Paywall
topic on 7 shows · 14 statements across 12 episodes
Founder's Journal 
In Depth 
Top Founders 
How I Built This 
the a16z Podcast 
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20VC
14 statements about Paywall, every show
Swulinski: Place SaaS paywalls inside the post-aha honeymoon phase
“You have that magical aha moment, And then you're kind of, you stay in that kind of like honeymoon phase of like, this is just amazing. And then within that phase, paywall, right?”
Agrawal: Web faces existential risk of closing up without new economic incentives
“I think there is a existential risk on the web that the web might close up more and more unless we figure out and solve problems in a way that incentivizes This data to remain open, and it must be optimal for most people for putting their content, their ideas,…”
Public viral content degrades as it becomes pure lead generation for paywalls
“So as paywalls have filled up the web, I think that has also changed the nature of what we're all seeing, which is that it's all getting lazier and sillier, because, and more provocative, because it's trying to get you to go behind the paywall.”
Longer onboarding flows with diagnostic questions build buyer intent and conversion
“So what seems like a very, you know, contrary to popular wisdom, make the boarding flow longer and ask lots and lots of questions actually really helped to build intent. And then by the time they get to the paywall, they had a surprisingly high conversion rate…”
Mollick claims his 1990s startup invented the paywall
“So the startup company I helped co-found invented the paywall.”
Lieberman: Universal paywalls create massive inequality in access to information
“I think there's a real danger of every business putting their content behind a paywall, and all of a sudden, content no longer is a public good of sorts, and there ends up being kind of like this Huge inequality of access to important information.”
Wittenborn: Paywall display frequency is top driver of subscription conversion
“And so what Superwall is doing is optimizing paywalls. And so one of the learnings that we have from that is that the number one indicator for driving conversion is how often do you see the paywall, right?”
Modern digital media publications struggle to survive without a subscription paywall
“If you don't have a paywall, You're struggling.”
Latka: Paywalls carry a hidden opportunity cost in lost user engagement
“I mean, I think what, where I do think there's a big gap here is what people never quantify with pricing is what you miss out on when you put up a paywall in terms of engagement and what the opportunity cost is.”
Milich: Skiff Refuses to Paywall Encrypted Search and Templates
“Like, we specifically don't want to put paywalls on things that will make you kind of have a better experience on day one on Skit. So, for example, our templates feature, which lets you kind of share and use anti-encrypted templates searching through anti-encr…”
Slack Advised Gating Features Used Post-Day 30
“A lot of their guidance to us was just look for the features that people use On day 30 that they don't use in the first 30 days to you know, as one of your indicators for the construction of your paywall and how to introduce that to people.”
Evans: Hard paywalls significantly improve newspaper website user experiences
“When those newspapers did that, The page, the site experience got way, way better, because all the crap advertising disappeared, all the link bait headlines disappeared, all the taboola and the click on 500 other stuff disappears. You get white space on the si…”
Dixon: Digital media is limited to paywalls, native ads, crowdfunding, or billionaires
“You're left with a paywall model, which the New York Times and the Journal are, you know, and other, and the FT maybe are experimenting with. There's some other experiments going on with, like, crowdfunding and things, and then there's native advertising, and …”