Founder Playbook · Sub Club by RevenueCat
12 tactics from Ravi Mehta
How Tinder Captures More Value With Tiered Pricing and Consumables — Ravi Mehta
Watch the full episode“if you have one subscription tier at one price there's two buckets of users that don't get their needs met there are users who just can't afford the price... and then the other thing that people don't think about enough is that there's a whole bunch of people that are willing to pay $50 or $60 so you're leaving money on the table on both sides of that subscription”
Single Subscription Tier Leaves Money On Both Ends Of The Demand Curve
Ravi built a demand-curve framework at Tinder showing that a single subscription price always under-serves two groups: those who cannot hit the price and those willing to pay far more. The fix is a staircase of two to three subscription tiers — Plus, Gold, Platinum at Tinder — that meets each user where their willingness to pay actually sits. This model is now standard in gaming and dating alike.
“very few free users actually buy microtransactions it tends to be that these subscriptions are kind of force multipliers for the micro transactions”
Subscriptions Are Force Multipliers For Consumables — Free Users Rarely Buy Microtransactions
At Tinder the majority of consumable (boost, super like) spending comes from subscribers, not free users. The subscription tiers get users financially committed and habituated to spending in the app; the consumables then let them spend more on top. The lesson: do not launch consumables without a subscription anchor — almost no microtransaction revenue will come from free users.
“free-to-play works if you have really significant network effects... you want as many people using it as possible”
Free Tier Expands Network Effects — Gating Access Kills Both Sides Of The Market
Dating is a market with two-sided network effects — women who get lots of matches and men who want more. Gating both sides behind a paywall collapses the network. Tinder let in 85-90% for free so the people others want to match with are definitely there, then monetized the 10-15% who want a better experience. The same logic applies to any app where user density is part of the value.
“it was pretty organic so I wish I could say you know we had this graphic... I think it was more of an organic process of launching one subscription seeing how it does figuring out what are the things that people really value in that bundle”
Build Tiers Organically From User Behavior — Tinder Did Not Plan A Three-Tier Model
Tinder Plus came first; Gold followed when the team identified what users valued most in that bundle; Platinum was created after noticing heavy spenders who wanted more utility, not just status. Start with one tier, study what people value and what they skip, and build the next tier from real usage signals — not a whiteboard model drawn before launch.
“by the time that you got to the checkout screen people were much more likely to check out and the step-to-step conversion rate that we were seeing from one question to the next is north of 99%”
Longer Onboarding Can Boost Conversion When Friction Builds Confidence Not Fatigue
Sesame Care expanded checkout from 3 steps to 25 and saw a 40% conversion lift. Each question built medical confidence — people arrived at the payment screen persuaded, not worn down. The right onboarding length is determined by what the user needs to feel confident at the aha moment, not by minimizing screen count. Step-to-step conversion above 99% proves the friction is valued, not resented.
“Tinder massively decreased the friction to get into an online dating app... you could go from kind of oh maybe I'm interested in online dating to actually swiping on people and maybe talking to someone in less time that it took to create your profile on e-harmony”
Frictionless Onboarding Expands TAM — Tinder Turned Casual Curiosity Into A Mass Market
Match and eHarmony required 20-100 questions to create a profile, limiting online dating to people already committed to trying it. Tinder used Facebook login, photos, and a short bio to cut that time to under 2 minutes. This expanded the TAM from a niche to nearly the entire adult population. When onboarding friction drops below a psychological threshold, entirely new user segments materialize.
“I think it's better to start out with something that's a little bit higher... if nobody's willing to do that then you've got a product market fit problem especially if there's already framing for that price in the market”
Start Subscription Pricing High — If Nobody Pays You Have A PMF Problem Not A Pricing Problem
Founders chronically underprice at launch, building systems where users need to be extremely engaged before the app earns a reasonable ARPU. Ravi's rule: set the high-water line at $20-30 per month first. If users will not pay that, the problem is product-market fit, not pricing. If they will, you have a baseline to optimize from. A daily-use tool Ravi relies on heavily has never charged him simply because the free tier removed the forcing function.
“you can psych a user up or you can psych a user down as they're going through your product and it's important to manage that motivation in a really intentional way”
Psych Framework: Manage Onboarding Motivation Like A Budget And Spend Wisely Before The Paywall
The psych framework treats user motivation as a budget you add to and draw from across every onboarding screen. An email form costs points; a credit card entry costs more. Build up psych points through value delivery before expensive screens, and never hit the paywall when the motivation balance is low. Companies that replace password creation with phone-OTP or Sign-in with Apple see material conversion gains from this principle alone.
“growth would be easier if... people focused obsessively on turning their earned audience into an owned audience... it used to be that if you got a pretty sizable following you could count on that to distribute your products i don't think that's the case any longer”
Convert Earned Audience To Owned Audience Before Algorithm Shifts Kill Your Distribution
Algorithm changes on TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, and SEO are reshuffling distribution. A large following no longer guarantees reach. The solution is three-pronged: create a direct channel (email), build content habits so people come proactively, and build product habits that survive any algorithm change. Owned distribution is the only distribution that compounds reliably through platform turbulence.
“the best allocart or microtransaction products do have that scaling effect... 10 is going to be 10 times better than you know one 100 is going to be 10 times better than 10”
Consumables Work When Value Scales Linearly — Skip Them If The Second Unit Is Not Meaningfully Better
A Tinder boost used 10 times gets 10x more profile impressions — value scales perfectly with spend. But if your product charges per extra scan after 10 free, the 11th scan delivers no meaningful additional outcome compared to just subscribing. Consumable products only make sense when more units reliably deliver proportionally more of the core outcome users want. Forced consumables on utility apps just frustrate users.
“if I'm going out on a couple of dates a month that's like 400 bucks and so actually you know spending $100 on Tinder is actually a really good investment for me relative to the amount that I'm spending on this need”
Frame Pricing Against The System It Replaces — Tinder At $100 Per Month Is Cheap Versus Two Dates
Tinder's heavy spenders were not wealthy status-seekers — they were pragmatic people who realized $100 on Tinder beats $400 in date spending. The right pricing frame is never a competitor's price or your costs; it is the cost of the alternative system the user would otherwise use. Find the contextual system your product replaces or augments and anchor the pricing conversation there.
“goals are a three-legged stool you need the what you need the why you need the how and OKRs only have two of the legs”
NCT Framework Adds The Strategic Why That OKRs Always Miss
At TripAdvisor and with startup clients Ravi found OKRs repeatedly breaking down — not because the framework is bad, but because it assumes the strategic 'why' already exists. His NCT alternative adds Narratives (why), Commitments (what, not just metrics), and Tasks (how). The word 'commitment' acts as a natural limiter: people scope down to 3-5 things they will genuinely deliver, avoiding the goalpost-moving typical of classic OKRs.