RevenueCat: Powering Subscriptions for the App Economy

Gustaf Alstromer 0:00 [upbeat music] Today I'm joined by Jacob and Miguel from RevenueCat. They were in YC in summer 2018. What's the problem that RevenueCat is solving for developers?

Jacob Eiting 0:14 We help them make more money by making, uh, in-app purchases easier, so making it so you can build a mobile app and make money and it's not so painful.

Gustaf Alstromer 0:22 So a lot of YC companies, um, when they join YC, they, um, apply with an idea, pivot, figure things out. It might take some time. Eventually land on a new idea after some months in the DMAs. That's not you guys. When I first met you, you knew exactly the problem you were solving, exactly what you wanted to build, and

Gustaf Alstromer 0:40 had a good idea on how big it's going to get. So that's unusual, and it's been consistent from the day you did YC. Tell us what that problem was.

Jacob Eiting 0:47 In-app purchases are hard. [laughs]

Gustaf Alstromer 0:49 Well, it-

Miguel Carranza 0:50 Use- they used to be harder.

Jacob Eiting 0:51 Yeah. Well, um, before we came along.

Miguel Carranza 0:52 Yeah.

Jacob Eiting 0:53 Uh, but yeah, but Miguel and I worked together at a company doing mobile k- uh, apps in the... We started working together in 2011 or something like this.

Miguel Carranza 1:02 Yep.

Jacob Eiting 1:02 And, um, yeah, we, we were one of the first companies to build subscriptions on mobile, and it was just such a painful process. Like, the app stores were tough, and they had multiple app stores.

Gustaf Alstromer 1:14 You built this thing yourself for another company before you-

Jacob Eiting 1:16 Yeah

Gustaf Alstromer 1:16 ... started RevenueCat.

Miguel Carranza 1:17 We actually did it multiple times, too. Yeah, you keep iterating and also-

Jacob Eiting 1:20 Tear it down and rebuild

Miguel Carranza 1:20 ... things change.

Jacob Eiting 1:21 We didn't, we were, we, we really didn't know what we were doing. Yeah, I mean, probably half of our engineering efforts were just around-

Miguel Carranza 1:28 Yeah

Jacob Eiting 1:28 ... monetization. And we were a s- very small team. But because of that, it was like engineering was, like, distracted with essentially, like, monetization. When you're a small team, you don't have time to be messing around with payments, right? You wanna just build what your value prop is, and-

Gustaf Alstromer 1:43 And the, the problem was how to handle subscription across platforms.

Jacob Eiting 1:46 It was cross-platforms, even the-

Miguel Carranza 1:48 And how to grow the business, too. That was the problem.

Jacob Eiting 1:49 Yeah.

Miguel Carranza 1:49 Once you find it working, then you need to analyze the data. You need to grow, do price testing, do paywall testing, things like that. So it's, it's a lot of engineering effort and something that is not unique to your company.

Gustaf Alstromer 2:00 Why wasn't this solved by e- either Apple or Google at the time?

Jacob Eiting 2:02 I mean, there's, a bit of it's their sort of monopolies on their stores, so they don't really have an incentive to compete to make their payments system better.

Jacob Eiting 2:10 Um, so not to say they don't do a lot, like, the- they're, they're, they're really powerful systems, but they don't have that same level, I think, fit and finish as like a, as like a free market, uh, solution would.

Miguel Carranza 2:19 And also they're different. You need to unify everything if you wanna see the full picture.

Jacob Eiting 2:22 Yeah.

Miguel Carranza 2:22 So that's already a big, a big challenge.

Jacob Eiting 2:24 No matter what, like, they're, they're not incentivized to make it work well with Google and vice versa, right? So, like, we provide that layer as well, right? So it left a lot for developers to do, and it was just, like, purely a, a loss for the app stores. Like, developers were spending time on things that consumers don't really care about, right? So it's like the, the... It was just benefiting nobody.

Miguel Carranza 2:40 I think one, one thing that, that, that is very important, too, is the fact that even though we knew the problem really well, we solved it with one particular app, and we needed to solve it for-

Jacob Eiting 2:48 Generalize it

Miguel Carranza 2:48 ... tens of thousands of apps.

Jacob Eiting 2:50 There was some, uh, benefit there, too, of, like, we were able to take... We, we had a strong opinion.

Gustaf Alstromer 2:54 Mm.

Jacob Eiting 2:54 Like, we were like, "Hey, this is how it should be done." And we were kinda able to bring a lot of companies, like, into that fold, like, k- the RevenueCat way. Like, c- come into, like, this is how you should look at your data. This is how you should do your subscriptions. This is how you should manage this stuff. And we kinda set a standard, too, which I think was, was good. But yeah, like, we had lived that suffering, which, like, made those first initial customer calls so easy, 'cause, like, I was like, "Hey, like, I know what you're going through," [laughs] right? And, like, "You can trust me."

Gustaf Alstromer 3:17 Yes.

Jacob Eiting 3:17 Um, and that, that, that's huge in the beginning.

