The Price Power Podcast is for all things growth, retention, and monetization for subscription mobile apps. We talk with amazing leaders in the industry to help share their knowledge with you. Hosted by Jacob Rushfinn, CEO of Botsi.
Price Power
Claim This Podcastby Jacob Rushfinn
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20 episodes
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Podcast Overview
The Price Power Podcast is for all things growth, retention, and monetization for subscription mobile apps. We talk with amazing leaders in the industry to help share their knowledge with you. Hosted by Jacob Rushfinn, CEO of Botsi.
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Publishing Since
10/7/2025
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Recent Episodes
July 14, 2026
20: Opal Killed the Quiz Funnel. What's up next?
<p>Opal rebuilt their onboarding to work like a chat thread instead of a quiz, and Jacob walks through the whole thing screen by screen. The rock you crack open on the first tap, the sign-in question that replaced the sign-in buttons, the moment they tell you you'll spend eighteen years of your life looking at your phone, the paywall, and the monthly plan they only offer you if you try to leave.</p><p>This is a solo episode, so it goes deeper on the screens than a conversation usually allows. An app at Opal's scale doesn't ship an onboarding redesign without testing it hard first, which makes it a useful thing to study. The question isn't whether it works. It's which pieces of it would work for you.</p><p>What you'll learn:</p><p>• Why the first screen of your app is probably leaking more users than your paywall is<br>• How Opal replaced the Log in / Sign up wall with a question<br>• Why more login options usually pay for themselves once you scale<br>• The phrasing trick that gets people to answer a demographic question honestly<br>• Why Opal asks about your screen time before asking for screen time permissions<br>• How they split their permission requests apart, and what they put in between<br>• The three-beat setup: 91 days this year, 18 years of your life, then the rescue<br>• How paywall copy pays off a goal the user selected five screens earlier<br>• Why the trial reminder screen has almost nothing to do with reminders<br>• What "design your trial" is really doing to the user's decision<br>• The math behind pulling monthly off your first paywall<br>• The exit-intent monthly offer that almost nobody runs<br>• Why "no payment due now" keeps showing up next to the CTA<br>• What the Law of Shitty Clickthroughs says about the future of quiz onboarding<br>• The screen-count test for whether chat onboarding fits your app</p><p>Links & resources</p><p>• Retention.blog full written breakdown: https://retention.blog<br>• Opal: https://opalapp.com/<br>• Andrew Chen, "The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs": https://andrewchen.com/the-law-of-shitty-clickthroughs/<br>• Botsi: https://botsi.com</p><p>00:00 Intro: tired of quiz-style onboarding?<br>01:05 Opal's chat-style redesign<br>01:28 The rock you crack open<br>02:34 Why first-screen drop-off compounds<br>03:15 "Have we met before?" instead of Log in / Sign up<br>03:58 Login options and the data reassurance copy<br>04:22 The hybrid quiz/chat question style<br>05:31 "What best describes you?"<br>06:21 Easing into the screen time permission<br>07:44 91 days, 18 years, and the aha moment<br>09:07 Splitting the permission asks apart<br>10:00 The personalized pre-paywall screen<br>11:38 The fist bump commitment prompt<br>12:15 "Two plus hours" and a copy critique<br>13:23 Social proof and the "Reclaim my time" CTA<br>13:55 The trial reminder screen<br>15:47 Design your trial<br>16:13 The math on removing monthly<br>18:06 "Not ready for a year?"<br>18:27 The "no payment due now" checkbox<br>20:08 Post-paywall onboarding and gamification<br>22:15 The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs<br>23:27 Why chat UX works right now<br>23:54 Which apps should actually test this<br>25:19 Teaser: the onboarding and paywall library</p>
June 25, 2026
19: Lessons From Reviewing 100+ Web Funnels w/ FunnelFox CEO
