supported hundreds of millions of dollars in media spend on tech products and political campaigns. Key Takeaways: Nick joined Calm in 2019 at an exciting time when the company was on the cutting edge of optimizing both how to monetize a digital product through subscriptions and how to distribute it through performance marketing channels.The launch of Sleep Stories was a critical inflection point for Calm, both because sleep proved to be a more acute pain point vs. meditation and because paid social channels like Instagram proved to be perfect for acquiring users who were up late at night doomscrolling because they were struggling with insomnia.Calm was one of the first companies to get sophisticated about using “social listening” techniques to incorporate trending memes from social media into their ad creatives to improve the performance of paid user acquisition campaigns.Not only was Nick’s performance marketing team at Calm extremely creative, but they also took a highly iterative and analytical approach to optimizing campaigns while using metrics like LTV/CAC and payback period to measure performance.Ultimately, Nick’s team ran 5,500 ads while he was at Calm that converted an incremental 1.2 million subscribers. Calm’s paid user acquisition efforts were also complemented by Calm’s organic growth engine, which fueled additional and highly cost-efficient user acquisition and subscriber conversion.Nick Candler: Calm Website: https://www.calm.com/10 Scale Website: https://10scale.co/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolascandler/Phil Carter: Website: https://www.philgcarter.comSubstack: https://philgcarter.substack.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philgcarterX: https://x.com/philgcarter Podcast Production by Podders: https://podders.io/

    53 min
  5. How OpenArt is Using AI to Reinvent Content Creation

    OCT 30

    How OpenArt is Using AI to Reinvent Content Creation

    Coco Mao is the cofounder and CEO of OpenArt, an AI-powered creative platform that enables anyone to generate images and videos from simple text prompts. Since launching OpenArt in 2022, Coco has led the company through rapid growth, expanding from generative art tools to its new “One-Click Story” video feature and scaling revenue to over $30M in ARR. Prior to OpenArt, Coco spent several years at Google, where she worked on search as well as experimental products like Tangi, which focused on short-form creative content. She holds a degree in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University. Key Takeaways: After spending seven years at Google, including stints working on search and short-form video content, Coco left in 2022 with her cofounder, John Qiao, to cofound OpenArt as an AI platform for visual content creation.One of the keys to OpenArt’s initial success was building a community where content creators could not only see what images other people were generating, but the specific prompts they were using to create these images.In addition to word of mouth, OpenArt leaned into programmatic SEO as an early growth strategy by creating templatized pages that ranked for longtail keywords like “3D Art Generator” or “D&D Image Generator” that drove thousands of visits.OpenArt eventually pivoted from image generation to video generation, which required changes to the company’s core product offering, go to market strategy, and subscription pricing and packaging model.The center of OpenArt continues to be its highly-engaged creator community. While AI may soon surpass human intelligence, Coco believes that humans will always have a desire to create, and OpenArt’s mission is to use technology to help people all over the world express themselves through visual stories.Coco Mao: Website: https://openart.ai/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kechunmao/X: https://x.com/openart_aiPhil Carter: Website: https://www.philgcarter.comSubstack: https://philgcarter.substack.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philgcarterX: https://x.com/philgcarterPodcast Production by Podders: https://podders.io

    55 min
  6. How Best-In-Class Retention Propelled Flo to a $1B Valuation

    OCT 16

    How Best-In-Class Retention Propelled Flo to a $1B Valuation

    Dmitry Gurski is the cofounder and CEO of Flo, a leading women’s health platform widely known for its period tracking and broader reproductive health insights. Dmitry cofounded Flo in 2015 and has led the company through major milestones including 100M+ downloads, a $200M Series C funding round, and a $1B+ valuation. Prior to Flo, he founded several ventures in publishing and health tech, drawing on a background in pharmaceutical chemistry and executive education from Stanford. Key Takeaways: Flo made two contrarian bets early on that helped it to outcompete hundreds of other women’s health apps. First, it offered period tracking for free, which became a powerful driver of organic user acquisition, and second, it built features for different use cases like conception, pregnancy, and perimenopause into a single super app, resulting in category-leading long-term retention rates.Strong retention rates allowed Flo to compound its active user growth over time. More active users has led to increased organic growth through word of mouth, which has in turn led to more active users, creating an efficient growth engine.As Flo scaled, it also developed a rigorous experimentation culture. The app now runs thousands of experiments per year with 200 to 300 active experiments running at any give time. This has had a tremendous impact on its growth, and particularly on metrics like trial start and conversion rates that drive monetization.As its revenue growth accelerated, Flo reinvested more and more money into product innovation, leading to even more rapid growth. Today, Flo is the #1 health app in the world, with 450 million installs, 80 million MAUs, and $300M in ARR.After launching “Flo for Partners” in 2023, the company has already acquired >2M male users who are actively using Flo in Partner Mode, and the company believes it can very realistically grow to >10M partners over the next few years.Dmitry Gurski: Website: https://flo.health/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmitrygurski/X: https://x.com/flotrackerPhil Carter: Website: https://www.philgcarter.comSubstack: https://philgcarter.substack.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philgcarterX: https://x.com/philgcarter Podcast Production by Podders: https://podders.io