Gustaf Alstromer 3:19 But most people who experience a big problem at a company and then solve it aren't leaving to start a company. Like, what, why did you two guys leave to start a company?

Jacob Eiting 3:27 I mean, I had always wanted to start a company. I had, like, entrepreneurs

Jacob Eiting 3:30 in my family and stuff like that. Um, but I'll say, like, it wasn't until much later that I realized, like, oh, this can be, like, financially very s- lucrative. I guess I-

Gustaf Alstromer 3:38 How late did you figure that out?

Jacob Eiting 3:40 Probably, like, series C.

Gustaf Alstromer 3:41 Oh.

Jacob Eiting 3:41 [laughs] Maybe series B. Uh, 'cause at first it was like, I- this is just, like, a cool thing. I, I lived in s- we lived in Silicon Valley for a long time. We were engineers, and, like, I'd seen it, but I never thought of myself as, like, somebody who could play that game. Like, I was always like, oh, I can be here.

Gustaf Alstromer 3:55 Mm.

Jacob Eiting 3:55 But I'm, like, sort of not on that level or, like, I didn't really... And even when we started the company, it was just kinda like, oh, I don't know, it sounds like a fun thing to do, you know, with a friend.

Miguel Carranza 4:03 Yeah, I always wanted to do it because I always liked the zero to one, which is interesting now because we're at a different stage and you need to-

Jacob Eiting 4:08 Zero to one only lasts a finite period of time, right?

Miguel Carranza 4:10 Exactly. I, I... If things are going good, yes, that's what's gonna happen. Uh, but yeah, no, I also respect this guy a lot and really enjoyed working with him, and I, I think it was, like, the right time, the right problem, the right person.

Jacob Eiting 4:21 We had talked about turning the idea into a business much s- earlier than we did. Like, two years earlier, 'cause we were just like, "This is obviously undifferentiated work that should be a service," so we c- we were shopping. We were trying to find somebody. And then we just... You know, life and just the timing wasn't right, and eventually I was like... I turned 30, and I, I set a deadline for myself. I was like, when I turn 30, I'm gonna do a company and, and I was, like, maybe six months late, but, like, um, kicked it off.

Gustaf Alstromer 4:44 You and me sat in a conference room in, at YC back, back then, and you were just, like, with a lot of clarity describing exactly what the problem was, what you're gonna build. And to me, actually, the, this could get... Everybody had this problem, it's gonna get really big, but you had no customers at that point.

Jacob Eiting 4:57 [laughs]

Gustaf Alstromer 4:57 So... But you were still very confident that this is going

Gustaf Alstromer 5:00 to be a thing, and the cool thing about you guys is, like, it actually turned out pretty much exactly the way you described it in that conference room in 2018. At least for the next, like, five or seven years, it's sort of, like, been consistent.

Jacob Eiting 5:09 It's, it's uncanny. Sometimes I'll... I, I had, like, a big doc I wrote for myself, like, back before I even called this guy to be like, "Hey, let's start." Like, it was like, "Okay, how big can this get? How is this gonna work? What are gonna be our, our..." And, like, 80% of it kinda... And I don't know if it's because we were working off of the doc-

Gustaf Alstromer 5:24 Mm

Jacob Eiting 5:25 ... or because I was just really probably more the doc informed the world.

Miguel Carranza 5:28 It was interesting to see that-A lot of the things that we were discussing and we were thinking of building back in 2018 are now starting to-

Jacob Eiting 5:36 Yeah

Miguel Carranza 5:36 ... be fully realized.

Jacob Eiting 5:37 Even like our dream product roadmap from then, it took us a long time to get to the point-

Miguel Carranza 5:41 Yeah

Jacob Eiting 5:41 ... where we could do it, but like we're still building something we had written down in 2018.

Gustaf Alstromer 5:45 So- so maybe go back to the batch a little bit. So how specifically did you get the first like five customers? Like, what, like, the specific things you did, or like first 10?

Jacob Eiting 5:51 I would just reach out, 'cause I was an iOS developer, and that was always like a pretty in-demand skill set. So I would just email them and be like, "Hey. Can I, can I get access to your code and like fix some problems for you? And then I will add my SDK. That's the exchange. You don't have to pay me. Just let me add this and have 1% of your revenue in perpetuity" [laughs] You know? That got us into a few. Turns out, though, like timing is really hard, so like I did that for a few people, but then they wouldn't ship for like six months. So our first customers ended up being random people from the internet. D- even during YC, like I would, I would go... It was very much the, the call us and install, right? Like, I'd go to their office, I'd spend a day with them. And I would always try to like, you know, you put extra fries in the bag, so I would like do the integration. [laughs] But then I would like, if I found s- some bugs or issues with their app, I would fix them as well, just to like... Be like, "Oh, I noticed this like page had like this like one issue, so I fixed that for you guys, too." And they'd be like, "Oh," you know, these are teams with handful of people, right? So these are, they're very, very, very grateful. But it was only, I think when we got in, we started YC, we maybe had like five or six apps using RevenueCat.

