“We were essentially paying ten dollars for a premium subscription and the economics worked for us but it just didn't scale as much as we were hoping. We killed it after like a year.”

Referral program paid $10/sub, broke even, killed after a year

Lose It!'s referral program paid $10 per converted premium signup. It broke even but never moved the needle. Worse, treated cohorts had lower LTV than untreated — meaning they were probably paying for shares that would have happened anyway. The funnel math is brutal: 5% of exposed users share, 5% of their friends convert. Killed after a year.