“Before it was like 'you're not making money, how are you going to make money, are you going to be a social network or a tools company?' — adding subscriptions meant we could take control of the pitch.”

Switching to subscriptions gives you investor narrative control

Before adding subscriptions, Rapchat sat in an ambiguous zone for investors: a social network without advertising, a music tool without a monetisation model. Introducing even early subscription revenue — a few months in, not fully rolled out — changed the investor conversation completely. Seth Miller could now declare the company type, defend the unit economics, and answer the monetisation question directly. Subscriptions resolved the identity problem that had made fundraising hard.