Gustaf Alstromer 6:46 Mm-hmm.

Jacob Eiting 6:46 Um, during YC is like when it really started to accelerate. And that was one of the things like, uh, you- you helped us with, was like you had worked with so many consumer apps that had the problem, and I think that you got me in touch with like 20 of them, and maybe like 10

Jacob Eiting 7:00 switched over. Like the YC brand effect really helped 'cause it was like, "Hey, Gustaf says these guys are serious. I'll take them serious." And then we got a couple like serious apps and then that creates this like sort of like social proof loop where it's like, hey, like, okay, not only do these guys know what they're talking about, like other people have trusted them, and so maybe I should trust them.

Miguel Carranza 7:17 There was also the realization for us during YC that we got asked the question of like, oh, what, what needs to happen for this company to be worth a billion dollars? And I was, that was something that I had never thought in my life-

Gustaf Alstromer 7:26 [laughs]

Miguel Carranza 7:26 ... that it could be a reality. And-

Jacob Eiting 7:27 Yeah. Group, group office hours, yeah, yeah.

Miguel Carranza 7:29 Yeah.

Jacob Eiting 7:29 And I was like, come on. Like, what kind of question is that?

Gustaf Alstromer 7:31 [laughs]

Jacob Eiting 7:31 Like, we're trying to make it worth a million dollars, so let's just start there.

Gustaf Alstromer 7:34 Are some of those kind of companies still u- using it today?

Jacob Eiting 7:36 I think all of them. The ones that are extant, yeah.

Gustaf Alstromer 7:37 That's product market fit.

Jacob Eiting 7:38 Yeah. Yeah. I mean-

Gustaf Alstromer 7:39 Basically switching over the first 10 out of 20 customers and they're all customers seven years later?

Jacob Eiting 7:44 Yeah. Yeah. But it's also in that doc we talked about, I talked about, yeah, it's like w- we may not be able to get the big, like I can't get Netflix to switch over probably. But if we can get as many apps as possible, somebody, the next Netflix will like rise up in that, and that's kind of proven to be true. Like some of those apps are pretty early stage, and now they're massive, right? Um, so yeah, we, I mean, we just did, did anything possible. For those first like, first like 100 customers, or not even, like first like 40 customers, whatever it took. And then we started, I started to notice we had product market fit when I had to do less of that.

Gustaf Alstromer 8:14 Mm.

Jacob Eiting 8:14 So like when it just started, each month we were getting more customers and I wasn't doing anything.

Gustaf Alstromer 8:18 Mm.

Jacob Eiting 8:18 Like, I was just like, everything's going slightly faster and slightly faster, and you don't know why. I think that's the key for like-

Miguel Carranza 8:23 Yeah. For me, it was the servers. It was like-

Jacob Eiting 8:25 Yeah. The servers start breaking.

Miguel Carranza 8:27 Yeah. It's like, okay, how long, how long can we sustain this, this, this load?

Jacob Eiting 8:31 Honestly, we spent from like 2019 as kind of when we were like, we might have product market fit, to like, oh my God, it's killing us. But yeah, I remember sending out, there was this like first round survey, like product market fit survey. Like, "Oh, send this. If you have greater than 75%, you have like product market fit." And I sent it out, we had like 92% or something. [laughs] I was like... 'Cause you don't wanna say it, right?

Gustaf Alstromer 8:48 Yeah.

Jacob Eiting 8:48 'Cause product market fit is this mystical thing, and like so many, like it's such a graveyard of startups that thought they had product market fit and didn't. So you're like, I was so hesitant to be like, "I think we have it." But eventually it's like, yeah, the, like I was saying, the servers are falling over, you probably-

Miguel Carranza 9:00 The, the servers and the bandwidth. Like, when, when customers were ask- so actively asking for things that we didn't have the bandwidth to build-

Gustaf Alstromer 9:07 Yeah

Miguel Carranza 9:07 ... it was like, okay, they really like this.

Jacob Eiting 9:08 Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You just fe- everything feels on fire. You can't keep up. If you're having to like decide what to do every week, then you probably don't have product market fit yet, right? Like, uh, if you have it, like you just have no,

Jacob Eiting 9:20 you have, you just, there's, there's an, a list of 9,000 things to work, it's just a matter of like prioritizing.

Gustaf Alstromer 9:25 For the people watching, um, let's say there's another team of two people, one who sells to developers. What is your best advice on how to sell to developers? Like, if you, you built your thing, you know nothing about go-to-market or marketing, what should they know?

Miguel Carranza 9:37 I think, I think most developers don't wanna talk to sales. That's-

Jacob Eiting 9:39 [laughs] Don't do sales.

Gustaf Alstromer 9:40 So don't do sales. Yeah.

Jacob Eiting 9:41 And everybody's gonna tell you to do sales. And you just have to ignore them or like convince them you're doing it, but don't do it. And the, the reality is, is like you're always doing sales, it's just like doing it for developers is very different.

Miguel Carranza 9:52 Is different.

