#224: Breaking down the Subscription Value Loop strategy with Phil Carter, Growth Advisor at Elemental Growth

Jan 20, 2025

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In the future, history textbooks will be telling the story of how, at the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century, we all collectively jumped into the world of mobile apps.

Now, you may be super excited about the growth of the mobile ecosystem or shake your head about its externalities, unintended consequences, but it’s undeniable - mobile apps take a huge spot in our lives.

Today, a big chunk of the mobile app economy space belongs to app subscriptions - Netflix, Apple TV, Tinder, Duolingo, the list goes on and on. If you build apps yourself and monetize them with the subscription model, you will be really interested to learn about Phil’s Subscription Value Loop strategy.

Today’s Topics Include:

Phil Carter's bio
Key challenges developers of subscription-based apps face today
Identifying and refining the core value proposition
Strategies to convert free users into subscribers, while maintaining a great user experience and ensuring long-term profitability
Android or iOS?
Leaving his smartphone at home, what features would Phil miss most?
What features he would like to see added to his smartphone?

Links and Resources:

Quotes from Phil Carter:

"The core of the subscription value loop framework that I teach about in my course is a company's core value promise. In other words, what is the value that you're providing to a user, and ideally to a paying subscriber, that is going to not just bring them to the product in the first place, but cause them to continue paying you a subscription over a long period of time?"

"And value delivery is typically led by marketing teams, sometimes with the support of growth product teams or sales teams if you have a B2B business. And value delivery is all about making sure that you have sustainable unit economics, right? You're going to have some amount of LTV that you get from users. But in order to have a sustainable business, you need a strong LTV over CAC ratio and a rapid payback period. And that depends critically on your cost of user acquisition."

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Business Of Apps - connecting the app industry since 2012