Assertion Not checkable as stated
Phil Carter: CAC almost always increases over time for scaling startups
“For everyone else, CACs almost by definition will go up over time for a couple reasons.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Carter: Apple and Google will lower App Store fees within 10 years
“I do think that there may be some factors over the next 10 years that start to make this a little bit easier. For example, 15 to 30% app store fees. I think Google and Apple are under increasing pressure to lower the average app store fee, at least in certain …”
Insight
Carter: Longer onboarding quizzes drive higher conversion for health and finance apps
“In categories like health and wellness or finance, where you're making a very considered purchase. And part of the value promise is believing that this product is being tailored to your unique needs. In that context, a longer onboarding quiz, if implemented co…”
Insight
Carter: Winning in LLM Optimization Requires the Exact Same Assets as SEO
“A lot of the underlying things that you need to do to be really successful in SEO. Are the same things that you need to do to be really successful with these LLMs, right? You need to have a product that is relevant. You need to have content that people find in…”
Assertion Supported
Carter: Average Consumer App Loses 50% of Annual Subscribers in Year One
“The average consumer subscription app is losing more than 50% of its annual subscribers in the first year and more than 50% of its monthly subscribers in the first three months.”
Insight
Carter: Startups Should Hire First Growth Leader Only After Reaching Product-Market Fit
“In my opinion, Before you have product market fit, you don't even really know if you're building the right product. And then even once you have product market fit, you then need to figure out how do I get this product to scale within the right channel so that …”
Insight
Phil Carter: Seed and Series A startups should avoid small growth optimizations
“So if you're in the early part of that S curve, which by definition means any seed or series a startup, You should not be focusing on small optimizations. It's a waste of time for a couple reasons.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Carter: Spending Under $10,000 Monthly on Facebook Ads Is Inefficient
“Like they're spending 5000 dollars a month, 10,000 dollars a month on Facebook. That's just not enough to get an efficient outcome.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Carter: Fast-Growing Startups Get 70%+ of Early Users From One Channel
“70% or more of user acquisition for most fast-growing tech companies is going to come through a single channel early on, and so don't spread yourself too thin.”
Insight
Carter: Consumer subscription apps cannot spend their way to dominance
“There are some rare exceptions where I think that has happened. Typically in marketplace businesses where the network effects are so strong once you get to the tipping point that you can have upside down unit economics for months or even years. And then, you k…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Carter: Consumer App CAC Payback Benchmark Is One to Six Months
“Six months is good. One month is great. You know, first, first session is exceptional, which is significantly lower than B to B, right? And B to B, you know, 12 months can be considered a good payback or even 18 months for an enterprise SaaS business.”
Assertion Supported
Carter: Only 30 to 40 Consumer Subscription Companies Are Worth $1B+
“I actually just published a guest post for Lenny's newsletter, and one of the figures that I include in that article is a list of consumer subscription businesses that have achieved billion dollar plus valuations. So that's both publicly traded companies as we…”
Insight
Carter: Quantified Self Apps Lose Subscription Value After Two Months
“In many cases, after I see a month or two of my data, I kind of know, okay, these are the things that lead to better sleep, and these are the things that lead to better fitness metrics like HRV or resting heart rate or whatever the case may be. So the value di…”
Insight
Carter: Consumer Apps Should Target 80%+ Paywall View Rate in Week One
“You want your paywall view rate to Ideally be over 80% and over 80% ideally within the user's first session, or if not their first session, then certainly within their first week.”
Insight
Carter: Organic Apps Suit Freemium While Paid Acquisition Requires Hard Paywalls
“You do see a lot of correlation between companies with lower price points and organic acquisition strategies like Quizlet going more freemium. And companies with higher price points that are much more dependent on paid advertising for subscriber acquisition go…”
Insight
Carter: Web-Based Checkout Discounts Neutrally Bypass 15-30% App Store Fees
“That email will often lead to a web-based checkout flow, which means that you're avoiding the 15 to 30% app store fees, and so your net revenue as the business is neutral, but you're converting subscribers that otherwise wouldn't have converted because the pri…”
Insight
Phil Carter: Overusing Push Notifications and Emails Kills Engagement Channels
“Anytime you increase the number of notifications or emails you send, in the short term, it's like the sugar high. It's going to lead to a short-term pop in your metrics, but if you do that too many times, you kill the channel.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Carter: Quizlet Generated 95%+ of User Acquisition Organically via SEO
“Quizlet that's, you know, 95% plus organic acquisition through SEO and word of mouth”
Insight
Phil Carter: Early-stage startups lack sufficient user volume for A/B testing optimizations
“And then the third reason is oftentimes, even for consumer businesses and certainly for B to B businesses, if you're that early, You simply don't have enough users to be able to measure a statistically significant difference in a small optimization type of an …”
Insight
Carter: Interview Assignments Should Take Under Two Hours on Ubiquitous Companies
“What I found works best is pick an assignment that truly shouldn't take more than an hour or two before you hit diminishing returns. On, you know, spending more cycles on it. And that number two is either more of like a hypothetical scenario or it's a company …”
Insight
Carter: The biggest growth wins often follow failed A/B tests
“The biggest wins come right on the heels of a failed A-B test where, like, that's not what I was expecting to see, but based on what I am seeing now, I've learned something new about the customer, so now let's go run a second A-B test on the basis of that lear…”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Phil Carter: SEO drove over 70% of Quizlet's growth
“With that context SEO was driving more than 70% of Quizlet's growth and had been for some time.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Carter: Quizlet's content creation metrics were higher in UK than US
“All of our content creation metrics in the UK, metrics like what percentage of teachers and students become content creators and how many pieces of content does each of those creators create? Those metrics were actually higher in the UK than in the US, which k…”
Insight
Phil Carter: Consumer Apps Lack Upsells to Drive Net Revenue Retention
“There's no real concept of net revenue retention, because unlike B to B SaaS, you can't land and expand. Like most of the kinds of companies have one subscription tier. They don't have anything they can really upsell consumers into.”