Jacob Eiting 9:52 Yeah. You-

Gustaf Alstromer 9:53 How, how is it like?

Jacob Eiting 9:53 It's like answer their questions, right? And like their questions are often technical. Um, and then they might get into like non-technical, right? But they almost always start technical, right? They don't, they don't start with like, oh, executive stakeholders, and then we're gonna push this thing down. Like, that's how like a lot of traditional SaaS is sold. Dev- developer based stuff is not sold like that. You can, but it's like massively inefficient to start there and push down. It's so much more efficient to like put it out there, make it easy to use, make it easy to adopt, and then let developers just pull it in. 'Cause like a developer's, they- they've got a mission. They're like, "I'm gonna do a thing," and you want them to find you, and then you want them to be able to put you into their product as quickly and easily as possible. And then once you have that, then it's pretty much, as long as you deliver on what your promise is-

Miguel Carranza 10:34 Yeah

Jacob Eiting 10:34 ... like it's easy.

Miguel Carranza 10:35 And don't underestimate the long tail and the indie developers because this, they are the ones that can, like they will try a lot of the stuff for you and are champions, and word of mouth is crazy. And then they might go and work for a bigger company. And you should-

Jacob Eiting 10:46 They al- they almost all do, right? They work for bigger companies. It creates like this groundswell. They create content on their own that like then reinforces. So like I- I think, I think you can, you can go after a lot of different scales of customers. But I think the, the value, especially in dev tools, of small customers is understated.

Gustaf Alstromer 11:01 A- and now you guys are a big company. How big is the company?

Miguel Carranza 11:04 100-

Jacob Eiting 11:04 100, 105 people or something like that. Yeah.

Gustaf Alstromer 11:06 How do you two make sure you don't lose touch with the customers when you're 105 people?

Jacob Eiting 11:09 Hmm. Uh, well, don't worry, they find you.

Miguel Carranza 11:11 [laughs]

Jacob Eiting 11:12 Uh, honestly, Twitter, X.com, the everything app. I still [laughs] like I'm on there every day.

Gustaf Alstromer 11:17 Mm.

Jacob Eiting 11:17 And like, uh, customers can reach me. I'm always tweeting about our product, interacting with them. And this is a small trick on, on a, a social media like X. Like I, I get followed by, you know, [laughs] I get followed by a lot of people, you know? But if I see anybody is a RevenueCat customer, I always follow them backAlways follow every RevenueCat customer. And like big or small, like I don't care. Like, it, it just fills my feed with customers. And then every day I open it up and I'm seeing like the good and the bad and what people want, and that's just like an easy way.

Miguel Carranza 11:40 The conferences too, some of the... I mean, depends on the conference. There's different returns of investment. But developer conferences can help a lot, and you end up seeing a lot of people in person. And, and they, in person it's more useful to know what things are working well and what things are not working well-

Jacob Eiting 11:54 Totally

Miguel Carranza 11:54 ... and what their frustrations are, and people are very honest.

Jacob Eiting 11:56 You, you really like have to make time for it. And what I just do is any time a customer

Jacob Eiting 12:00 reaches out and like wants a meeting, pretty much I'll just say yes. And I, even if I'm busy, I'm like, I will say yes-

Miguel Carranza 12:04 Yeah

Jacob Eiting 12:05 ... 'cause I know it's good medicine. Like I just need to be having these conversations. Even if they haven't asked for me that's maybe I don't care that much or whatever, I just get in a room, talk to them, hear their problems, and that will inform-

Gustaf Alstromer 12:15 Can you kind of enforce that or, or try and inspire that to your, the team?

Miguel Carranza 12:19 Yeah, absolutely.

Jacob Eiting 12:19 I always say they're not the pope. Like you can just talk to the customer.

Gustaf Alstromer 12:22 Yeah.

Jacob Eiting 12:22 Like they don't, you don't need an au- you don't need a request.

Gustaf Alstromer 12:24 Yeah.

Jacob Eiting 12:24 There's no formality. Just send a customer an email, get them on a phone call. Like everybody has permission to talk to... Which I don't think that's true at all companies.

Gustaf Alstromer 12:30 No, it's not.

Jacob Eiting 12:31 It's crazy.

Gustaf Alstromer 12:32 Absolutely.

Jacob Eiting 12:32 And I mean, I, maybe there's reasons for that at scale, but it's like, you know, I figure if somebody can't have a like normal conversation with a customer, you're probably not fit for my team. [laughs] You know what I mean? Like, that should be like a bar, that you can just like talk to a customer. But yeah, we try to encourage people. And that's also what, you know, X is good for. Wherever your customers are-

Gustaf Alstromer 12:49 Exactly

Jacob Eiting 12:49 ... just getting your team there too, so that they're like able to just have normal relations with customers and talk to them and stuff.

Gustaf Alstromer 12:55 One thing I found extremely impressive about your company is that you've been consistent from probably 2018 until today about what metrics matters for your company, how you report on them, that you are basically sending the investor updates on the day of for like all of these years.

