Benchmarking Consumer Subscription Limits

In this episode of Mostly Growth, CJ and Kyle break down the brutal math behind OpenAI’s path to a $500B revenue future—unpacking how much would realistically need to come from consumer subscriptions, B2B APIs, advertising, and commerce. Using comparisons to Netflix, Meta, Google, Amazon, and Snapchat, they map out the limits of each revenue stream and debate whether OpenAI can ever become both the world’s largest subscription business and a top-tier ad platform. Along the way, they detour into business blunders (including Kyle getting locked out of LinkedIn for being “too efficient”), unpack why CJ’s startup in the travel-experience space failed, and riff on everything from recruiting economics to software sprawl. It’s part financial modeling exercise, part therapy session for terminally online operators, and fully a Mostly Growth deep dive.

—

LINKS: 

Mostly Metrics: https://www.mostlymetrics.com

CJ on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cj-gustafson-13140948/

Growth Unhinged: https://www.growthunhinged.com/

Kyle on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyle-poyar/

Slacker Stuff: https://www.slackerstuff.com/

Ben on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/slackerstuff/

—

RELATED EPISODES:

Grindr’s $0 CAC Secret from the CFO Who Launched Disney+ | Vanna Krantz

https://youtu.be/ijFIMmtpLNw

—

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00:00 Preview and Intro

00:01:25 Sponsors – Metronome, Pulley

00:03:53 Return from Sponsors and Show Kickoff

00:04:09 Klook IPO and the Global Tours Market

00:09:53 Real World MBA and Startup Lessons

00:10:27 OpenAI’s Path to $500 Billion

00:11:02 Revenue Makeup – ChatGPT, API, and Anthropic

00:12:15 Benchmarking Consumer Subscription Giants

00:13:23 Ads, Take Rate, and Diversification Strategy

00:19:27 Scaling to $200B in Subscriptions

00:20:06 Meta-Sized Ad Ambitions for OpenAI

00:21:35 Flash Forward – Can OpenAI Really Get There?

00:22:45 YouTube, Tokens, and Streaming Models

00:23:49 CJ’s Recruiting Venture – Mostly Talent

00:29:28 Building the Whole Finance Department

00:31:29 Experimental Pricing Model Proposal

00:33:01 Iterating on Warm Intro Structure

00:35:23 CJ’s Preferred Recruiting Model

00:36:15 Report from Rippling – Software as a Disservice

00:39:40 LinkedIn Lockout: Kyle’s Wake-Up Call

00:40:40 CJ’s Bookmarking Blunder & Twitter UI Rant

00:41:27 Social Media Game Push – NYT, LinkedIn, Facebook

00:42:27 Apple’s “iPhone Pocket” & Borat Comparison

00:43:00 Final Banter: Satchels & Sign-Off

—

SPONSORS:

Metronome is real-time billing built for modern software companies. Metronome turns raw usage events into accurate invoices, gives customers bills they actually understand, and keeps finance, product, and engineering perfectly in sync. That’s why category-defining companies like OpenAI and Anthropic trust Metronome to power usage-based pricing and enterprise contracts at scale. Focus on your product — not your billing. Learn more and get started at https://www.metronome.com

Pulley is the cap table management platform built for CFOs and finance leaders who need reliable, audit-ready data and intuitive workflows, without the hidden fees or unreliable support. Switch in as little as 5 days and get 25% off your first year: https://pulley.com/mostlymetrics

—

#MostlyGrowthPodcast #OpenAI #AIeconomics #SaaSgrowth #CFOinsights