    1h 4m
  7. How Noom Avoided PMF Collapse in the Wake of GLP-1s

    OCT 2

    How Noom Avoided PMF Collapse in the Wake of GLP-1s

    Brent Zajaczkowski is the VP of Product Growth at Noom, one of the world’s largest preventive health platforms that is widely credited with pioneering a novel psychology-based approach to weight loss. Brent joined Noom in 2020 as a Senior PM, and has since been promoted multiple times. Prior to Noom, Brent spent 8+ years in product management and software engineering at TripAdvisor and Wyzant. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from Brown University. Key Takeaways: After being founded in 2008, Noom has become one of the largest online weight loss platforms in the world, and is widely credited with pioneering a novel, psychology-based approach to weight loss built on cognitive behavioral therapy.Noom is famous for its “longboarding flow,” which asks users to answer dozens of questions to help personalize their weight loss plan and product experience. While this approach is unconventional, it works because Noom’s users have often tried many other ways to lose weight unsuccessfully, which means they need to be convinced that Noom will work where other solutions have failed.Many of Noom’s most successful A/B tests have tapped into underlying user psychology to boost motivation. These include asking users to pay for a trial so they really commit to their weight loss program, and building a “re-onboarding” flow to encourage users who have fallen off the wagon to try again.The proliferation of GLP-1 medications like Ozempic and Wegovy threatened Noom’s core business, but the company has adapted by investing in several PMF expansion bets, including offering GLP-1s through its own platform.Recently, Noom built an AI companion called “Welli” that helps users navigate its increasingly complex service offering and receive a personalized experience, which has helped to increase user engagement and retention rates.Brent Zajaczkowski: Website: https://www.noom.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brent-zajaczkowski/Phil Carter: Website: https://www.philgcarter.comSubstack: https://philgcarter.substack.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philgcarterX: https://x.com/philgcarter Podcast Production by Podders: https://podders.io

    57 min
  8. How Learneo Leveraged M&A to Build a $3.6B EdTech Empire

    SEP 18

    How Learneo Leveraged M&A to Build a $3.6B EdTech Empire

    Andrew Grauer is the CEO of Learneo, a holding company valued at $3.6 billion that owns multiple learning and productivity businesses including Course Hero, QuillBot, CliffsNotes, Scribbr, LitCharts, LanguageTool, and Symbolab. After cofounding Course Hero in 2006 when he was a sophomore at Cornell, Andrew spent 15 years growing it into one of the world’s largest EdTech businesses before folding it into Learneo. Over the last few years since Learneo acquired QuillBot, Andrew has been focused on transforming that product into a multimodal generative AI platform for students and professionals. Key Takeaways: Andrew started Course Hero in 2006 when he was a sophomore at Cornell because he wanted a platform that could help student like him find and study academic materials that were highly course-specific.Course Hero developed an elegant model where students could access content either by uploading their own course materials, which made the entire platform more valuable, or by paying for a subscription, which generated revenue.As more students contributed content to Course Hero, the platform became more valuable for other students, leading to more sign ups and even more content. The company accelerated this core growth loop by investing in on-campus marketing, search engine optimization, and other user acquisition channels.From 2020 and 2023, Course Hero formed a parent company called Learneo and expanded into math, literature, and writing through its acquisitions of Symbolab, LitCharts, CliffNotes, QuillBot, Scribbr, and Language Tool. This strategy allowed Learneo to expand horizontally while keeping each of its portfolio companies narrowly focused on building great products within their respective verticals.Now, as generative AI unlocks new opportunities for learning and productivity, Learneo is focused on leveraging its existing assets and capabilities to build new multimodal creation tools, starting in the writing space with QuillBot.Andrew Grauer: Website: https://www.learneo.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewtategrauer/X: https://x.com/atgrauerPhil Carter: Website: https://www.philgcarter.com/Substack: https://philgcarter.substack.comLinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/philgcarterX: https://x.com/philgcarter Podcast Production by Podders: https://podders.io

    56 min
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About

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.

Information

  • Creator
    Phil Carter
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    26
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2025 Subversive
  • Show Website
    Subversive

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