Jacob Eiting 13:10 It's become a compulsion.

Gustaf Alstromer 13:11 A lot of people don't have the discipline to do this, 'cause like when things go bad, they stop sending them, or when things go bad, they change the metrics. And like you've been consistent for so long. Like is this how you run the company? Does everybody know all the metrics? Is everyone-

Miguel Carranza 13:22 Yeah. Everything is

Gustaf Alstromer 13:23 Tell us about that.

Jacob Eiting 13:24 I think it creates... Discipline's maybe the right word. But it just creates like some reality that I have to live in. Like I have to be honest with myself because yeah, y- like my investors get all the data. Like my team gets 99% of that data. If I stop sending something, it would be very obvious, right? And they would make you question why. Uh, yeah, and I, I, I, you know, if it's a Sunday or whatever, I'll do everything I can to get it, to get that. I've missed it a few times, but usually within the first three days of the month. And yeah, the, the, the, the metrics that I send and those have only changed like three or four times in eight years, and in very minor ways, right?

Gustaf Alstromer 13:55 Yeah.

Jacob Eiting 13:55 Um, and so you, you need to just have like a consistent grounding truth

Jacob Eiting 14:00 to like look at. Um, and that, the, the, the exercise is as mostly for me, right? It's like to sit down, write it. A lot of like leaders on our team will also have adopted it, so organically they'll send a support update with like a similar cadence.

Miguel Carranza 14:13 The transparency helps a lot because we are fully distributed in many time zones. So the only way to make sure that people know everything is to be fully transparent, because otherwise you don't know who knows what or whatever.

Jacob Eiting 14:24 I know people are like, "Send investor updates," but it's, i- i- good companies that do well send investor updates. But I'm always like, I almost don't think that's ever gonna help, because I think it's mostly an outcome of a personality type. Like I have noticed it is mixed on who does them, but and I think it's mostly down to the person. And then, but I also think there's a correlation between the person who sends updates and the person who is successful. I think there's like some, like underlying correlated trait there.

Gustaf Alstromer 14:45 You're a fully distributed team. Were you remote prior to COVID?

Miguel Carranza 14:48 Yes.

Jacob Eiting 14:49 Yeah, barely, right?

Miguel Carranza 14:49 Yes, yes.

Jacob Eiting 14:50 Yeah, yeah. Just sort of accidentally.

Miguel Carranza 14:51 We lucked out a little bit there.

Jacob Eiting 14:52 Yeah, h- how did you make this call and, and-

Miguel Carranza 14:54 Hiding in the Bay Area is the reason.

Jacob Eiting 14:56 Yeah, it was hard. It was during like, uh, the peak of like Fang basically hiring everybody in the Bay Area for insane numbers. So yeah, we finished YC in 2018. We raised a million and a half bucks, which was a, that was a big seed round in 2018. And, uh, we h- we were able to hire like two of our friends who were surf buddies who would just would take a swing and whatever, and then one guy who was like inbounded to us and just like, "I love the idea. I really wanna work there." After that, that was kind of our hiring pool. [laughs] We kind of ran out. And then, uh, sort of simultaneously we had one of the people that had joined wanted to move, and then like we, a friend of ours who we wanted to hire was in Taiwan, and we were like, "Okay, we'll just, we're just remote now. We're gonna try it." We copied what GitLab had done and all of that stuff, and, and then COVID happened like six months later. So we had like prepped for this, and then when it happened, it was very easy to sw- flip the switch.

Miguel Carranza 15:43 Yeah. We had to adapt to many things, but uh, and again, it has advantages and disadvantages obviously. But yeah, we've been able to hire people that we wouldn't have been able to hire otherwise.

Jacob Eiting 15:50 Yeah.

Miguel Carranza 15:51 And also we have, we avoid all the visa, immigration situation problems that I had to suffer.

Jacob Eiting 15:57 If you're in a coastal, like one of the tech hubs and stuff like that, well, obviously it's like competition's kinda, you know, it's easy. There's a lot, there's like recruiting events every night of the week. Which is like, I'm great, everybody should go interview and get your, the best deal you can. But like, uh, something about having a remote, um, company makes people a little more, I don't wanna say loyal, but like a little more... Like they join you for a reason, right? And it's not just like, oh, because it's in my city.

Gustaf Alstromer 16:17 And you're probably extremely competitive where they are.

Jacob Eiting 16:19 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that too. Like yeah, we have a lot of like, uh, like compensation leverage.

Gustaf Alstromer 16:24 Are there things that you are intentional about to run the company remote? Like, like what, what are some things that someone can ta- learn from on how to do this well?

Miguel Carranza 16:31 Ha- having a clear compensation philosophy, and you need to agree. Every, every compensation philosophy can be different, right? But at least having it cons- written down and consistent has been super helpful.

