Founder Playbook · Sub Club by RevenueCat
14 tactics from Aaron Foss
From Idea to 8-Figure Exit in 10 Years Flat
Watch the full episode“I love things where the risk and reward is out of balance where obviously the risk is low and the reward is high you don't want it the other way that's not it but that kind of framing as like why wouldn't you at least take the shot”
Enter contests with asymmetric risk and reward
Aaron entered the FTC robocall-blocking contest because the downside was a few weeks of work and the upside was a government-endorsed launch platform. He was between companies, had relevant telephony experience, and could lose nothing beyond time. Seek out competitions, grants, accelerator applications, or press pitches where a no costs nothing but a yes can completely change your trajectory.
“the key was almost like this distribution this go to market this how are we going to get to Consumers and that other person or I guess 799 other people just didn't have anything that was good enough to win”
Win with distribution, not the best product
Aaron's FTC entry beat 799 others despite some having better algorithms, because his submission focused on how consumers would actually get to the product — not on technical superiority. The FTC CTO said the idea looked 'stupid enough to work' and picked it over more sophisticated approaches. Nail your distribution story before you finalize your feature set; judges and customers alike care more about reach than optimization.
“I knew that that was an opportunity like the amount of we call it like earned media now but I was just like yeah I got to get as many people and capture their information as much as I can because I knew that that was my cheat code”
Build your waitlist before the press moment
Before attending the FTC press conference, Aaron built nomorobo.com with a single email capture box and no product. By the time the app launched months later, he had 30,000 email addresses — all from earned media he converted at the moment of peak attention. Treat any high-visibility event as a demand-capture opportunity: the list is your proof of market and your launch engine.
“I'm not a big fan of big bang launches maybe because I just got burned that one time there's so many things that can go wrong so every launch we've had it's ready when it's ready and then we push it out”
Soft-launch always — no big bang releases
After an early bad experience, Aaron adopted a permanent policy of shipping quietly when the product was ready — no coordinated launch dates, no countdown pressure. He would fix bugs, then email reporters he already knew with a quiet heads-up and let word spread organically from there. A soft launch lets you find and fix critical issues before they compound under spotlight pressure.
“I didn't want this to be a premium we gave a two-week free trial because we wanted people to try you may not get a robo call today or tomorrow what but by two weeks in you're going to know”
Match free-trial length to the value moment
Nomorobo chose a two-week trial specifically because robocalls don't arrive every day — users needed enough exposure to experience the product actually working before they were asked to pay. Align your trial length to when the core 'aha moment' naturally occurs, not to an arbitrary 7-day default. If your value takes time to surface, a shorter trial kills conversion before the user ever sees what they paid for.
“on a $1.99 a month we were actually getting a better deal if we had to go and get off the shelf kind of pricing and we had to run it ourselves I actually did the math I'm like actually apple is cheaper”
Run the Apple-tax math before resenting it
At $1.99/month, Apple's 30% cut was mathematically cheaper than building proprietary payment infrastructure — chargebacks, fraud, failed payments, and compliance all eat margin fast at low price points. Aaron ran the numbers and found the platform fee was a net positive before he even factored in distribution. Before resenting platform taxes, calculate what in-house processing truly costs at your price point and volume.
“what happens now if you get a call from an unknown number while it's ringing you run over to Google and you type it in... let's just make landing pages for every one of those phone numbers so when you type it in it'll say Nomorobo and this is a scam call”
Programmatic SEO from your own data exhaust
Nomorobo built landing pages for every known robocall number, each populated with recordings, transcriptions, and a CTA to block the caller and try the app. The content came entirely from call data the product was already generating. The moat was structural — competitors could not replicate the pages without the same data pipeline, and the pages ranked for searches users were already doing in real time.
“hey here are the top scams that are hitting Austin right now along with audio now we'll talk about it... if you give a reporter something to work with boom they're just going to write the story”
Give reporters local data, not category stats
Instead of pitching 'robocalls are bad' (a story already written thousands of times), Aaron sent reporters city-specific data: the exact scams hitting their city right now, with audio recordings attached. The story wrote itself because the reporter just had to listen and localize. This approach generated 2–3 press mentions per week for 10 years with zero PR budget or media spend.
“maybe this is another piece... because we were offering it for free the carriers came to us and said can we tell people about it like yeah so like literally I get a call at the time it was Time Warner right now spectrum they were coming to us”
Free tier can pull B2B partners inbound
Because the landline product was completely free, carriers like Time Warner and Spectrum came inbound asking to integrate it — they got to offer robocall protection to their users at zero cost. Nomorobo got a massive distribution channel without a single enterprise sales hire. A free product targeted at a segment that large platforms serve can become a deal magnet instead of a cost center.
“no tracking no Shenanigans none of this like we just offer what we do so that also worked with the Apple ethos... when we were able to say you should feature us as app of the day why because we protect somebody and we're privacy conscious that just became a competitive advantage”
Align with platform values to get featured
Apple features apps that reinforce its public brand story, not just apps that are technically excellent. Nomorobo built its product around Apple's privacy stance — no tracking, no phone number required, block-list-only approach — and then explicitly made that case when pitching for featuring. Identify what story the platform gatekeeper is already telling publicly and make your app its proof point.
“I have two time frames it's now or later are we working on it now cool let's do it or we're working on it later sometimes later never comes and then that feature just wasn't important”
Two time frames only: now or never
Aaron ran his entire backlog with a binary priority system — features were either being worked on now or they were in a later pile where they might never surface. This isn't laziness; it's a forcing function. If a feature never fights its way back to 'now' status, the team has revealed that it wasn't important enough to build, which is valuable information on its own.
“it wasn't one of those things we didn't have to meet any milestones... it was just like hey I need this much cuz we have a lot of assumptions that we have to go and test and we don't know”
Raise only what the next milestone needs
Nomorobo raised just $2.25M total across 10 years, each tranche sized only to reach the next specific milestone rather than to maximize runway. This preserved ownership, avoided VC pressure to scale prematurely, and kept the team accountable to actual progress rather than capital deployment. Slow-rolling raises is a deliberate ownership strategy, not a failure to raise more.
“I went back to all the other people that and said hey look we're not running a process but we got this offer because of that we had our choice”
"Two is one, one is none" when negotiating acquisition
When Nomorobo received an inbound acquisition offer, Aaron immediately contacted all prior interested parties — not to run a formal process, but to create competitive tension. A single offer gives the acquirer all the leverage; multiple simultaneous conversations put the founder in control of timing, terms, and buyer selection. He ultimately chose a smaller acquirer over a bigger one because it was a better fit — something only possible because he had options.
“I kind of got to the end of what I'm really good at what makes me special what makes like it needed to grow up it needed to graduate and that was a thing that I had a lot of time wrestling with but ultimately that was the right decision”
Know when your role as founder is complete
Aaron didn't pursue the exit because of financial pressure or burnout — he sold because he honestly assessed the boundary of what he was uniquely capable of building, and recognized the company had outgrown it. The acquisition came after a decade of profitable, self-funded growth, not as a rescue. Identifying when your specific contribution is complete, and acting on it rather than holding on, is what turned a lifestyle business into an 8-figure exit.