<p>Andrey Shakhtin, founder and CEO of FunnelFox, explains why web subscriptions convert and monetize better than the app store, how to stand up a minimum viable web-to-app test, and the payment risks that can freeze your revenue once you scale.</p><p>What you'll learn:</p><p><br>• Why full-funnel conversion (impression to purchase) runs roughly 2x higher on web than in-app, and how the app store install step explains the gap<br>• Why web LTV is about 2x in-app on annual plans and at least 50% higher on monthly<br>• The two structural reasons web LTV is higher: quiz funnels skew toward older, higher-willingness-to-pay buyers, and you control retention end to end<br>• How owning the payment stack lets you run custom cancellation flows and dunning (failed-payment recovery) that Apple and Google never expose<br>• Why deterministic post-ATT attribution makes web the fastest creative-testing loop you have<br>• Why a web funnel is the cheapest way to validate a product, sometimes before the app exists<br>• Why free trials quietly poison your Meta optimization, and how a $1-$5 paid trial fixes the signal<br>• The unit-economics benchmarks that matter: roughly 40-60% day-zero ROAS and a 6-month payback<br>• Why most "amazing-looking" funnels still fail at the paywall and checkout<br>• How to structure a paywall: outcome-based value, visualization, FOMO, price, then social proof<br>• The real difference between refunds, disputes, and chargebacks, and why only chargebacks threaten your account<br>• How dispute-rate and VAMP (Visa's acquirer monitoring) thresholds can get your PSP to freeze recurring revenue<br>• Why chargeback-alert services and external billing (payment orchestration) are close to mandatory at scale<br>• How an easy refund path plus a 50% save offer lowers chargebacks and protects net revenue<br>• How post-purchase upsells add roughly 20% LTV without triggering disputes</p><p><br>Key Takeaways:</p><p>A web funnel is the cheapest validation you have. Test demand, pricing, even a niche for a few hundred dollars a day before committing engineering. Some teams launch with no product at all, then build the app for the niche that converts.</p><p>Web's edge is deterministic measurement. With no ATT loss, every purchase ties to an exact creative, so you iterate on message and audience by real numbers instead of inferring from installs.</p><p>The full funnel converts about 2x on web. You skip the app store install decision, a friction point where lukewarm users drop before they ever see the offer. Most teams miss it because they optimize to installs.</p><p>Paid trials protect your ad signal. A $1-$5 charge proves the card works and sends Meta a real purchase event, so it optimizes toward payers instead of trial-tourists who never convert.</p><p>The paywall is where funnels die. After ~100 funnel reviews, it's the most under-built step. "Unlock all features" is not value. Lead with a specific outcome and date, and build it like a landing page.</p><p>Chargebacks can freeze everything. Refunds are harmless, but cross a provider's dispute or VAMP threshold and it can lock all stored recurring revenue. Make refunds easy and offer a 50% save to keep subscribers.</p><p><br>Links & Resources</p><p>FunnelFox: https://funnelfox.com<br>State of Web-to-App Subscriptions report: https://funnelfox.com/state-of-web2app-2026<br>Andrey Shakhtin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrey-shakhtin/</p><p><br>Timestamps</p><p>00:00 Andrey's path: 16 years in mobile, from code to growth to FunnelFox<br>04:30 The minimum viable web-to-app experiment<br>08:00 What scale you need first, and validating a niche with no product<br>10:00 Why web should complement, not replace, your other channels<br>13:30 How web monetization differs from in-app<br>16:00 The report: web LTV and conversion roughly 2x in-app<br>16:40 Why web LTV is higher: older buyers and full retention control<br>19:00 Why the app store install step kills conversion<br>21:00 Organic vs. paid traffic funnels<br>22:30 Free trials vs. paid trials, and the Meta signal<br>25:30 Why web-to-app projects fail<br>28:30 Unit economics: day-zero ROAS and the 6-month payback<br>29:30 Diagnosing a broken funnel against benchmarks<br>36:00 How to structure a paywall that converts<br>41:30 Intro offers and the telecom playbook<br>44:30 Refunds, disputes, chargebacks, and VAMP explained<br>51:00 Defending your payment account: alerts and external billing<br>55:30 The refund hack: offer 50% instead of losing the subscriber<br>57:30 Upsells and lifting LTV ~20%<br>59:30 Biggest pricing win: GLP-1 and $800 order values<br>01:00:30 What FunnelFox does</p>
June 11, 2026
18: Hybrid Monetization: When and where to start w/ Cristian Rotari
<p>Cristian Rotari, Monetization Lead at Zing Coach, explains why hybrid monetization is more than bolting ads onto a subscription app, how to layer in-app purchases, affiliates, physical products and partnerships without cannibalizing your core revenue, and when an app is actually ready to start.</p><p>He walks through the demand curve idea he picked up from Thomas Petit at Lingokids: a single subscription price treats willingness to pay as binary when it really runs across a wide spectrum, from whales who will buy anything to plankton who will never convert. He covers why ads are a volume business that loses money for most small apps, why AI apps have to think about credits and token costs from day zero, and the cannibalization rule he uses at Zing Coach: promote subscriptions to free users, promote upsells only to people who have already paid.