Jacob Eiting 16:40 Just j- in general, systems thinking for a lot of things that like you wouldn't necessarily systematize. Like i- it has its benefits and downsides. Sometimes like we're just trying to fix a simple little problem, but it's like, oh, we have this big system, so now we have to like figure it out. And like Slack just becomes your office, and you're just like o- on Slack all the time, or like you make, make Slack interactions very casual. Um, and then just, yeah, everybody needs

Jacob Eiting 17:00 to like write and create artifacts, like looms and videos and, and all this stuff. And I think generally it just also makes your, it makes your communication culture better. I still think if I could like magically teleport my whole team into an office every day and then teleport them back to their houses, I would do that. [laughs] Right? I think. Um, but I can't, right? Um, I love when I hire people not having to really worry where they are. Like I'm just like, "Where do you live? I don't care. Like are you in roughly these time zones?"

Gustaf Alstromer 17:23 Yeah.

Jacob Eiting 17:23 "Awesome. Like, uh, let, let's work together." And so when I look at the team we've been able to assemble, I'm like, "There's no way I'd built this team if we were like confined to a city," right? And I hear a lot of founders like being like, "Oh, we just spun up this office." A lot of office drama, like we're doing this and that, and I'm like, "I just don't worry about it." Like I just, you know, we have no physical assets, [laughs] no buildings. It's amazing.

Miguel Carranza 17:41 And for, for a particular product too, it also helps having people distributed and, uh, because we're critical infrastructure, so having somebody always up is also a g- a good thing also.

Jacob Eiting 17:49 Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. The sun never sets on RevenueCat.

Gustaf Alstromer 17:52 You're in an ecosystem surrounded by Apple, Google, probably Stripe, and a few other enormous companies. Like-Do you worry that one of them just, like, run, run you over one day or?

Jacob Eiting 18:02 Yeah. I, I mean, to some degree.

Gustaf Alstromer 18:04 The good news is that while, since you started the company, the app stores that they built are enormous.

Jacob Eiting 18:09 Yeah.

Gustaf Alstromer 18:09 Like, which benefits you massively.

Jacob Eiting 18:10 I mean, it's like 10Xed, right?

Gustaf Alstromer 18:11 Yeah.

Jacob Eiting 18:11 And there's a bit of at now with our scale, some mutually assured destruction, right? Like, we're representing such a good chunk of their, their customers that, like, it would be hard for them to, like-

Gustaf Alstromer 18:20 Right

Jacob Eiting 18:20 ... hurt us too much. And we have good relationships, like, both formal and informal. Um, so we do our best there, and also obviously it's, like, always a risk. Um, but I think that's just the reality. It's hard to build a business in 2025 in, like, a completely green field. I mean, in AI, like, everybody depends on other people's models and stuff like that, and I think you can't wring your hands about loss aversion, about what happens if. It's just, like, build. If you build something massively valuable, it's, you know, it's very unlikely that it's gonna, like, disappear overnight.

Gustaf Alstromer 18:44 When you started the company, you worked together at the previous job for, for how long? Like-

Jacob Eiting 18:47 Four years, three years. Something like that.

Gustaf Alstromer 18:49 Oh. So you guys knew each other pretty well.

Jacob Eiting 18:50 Yeah.

Miguel Carranza 18:50 Yeah.

Gustaf Alstromer 18:50 Really.

Jacob Eiting 18:51 Yeah. And we were, like, friends, too. Like, and we, we went surfing and, like, all that stuff.

Gustaf Alstromer 18:54 Then you were co-founders. Now you have over a hundred, hundred people. Like, how has the co-founder relationship changed over those years? And-

Miguel Carranza 19:00 It's a marriage without the good parts.

Jacob Eiting 19:02 Not like any other relationship in your life. It's not like a friendship. It's not like a, it's not like an employee, you know, coworker relationship. It's not like a marriage exactly. But it's kinda close to all three of those, I would say, in different ways.

Gustaf Alstromer 19:14 What's some advice for people who are just getting started on how to, like, not fuck up their co-founder relationship?

Jacob Eiting 19:18 [laughs]

Miguel Carranza 19:19 Yeah. Well, I think it has to start from a basis of mut- mutual respect. If that's not there, it's very difficult, right? Like, the thing that we, we disagree all the time, but I know we are very aligned in philosophically mo- most of the things, so it's usually not something that is... It's when it's something unclear, right? And when it's something unclear, fully trusting that the decision is not to try to screw the other person. Otherwise, if you have that in the back of your head like, "Oh, this person is trying to screw me," then it's never gonna work eventually and it's-

Gustaf Alstromer 19:45 Do you have a weekly call to just, to talk about, like-

Jacob Eiting 19:47 Honestly, we don't. Like-

Miguel Carranza 19:48 We don't. It's like-

Jacob Eiting 19:49 It's just organic

Miguel Carranza 19:49 ... organic thing. Yeah

Jacob Eiting 19:50 ... break up, you know. Uh, we used to, and now it's just like we just have a if, if Miguel calls or I call, you, you pick up, like-

Miguel Carranza 19:55 Yeah

Jacob Eiting 19:55 ... kind of deal. And then we try to as often as we can, being remote, like we often just try and try to

Jacob Eiting 20:00 create opportunities for us to be together and hang out, and, like, that helps.

