The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 15 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
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.”
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 …”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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…”
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”
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.”
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…”
Carter: 75% of Consumer App Trials Start Within 24 Hours of Install
“RevenueCat recently had their state of subscriptions report for, ah, for twenty-twenty-four, and they reported that over 75% of trial starts actually happen in the first 24 hours after a user installs an app, in many cases on the first session.”
Carter: Retaining 50% of Monthly App Subscribers for Six Months Is Exceptional
“For monthly subscribers, I think any company that is retaining more than 50% of its subscribers for six months or more is doing a very, very good job because monthly subscribers just tend to turn at much higher rates”
Carter: Noom's Onboarding Flow Contains Over 100 Screens Taking 20+ Minutes
“New, right? Which has more than a hundred screens in its onboarding flow, or at least the version of the onboarding flow I've gone through, right? It's got so much personalization that everybody probably gets a slightly different adventure through their onboar…”