</p><p>What you'll learn:</p><ul><li>Why hybrid monetization is hard to get real guidance on, even though everyone talks about it</li><li>How the demand curve reframes pricing from one number to a spectrum of willingness to pay</li><li>Why whales and plankton need completely different monetization strategies</li><li>Why freemium, not a hard paywall, is what unlocks both hybrid revenue and organic growth</li><li>When an app is actually ready to add a second monetization model (hint: not day one)</li><li>Why most apps should start with in-app purchases, not ads</li><li>How AI apps break the subscription math when one power user burns thousands in tokens overnight</li><li>Why ads only pay off with high daily usage and long sessions</li><li>How to add affiliate revenue with nothing more than an Amazon link</li><li>How Zing Coach structures partnerships like the New York Sports Clubs white-label deal</li><li>Why you should sell more to subscribers, not to the free users who already said no</li><li>How Zing Coach gets 40% of yearly-plan buyers to take at least one upsell</li><li>Why subscription tiers can clash with hybrid and how Spotify avoids the trap</li><li>Cristian's hot take on the trials debate</li></ul><p>Key Takeaways:</p><ul><li>Willingness to pay is a spectrum, not a yes/no. A single subscription price leaves money on the table at both ends. Whales would pay more if you let them; plankton will never subscribe but might buy a one-off. Hybrid monetization exists to capture both.</li><li>Freemium is the foundation. A hard paywall caps your user base, which caps both hybrid revenue and word-of-mouth growth. When Zing Coach eased its paywall and added a trial, it grew the top of the funnel without losing much subscription conversion.</li><li>Hybrid is not a day-one move. Nail product market fit and one monetization model first, usually subscriptions. Once you understand and can segment your users, add a second layer, and start with in-app purchases rather than ads.</li><li>Ads are a volume business. They need high daily active users and long sessions to pay off. Most subscription apps, used once or twice a week, do not have the volume, so ads usually lose to in-app purchases for small and mid-size apps.</li><li>AI apps are the exception to "go slow." Token costs mean a single power user can spend thousands overnight. These apps need credits and usage limits from the start, so it is the status quo, not an add-on.</li><li>Stop the cannibalization with a simple rule. Promote subscriptions to free users; promote upsells only to people who already subscribed. Someone who paid has shown intent, so that is who you upsell. Free users who declined have low willingness to pay, and stacking offers on them just lowers subscription conversion.</li><li>Sell to intent. At Zing Coach, about 40% of yearly-plan buyers take at least one upsell, and conversion drops as plan length and intent drop. The wallet is already out, so monetize that moment instead of leaving it unattended.</li><li>Tiers need a clear value ladder. Spotify segments by use (individual, family, student) rather than piling on pro and premium feature tiers. Add tiers as extra value on top, never by removing things users expect in the base plan.</li></ul><p>Links & Resources</p><ul><li>Cristian Rotari on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cristianrotari/</li><li>Zing Coach: <a href="https://www.zing.coach">https://www.zing.coach</a></li><li>Alice Muir on AI app pricing (referenced in episode): https://pricepowerpodcast.com/episodes/16-how-to-build-a-subscription-app-in-the-ai-era-w-alice-muir</li></ul><p>Timestamps</p><p><strong>00:00</strong> Intro<br> <strong>01:34</strong> What hybrid monetization actually means (and why it is more than ads)<br> <strong>05:34</strong> The demand curve: whales, plankton, and willingness to pay<br> <strong>08:34</strong> Why freemium unlocks both revenue and organic growth<br> <strong>14:34</strong> When an app is ready to add a second monetization model<br> <strong>17:04</strong> AI apps and the token-cost problem<br> <strong>21:04</strong> Why ads are a volume business most apps lose at<br> <strong>28:04</strong> Affiliate revenue and the Amazon link shortcut<br> <strong>33:04</strong> Physical products and brand extensions<br> <strong>35:34</strong> Partnerships and white-label deals<br> <strong>41:04</strong> Avoiding cannibalization: sell to intent<br> <strong>48:34</strong> Subscription tiers and the value ladder<br> <strong>54:04</strong> Hot take on the trials debate<br> <strong>56:04</strong> Biggest win: the Body Scan upsell</p>
20 total episodes available
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