Miguel Carranza 20:03 I think working at a startup also, uh, also helps because we saw, like, the good and the bad parts of a startup, like the highs and the lows. So-

Jacob Eiting 20:10 We were able to pick a lot of what we experienced together at that company, and, like, pick the good parts we wanted to take and the bad parts we didn't wanna take. Um, which was helpful. Um, but I would also say, like, just invest in the relationship. You know, you don't have to go on, like, a, a whole vacation together, but, like, you know, if you can go to a thing and, like, spend some quality time and do some stuff just with your co-founder. E- everybody's gotta figure it out for their own, like, balance of personalities and stuff. Um...

Gustaf Alstromer 20:33 So you mentioned earlier that you had no idea, like, how to get a billion-dollar company, and, well, you're on track for sure. [laughs]

Jacob Eiting 20:40 So being part of YC and then everything post has been, like, progressively having somebody force my, like, uh, vision further and higher. [laughs] You know? 'Cause I've always just been, like, problem in front of me, you know, whatever. I, I tell people, like, I've, I've been running out of excuses as to why we aren't gonna be able to hit that. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's been I've like, "Oh, this, the market's too small. Oh, like, I'm gonna get tired. Oh, Miguel and I are gonna fight and break up. Oh, like, we're not gonna be able to hire." Like, we've kind of, like, progressively solved, like, each one of those and, like, each one of those may also become unsolved over time. Like, they come of, they come and go. And so, so now it's like, you know, yeah, I still remember that YC, uh, office or the group office hours where we had to go around and I laughed at myself.

Gustaf Alstromer 21:17 The, the que- the, the question was, um, what have to happen for you to be a, be a billion-dollar company or a hundred million revenue? Like, put the pieces together.

Jacob Eiting 21:24 Yeah. And I just was like, I was, I was like, "I'm never gonna be able to do that."

Miguel Carranza 21:27 Yeah. I was doing the math and I was like, "Oh, there's not that many apps."

Jacob Eiting 21:29 Yeah, yeah. And, uh, and then that's become, like, one of my chips on my shoulder because, like, I became in that moment, like, my greatest detractor. And, like, I didn't believe in myself. And now, like, a pu- big part of my motivation is, like, defeating that kid, right? Defeating that guy. 'Cause, like, obviously we, we can do it, right? So now it's like, yeah, we're kind of on this trajectory where we might pass that pretty soon. And, like, um, so it's like, well, can we do 10X that, right? Like, what's a $10 billion vision look like, right?

Gustaf Alstromer 21:53 Is there something in the, in the way of that?

Jacob Eiting 21:54 I mean, there's, yeah, there's, like, problems, right?

Gustaf Alstromer 21:56 Yeah.

Jacob Eiting 21:56 Like, we gotta... New markets. We gotta build new things. Like, we have to, you know, our, our market's grown 10X. Will it grow 10X again? Maybe, maybe not. But yeah, there's, there's, there's new and interesting problems. I think that's kind of one of the things that I would not have suspected that I would be so excited and engaged as I am, like, almost a decade in.

Gustaf Alstromer 22:13 Mm.

Jacob Eiting 22:13 But each, like, layer you break out of, like the problems kind of, like, repeat and rhyme, but on new scales.

Gustaf Alstromer 22:19 Yeah.

Jacob Eiting 22:19 And, like, it's sort of this perpetual busy box for me. [laughs]

Gustaf Alstromer 22:22 Yeah.

Jacob Eiting 22:23 Like, oh, new interesting problems, like, new scaling things. You also get to meet, like, really great people.

Miguel Carranza 22:27 I think that's the biggest thing is the culture. Like, if, if you're able to build the culture, maintain the culture, then, then you can fix all the problems.

Jacob Eiting 22:34 And you can do that as a founder. That's, that's advice I would give to people. Like, if you don't like coming to work, fix it. Like, you, you have that power. Your investors, they might be telling you things and you, like, listen to that advice, and then it actually makes your company worse.

Gustaf Alstromer 22:45 Mm.

Jacob Eiting 22:45 Like, they're, they're trying to help, but they're, they, they don't know how really. So, like, first and foremost, make it a place you're excited to come to work every day. And then, like, then that's when the magic happens, right?

Gustaf Alstromer 22:55 And, and, and in a way internalizing that the journey is the, the thing that's the important part.

Jacob Eiting 22:58 Well, 'cause the velocity is what gets you there,

Jacob Eiting 23:00 right? So it's like if you can just optimize for, like, the day to day and the m- and the velocity and the excitement and the energy, like, you... And, and just make sure you're, like, it goes back to the every month I just wanna make sure, like, I have a little bit of up. Like, every month something is moving in a good direction. Every month. And don't worry about how that's gonna compound in, you know, 120 months. Just worry about, okay, like, how do I just each month? And then, yeah, you, you suddenly you wake up one day and you look backwards and you're at the top of this, like, [laughs] exponential slope.

