Founder Playbook · Sub Club by RevenueCat
11 tactics from Giancarlo Musetti
Running Effective In-App Experiments — Giancarlo Musetti, Ad Hoc Labs
Watch the full episode“we removed um that like bypassing button and people just had to start a seven day free trial and that's where we we started to see tons of growth”
Hard paywall with no bypass converts better than soft paywall with a "maybe later" button
Burner ran a seven-day free trial soft paywall with a bypass option, then removed the escape hatch entirely. Revenue grew significantly after the switch because urgency and commitment are front-loaded: users who were not ready to commit at all were churning anyway. Counter-intuitively, forcing a decision creates better-quality cohorts.
“rather than offering five different prepaid numbers we just offered one the one that was um it's called the picture burner and it kind of has like texting calling and you can send pictures and it just drastically outperformed control”
Cutting SKU count from 5 prepaid options to 1 drastically outperformed the complex menu
Burner offered five flavors of prepaid numbers, each with different call/text limits. Collapsing that to a single best-fit option eliminated decision paralysis and massively improved opt-in. Complexity feels like optionality but acts like friction — fewer choices at the point of purchase almost always wins.
“i spent a minute like finding that perfect number and fussing around like finding a number i was like more invested and more likely to start a free trial um so it was like so maybe the cognitive load was actually creating a little bit more buy-in a little more sunk cost along the path”
Friction in onboarding can increase sunk-cost investment and lift trial starts
Burner removed the phone-number selection screen to reduce friction — and conversions dropped. Users who chose their own number felt personally invested in it; that investment carried them through the paywall. Removing low-value screens is not always right: some screens build the psychological commitment that drives subscriptions.
“the kpi for success here was roughly i think like there had to be 15 more often for the 49.99 package or 15 no less than 15 a 15 drop an opt-in for the 69.99 to break even yeah on the price difference and that unfortunately didn't happen”
Price tests require a breakeven threshold set in advance — not post-hoc interpretation
Burner tested $49.99 vs $59.99 vs $69.99 annual plans. The team pre-calculated that a 15% conversion lift at $49.99 was needed to break even on revenue — without that threshold the result is inconclusive, not a winner. Defining the breakeven math before running the experiment is what makes price testing credible.
“we also are doing smoke testing so basically showing users burner plus and seeing if they're interested in purchasing before they can actually get it and so then we measure... actually purchase and then you give them the womp paywall like... sorry not ready yet but thanks for your interest coming soon”
Use smoke tests to validate new features before a single line of production code is written
Before building Burner Plus, Musetti surfaced a real purchase CTA to existing users and tracked click-through as a demand signal — anyone who tapped got a 'coming soon' modal. This costs almost nothing and generates real willingness-to-pay data. It is the fastest way to validate whether a premium tier will actually sell.
“i used two pricing models to do that the gover granger model and the van westender model and so these are two different survey models that basically ask questions about pricing... are you interested in buying burner plus with xyz features for this price if yes survey done if no what about for this price ten dollars cheaper”
Van Westendorp and Gabor-Granger surveys quantify willingness-to-pay before any live test
Musetti used Gabor-Granger and Van Westendorp surveys on existing users before running any live paywall test for Burner Plus. These models show where price-volume curves cross and reveal the psychologically comfortable price band. Running both surveys first shortens the live experiment window and reduces the risk of pricing wrong at launch.
“there might be something that's like medium to high opportunity but insanely high complexity and it's going to take months to build right and so at that point is that worth it or is the high like the medium to high opportunity with like a very low lift worth it right like that second option is going to be where you're going to want to start”
Size each experiment opportunity against engineering complexity before committing to the roadmap
Before finalizing the experiment roadmap, Musetti cross-references expected impact with engineering effort. A medium-impact, low-lift experiment will almost always beat a high-impact, high-complexity one on ROI. Starting with quick wins builds a culture of evidence-driven iteration without burning the team on bets that take months to evaluate.
“why testing and data are always so powerful over any sort of intuition because you think like ah that's a bad user experience that's gonna turn a lot of people off and you're like yes but also you're showing it to a lot more people right like just like the way that usage decays and interest decays so quickly”
Data beats intuition every time — Burner's best results always surprised the team
Every successful Burner experiment produced a counter-intuitive result: hard paywalls outperform soft ones, more onboarding steps do not hurt, removing friction can reduce conversion. Musetti's throughline is that intuition about UX quality frequently mispredicts revenue outcomes. The only cure is running the test.
“i've gone through dozens and dozens of apps screenshotted every single screen in their app put it all in figma and then use that as a starting point for the brainstorm to like get everyone's creative juices flowing”
Screenshot every competitor app screen into Figma to fuel experiment brainstorms
Before ideating experiments, Musetti builds a comprehensive visual library of competitor onboarding and paywall flows in Figma. This gives the whole brainstorm group a shared frame of reference and surfaces approaches no one on the team would have invented independently. Competitive immersion before ideation consistently raises the ceiling on the experiment list.
“talking to users is really interesting because you learn a lot about your app and how it's used especially for an app like that where the it's a utility that has a number of different applications right”
User interviews reveal power-user segments and use cases that product teams never imagine
Burner discovered through user conversations that some customers manage 50+ separate numbers for individual contractors — a power use case product never anticipated. This insight directly informed the 10-line subscription tier, which became a strong performer. Utility apps in particular have user workflows that are invisible until you talk to people.
“subscriptions are gonna be way cheaper and we intentionally did that because subscription revenue is more reliable it makes our business more valuable and it's also giving a discount to the user so it's like a win-win situation right”
Price subscriptions well below a-la-carte — you're selling commitment, not just access
Burner priced its annual plan roughly 20% below the equivalent prepaid cost to accelerate MRR growth — the business gets predictability, the user gets a discount. Musetti frames subscriptions as futures contracts: a lower price in exchange for committed revenue. This framing helps founders resist the temptation to match a-la-carte pricing.