Growing to $1M MRR with Paywall and Pricing Experiments — Francescu Santoni, Mojo

On the podcast: How Mojo grew to over $1M in MRR, the most impactful pricing and paywall experiments, and why it’s important to choose complexity instead of just letting it happen.

Key Takeaways:

💪Bravery to pivot leads to long-term success. Early popularity can be deceiving. Without strong retention, it's time to pivot. Build features users love to evolve from a gimmick to a sustainable business.

🧱Make your paywall more prominent. Show your paywall during onboarding. Then, iterate on messaging, design, and pricing, focusing on one element at a time.

💲Pricing will always annoy someone. If no one complains, you’re underpricing. Be strategic about who you upset and how many people.

🤝Viral loops reduce the need for ads. Heavy ad spend can hide a lack of product-market fit. Build sharing and virality into your app first, then consider paid acquisition.

📈Choose complexity based on impact. Focus on your team’s strengths. Growth can be product-led or through, for example, paid acquisition, depending on what suits your team and app best.

About Guest

👨‍💻 CEO and co-founder of the video editing app Mojo.

🎬 Former GoPro employee and graduate of the Y Combinator accelerator program, Francescu and his team have built one of the top mobile apps for creating and editing social video content.

👋 LinkedIn

Resources

• Connect with Francescu on X: https://x.com/Francescu 
• More about Mojo: https://mojo-app.com
• Paul Graham’s essay “How To Do Great Work”: https://paulgraham.com/greatwork.html 

Follow us on X:

• David Barnard - @drbarnard
• Jacob Eiting - @jeiting
• RevenueCat - @RevenueCat
• Sub Club - @SubClubHQ
  
  

Episode Highlights 

[4:27] AI + Mobile = ❤️: Why AI is probably the next mobile revolution.

[6:16] Going Pro: How Francescu got his start building mobile subscription apps.

[7:44] Pivot… PIVOT: Despite early success with their augmented reality app, Francescu and his team had to shut it down and pivot to a new idea.

[15:12] Pricing and paywalls and packaging, oh my: Why you need to show your paywall during onboarding (and other monetization lessons Francescu learned building Mojo).

[27:42] Viral moments: Building social sharing features into your app could save you time and money on user acquisition.

[36:19] The product-led growth trap: Developing new product features isn’t always the key to growth.

[41:15] Priced to annoy: If no one is mad about the cost of your app, your prices are probably too low.