Gustaf Alstromer 23:26 I have one more question about the market. Uh, there was-Case between Apple and Epic, uh, that changed a lot about what you're doing. What, what changed?

Jacob Eiting 23:32 Yeah, so Epic's been, been suing Apple in a bunch of different venues. Epic tried to, like, put non-in-app purchases through the... Basically, they broke the App Store terms in order to draw a case-

Gustaf Alstromer 23:42 Right

Jacob Eiting 23:42 ... where they could bring, like, you know, essentially, like, an antitrust investigation against, against Apple.

Gustaf Alstromer 23:46 And that happened.

Jacob Eiting 23:47 And it happened, and they, they lost a bunch of their, their claims, but they did get a, a couple through. In the, the end, which happened recently, was, like, a judge came down and said in the US, like, you no longer, Apple can no longer prevent you from adding alternative payments-

Gustaf Alstromer 23:59 Mm

Jacob Eiting 23:59 ... to the App Store. Um, from everything we've measured, the a- the actual impact has been, like,, um, slightly positive, somewhat minimal, um, which I think is, like, much less what people predicted. They were like, "Oh, the App Store's this massively inefficient thing that's, like, capturing a lot of this value." It's, it's not as far from, like, market optimal as people think. I think it is, um, it definitely is. I think, uh, my, my opinion would've been, like, it would've been nice if we could skip the whole case as Apple would've just, like, liberalized, and, like, [laughs] we could've just got here on an economics argument. [laughs] But, like, w- we are where we are. But I was just... It's so funny that, like, I never would've thought in-app purchases 10 years in would be at, like, the center of, like, a Supreme Court case [laughs] against, like, two... Like, it's become a much bigger story than I ever expected.

Gustaf Alstromer 24:36 Yeah. Because what you do is so big. Like, like, you're at the-

Jacob Eiting 24:39 Sneaky big, right? Yeah.

Gustaf Alstromer 24:40 You're, you're sort of, like, a thing of the really big thing in, in mobile.

Jacob Eiting 24:43 It's kept it interesting, right? Like, I've had to read a lot of, uh, amicus briefs, and, uh, we've had a couple, uh, subpoenas [laughs] along the way, but, like, it's been good.

Gustaf Alstromer 24:53 For aspiring founders, there's a lot of them watching these, this channel, um, what are some advice you have? Just, like, general things you knew, you wish you knew when you started RevenueCat.

Miguel Carranza 25:01 Do YC.

Jacob Eiting 25:02 [laughs]

Miguel Carranza 25:03 Sure. Uh, and don't follow anybody else advice.

Jacob Eiting 25:06 Follow your heart.

Miguel Carranza 25:07 Yeah.

Jacob Eiting 25:08 Yeah. I mean, I think to some degree you have to wait. You get to a point where you can truly follow your heart. There's a lot of glass you have to eat. Don't expect it to be all that fun for a while. And then there's fun parts of it. It's exciting the whole time, in like a give you a heart attack kind of exciting in some ways, right? Um, and I don't think there's any way through that, like, magically.

Miguel Carranza 25:24 Oh, yeah, there are hard things that you have to do.

Jacob Eiting 25:26 Yeah. And just expect that. Like, expect to have to talk to customers at all hours, and get woken up, and, like, have to, like, work long whatevers, and have everybody else on your company, even though they're great, not work as hard as you or care as much as you. And, and, and that's, you know, as I say a lot, that's what the money's for. You know, that's why we make the big bucks, right? [laughs]

Gustaf Alstromer 25:42 How do you, how do you not give up?

Jacob Eiting 25:44 Uh, you have a suicide pact with your co-founder.

Gustaf Alstromer 25:46 Exactly. That's, that's right away.

Jacob Eiting 25:47 [laughs] Like, basically. I'm not gonna give him the satisfaction of me quitting first, [laughs] so. It certainly helps, right? It certainly helps.

Gustaf Alstromer 25:55 Yeah.

Jacob Eiting 25:55 Um, I think that's where it goes to, like, build the company you wanna work at. Have a mission you really care about. Like, I care more about the mission than I do, like, RevenueCat's financial outcome at this point, right? And it just happens that those things are very aligned. Yeah, I would say just, like, buckle up.

Miguel Carranza 26:09 Yeah. Not, not quitting is a big part of it, and I think if you get to, if you are s- lucky enough to get to the whole product market fit phase, then there's, there's a lot of things that would make you quit are under your control.

Jacob Eiting 26:21 And as somebody who's come from being an employee or, like, first company, and, like, all these fancy investors and all this whatever, it's like, look, if, like, they could do what you do, they would do what you do, right? [laughs] Like it's... And I don't mean to be, like, belittling of the investors. Like, they're great people, and, like, they're very important to this ecosystem. But, like, there is something that you can provide that they can't, so, like, trust yourself and, like, you know, ultimately make something people want, right? Like, talk to your customers. If you're producing value for people, you're gonna figure it out, right?

Gustaf Alstromer 26:46 Thank you, guys. This is awesome.

Jacob Eiting 26:47 Thank you. It's great. [outro music]