Founder Playbook · Sub Club by RevenueCat
5 tactics from Alex Prasad
Should You Ditch Freemium for a Free Trial Model?
Watch the full episode“Freemium in my opinion in a direct-to-consumer business is probably the most complicated monetization strategy you can have — you've got to be really clear on thesis statement, really clear metrics, really know where to draw these lines.”
Freemium is the most complicated monetisation strategy in direct-to-consumer
Freemium sounds simple — give something away free, charge for the rest — but in practice it demands constant discipline: which features belong behind the paywall, where to draw the free/paid line, and how to measure whether the free tier is converting or providing indefinite free value. V1 Sports found their freemium strategy had been deployed defensively rather than strategically, with a thesis statement nobody could reconstruct.
“The pros, students, athletes can join the platform — we're never going to disrupt with a paywall the interaction between the two. It's a touchstone, a third rail. You change that and it's a fundamental tenant of our business.”
Identify your non-negotiable free tier first — it protects the network effect core
Every freemium strategy has at least one non-negotiable: the feature or user type that makes the whole product work. For V1 Sports, the coach-student relationship cannot be paywalled — doing so would destroy the network. Revisiting strategy every 18 months does not mean everything is on the table. Identifying the real third rails early focuses re-evaluation energy on the genuinely moveable parts.
“Someone says 'we already tried that' and I go, 'Whoa, but that was 18 months ago — think about all the things we've learned.' Consumer willingness to pay via subscription has changed, onboarding patterns have changed, willingness to pay higher prices is surprisingly doing better and better.”
Revisit every strategic assumption every 18 months — consumer willingness to pay has shifted
In a market that moves as fast as subscription apps, a pricing test or gating strategy that failed 18 months ago may have been correct then and be wrong now. Alex Prasad forces re-evaluation of every assumption on a rolling basis. Consumer price tolerance, onboarding norms, and competitive positioning all shift faster than most founders reset their priors — the 'we tried that' objection is often a stale data point masquerading as institutional knowledge.
“So many apps, if they're four, five, six years old, probably have more business strategy debt than they realise — features they give away for free that maybe are higher value, ways they do things that haven't been rethought in years.”
Business strategy debt accrues silently in apps older than four years
Business strategy debt is the less-discussed cousin of technical debt: features misclassified as free, pricing that predates current consumer behaviour, monetisation models chosen opportunistically rather than strategically. The older the app, the more this accumulates unnoticed. Even a growing app can unlock substantial upside from a single rigorous re-evaluation of the free/paid line and the underlying assumptions it rests on.
“We decided basically to retreat to move forward — there are a lot of assumptions stacked here and we don't really know how many of these are true. Where's a simple place to start, and then proceed from there, meticulously brick by brick?”
Retreat to move forward: simplify to a provable foundation before layering strategy
V1 Sports' switch to free trial was an epistemological reset as much as a monetisation change. Years of turnover had left the team running on unverified stacked assumptions. The decision to go back to basics — list only what you are certain is true and build deliberately from there — is a reproducible framework for any app that has accumulated strategy debt without a clear thesis it can still defend.