YC Root AccessRevenueCat: Powering Subscriptions for the App Economy
CHAPTERS
- 0:05 – 0:53
RevenueCat’s core promise: make in-app purchases painless (and increase revenue)
The conversation opens with a crisp definition of RevenueCat’s value: simplifying in-app purchases so developers can monetize without getting bogged down in complexity. Jacob frames the company as a way to help apps make more money by removing friction in subscriptions and payments.
- •RevenueCat focuses on easing in-app purchases and subscriptions
- •Monetization infrastructure is a common pain across mobile apps
- •The product goal is to reduce developer time spent on payments/edge cases
- 0:53 – 2:00
Why subscriptions were so hard: cross-platform chaos, repeated rebuilds, and wasted engineering time
Jacob and Miguel describe their firsthand experience building subscription systems in earlier roles—multiple times—because app-store behavior and requirements kept changing. They emphasize how monetization work can consume a disproportionate share of a small team’s engineering capacity.
- •Early mobile subscriptions required heavy custom engineering
- •Teams repeatedly tore down and rebuilt monetization stacks
- •Cross-platform (Apple + Google) support compounded complexity
- •Monetization distracted teams from building their core product value
- 2:00 – 2:40
Why Apple/Google didn’t solve it: incentives and lack of cross-store unification
They argue the app stores weren’t strongly incentivized to create a developer-friendly, cross-platform subscription layer. RevenueCat positions itself as the unifying abstraction that gives developers a single view and workflow across ecosystems.
- •Platform incentives don’t prioritize cross-platform developer experience
- •Apple and Google systems are powerful but fragmented
- •Developers need unified data and subscription management
- •A third-party layer can standardize best practices across apps
- 2:40 – 5:45
From “we suffered too” to a startup: deciding to generalize the solution
The founders explain how lived pain created instant credibility with early customers, and how they turned an internal solution into a generalized product. They also share personal motivations: desire to start a company, love of zero-to-one, and a self-imposed deadline to begin.
- •Founder empathy made early sales conversations easier
- •Challenge shifted from solving for one app to tens of thousands
- •Strong opinions helped define “the RevenueCat way” as a standard
- •Personal motivations: entrepreneurship ambition, timing, and co-founder fit
- 5:45 – 8:14
YC and early customer traction: hands-on integrations and the first social proof loop
Jacob outlines an unusually scrappy early go-to-market: offering to fix code and do integrations in exchange for adding the SDK and taking a revenue share. YC relationships and brand credibility accelerated trust, converting a meaningful portion of warm intros into long-term customers.
- •Early pitch: free help + SDK install + small revenue share
- •“Call us and install” style onboarding; founders did the work
- •YC network intros drove a wave of serious early adopters
- •Early wins created compounding social proof and trust
- 8:14 – 9:25
Recognizing product-market fit: when growth becomes inevitable and infrastructure breaks
They describe PMF as a shift from founder-driven acquisition to inbound growth and relentless demand. Signals included servers “falling over,” customers asking for more than they could build, and a very high PMF survey score that overcame their reluctance to claim success.
- •PMF signal: customers arrive without active selling
- •Operational stress: servers/bandwidth breaking under load
- •Customer demand outpaced team capacity
- •High PMF survey results provided confidence
- 9:25 – 11:01
Selling to developers without “sales”: documentation, pull-based adoption, and the indie long tail
Jacob and Miguel argue that traditional enterprise sales motions are inefficient for developer tools. Instead, make the product easy to adopt, answer technical questions fast, and let developers pull it into their workflow—especially via indie developers who amplify word-of-mouth.
- •Developers avoid classic sales motions; lead with technical clarity
- •Optimize for self-serve adoption and fast integration
- •Support Q&A is the “sales” motion for dev tools
- •Indie/long-tail developers drive champions, content, and future enterprise influence
- 11:01 – 12:55
Staying close to customers at 100+ people: X/Twitter, conferences, and “everyone can talk to users”
As RevenueCat grows past 100 employees, the founders emphasize maintaining direct customer feedback loops. Jacob uses social media as a structured listening system, they attend developer conferences, and they institutionalize permissionless customer contact across the team.
