“it's as simple as growth versus profit and a lot of trade-offs we deal with come back to growth versus profit it's really hard to do both at the same time you could either grow grow grow by making it really easy to subscribe or you could juice your profit by making sure you're not paying a 30% tax”

Growth vs. profit: IAP tax is worth paying when conversion friction costs more

Michael frames the Apple IAP vs. web billing decision as a pure growth-vs-profit trade-off and concludes that for Skylight's growth stage the 30% tax is worth paying because Apple's native checkout converts better. The math only flips if you are optimizing for EBITDA to satisfy PE or M&A buyers. Know your objective before optimizing: maximizing subscribers and maximizing EBITDA require different decisions on the same question.