- •Jacob curates a customer-heavy feed by following customers back
- •Developer conferences provide candid, high-signal feedback
- •Founders say yes to customer meetings as “good medicine”
- •Cultural norm: any employee can directly contact customers
- 12:55 – 14:45
Operating discipline and transparency: consistent metrics, investor updates, and remote alignment
They share how a steady cadence of investor updates and stable metrics creates accountability and organizational clarity. Transparency is framed as essential for a distributed team so information doesn’t fragment across time zones and functions.
- •Consistent monthly metrics create a “grounding truth”
- •Investor updates are as much for founder discipline as fundraising
- •Transparency supports alignment in a multi-time-zone company
- •Leaders adopt similar cadences (e.g., support updates) organically
- 14:45 – 17:52
Building a remote-first org before it was common: hiring constraints, systems, and communication artifacts
RevenueCat became remote largely due to Bay Area hiring pressures, then intentionally adopted remote playbooks (inspired by GitLab). They discuss the need for systematized communication, written artifacts, and the trade-offs between remote flexibility and in-person cohesion.
- •Remote shift was driven by inability to hire locally at scale
- •Remote operations require systems: writing, Looms, async artifacts
- •Slack becomes the “office,” with both benefits and burnout risks
- •Remote hiring unlocks talent and avoids visa/immigration hurdles
- 17:52 – 18:44
Competing near giants: platform risk, relationships, and building undeniable value
Gustaf presses on the risk of Apple/Google/Stripe encroaching; Jacob acknowledges it but argues scale creates a degree of mutual dependence. Their strategy is to focus on building something so valuable it’s unlikely to be displaced overnight, despite platform dependencies.
- •Platform incumbents are a real but manageable existential risk
- •Scale can create “mutually assured destruction” dynamics
- •Maintaining formal/informal platform relationships matters
- •Best defense: build a product that’s deeply valuable to the ecosystem
- 18:44 – 20:33
Co-founder dynamics through scaling: trust, respect, and investing in the relationship
They describe the co-founder relationship as unique—part friendship, part marriage, part work partnership. Key advice centers on mutual respect, assumption of good intent during disagreements, and intentionally creating time together, especially in a remote environment.
- •Co-founder relationships require deep trust and mutual respect
- •Disagreements are normal; alignment on philosophy prevents toxicity
- •They rely on organic communication and always picking up calls
- •Invest in time together to maintain rapport while remote
- 20:33 – 23:26
Expanding the ambition: from “this can’t be huge” to building toward $1B and beyond
YC prompted them to think in billion-dollar outcomes, which initially felt unrealistic. Over time, they removed one limiting belief after another—market size, hiring, co-founder risk—and found long-term motivation in solving ever-larger versions of the same scaling problems.
- •YC forced a step-change in ambition and planning horizons
- •Motivation evolved: “defeat the detractor” version of oneself
- •Scaling problems repeat at higher levels with new constraints
- •Culture and enjoying the work are seen as key to sustained velocity
- 23:26 – 24:53
Market shifts and regulation: Apple vs. Epic and the real impact of alternative payments
They explain how the Epic legal battle pressured Apple to allow alternative payment links in the US. Jacob notes the measured impact has been modestly positive but smaller than expected, arguing the App Store is closer to economic efficiency than many assume.
- •Epic pursued antitrust pressure via deliberate ToS violations
- •US ruling limited Apple’s ability to block alternative payments links
- •Observed business impact: minimal to slightly positive (so far)
- •In-app purchases became an unexpectedly central legal/policy battleground
- 24:53 – 26:57
Founder advice: ignore noisy advice, embrace the grind, don’t quit, and stay close to customers
They close with practical guidance: YC can help, but founders must filter advice and follow conviction. Success requires enduring hard periods, maintaining relentless customer contact, and building a company you actually want to work at—because persistence is a core advantage.
- •“Don’t follow anybody else’s advice” (filter aggressively)
- •Expect difficult, all-hours work; founders care more than employees
- •Persistence is a competitive edge; co-founder commitment helps
- •Talk to customers, create real value, and build the company you want
