On the podcast, I talk with Dan about estimating the ROI of product changes before building them, calculating your subscription app's growth ceiling, and why you shouldn’t make assumptions about what is and isn’t working in other apps.
Top Takeaways:
💸 ROI-first thinking helps teams prioritize what actually moves the needle
Every project has a cost - whether or not you calculate it. Estimating the ROI of a sprint, even with rough assumptions, can reveal when you’re investing $50K of dev time into a feature with minimal upside. It’s not about forecasting with precision, it’s about using basic math to avoid chasing ideas that won’t pay off.
⚾ Big swings take more than one try
Launching a major feature is rarely a one-and-done success. The biggest wins often come after multiple iterations - refining the UX, testing variations, learning from early data. Too many teams ship once and move on. But if there are signs of life, sticking with it for a few rounds is often where the real gains are made.
⏳ Churn math reveals the ceiling on your growth
If you’re adding 500 users per month and churn is 10%, your max subscriber base is 5,000. It’s simple math, but easy to overlook when topline numbers are growing. Looking at cohorts and long-term retention curves helps you spot when you’re approaching that ceiling - and whether you’re building a durable business or just replacing churned users.
🧵 Small UX improvements can beat big features
Rewriting confusing checkout error messages took just two days and lifted revenue by 1%. Polishing key flows like onboarding or paywall views often delivers a better return than shipping something new. If every user hits a flow, making it smoother can have an outsized impact on conversion and retention.
🚀 The fastest team wins, not the most secretive
Worried someone will copy your idea? Don’t be. The teams that win are the ones who move faster, not the ones who keep ideas hidden. Speed matters more than secrecy. Whether you’re validating a viral feature with TikTok mockups or running a rough A/B test, moving quickly lets you learn, adjust, and stay ahead.
About Dan Layfield:
✍️ Founder of Subscription Index, a blog that breaks down the strategy, math, and real-world lessons behind successful subscription products.
🧠 Dan helps startups grow revenue by optimizing retention, reducing churn, and making smarter product bets rooted in ROI.
💡 “Your company will not be profitable ever if the output of your sprints doesn’t exceed the cost of your sprints.”
👋 LinkedIn
Resources:
The Hidden Math of Churn: Why You Can’t Scale Past $1M — Subscription Index blog post
Follow us on X:
- David Barnard - @drbarnard
- Jacob Eiting - @jeiting
- RevenueCat - @RevenueCat
- SubClub - @SubClubHQ
Episode Highlights:
[1:03] Over/under — The importance of estimating the ROI of your product development efforts in advance.
[6:39] Making a splash: The pros and cons of building features in order to get attention on social media or in the press.
[12:49] Sweat the small stuff: Why fixing “small” issues with your user experience can lead to big payoffs.
[19:41] Hitting a ceiling: How to calculate your company’s maximum subscriber base based on your monthly new users and churn rate.
[24:03] The long game: Accounting for long-term users (“locals”) versus short-term users (“tourists”) in your growth ceiling estimates.
[32:11] Good use: How the degree of product-market fit for your app affects your churn rate.
[37:40] User activation: Mitigating churn by providing a great onboarding experience and giving users early wins.
[39:21] Money talks: Why auditing your pricing tiers and payment processing systems can significantly bolster your bottom line.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Burden
The Burden is a documentary series that takes listeners into the hidden places where justice is done (and undone). It dives deep into the lives of heroes and villains. And it focuses a spotlight on those who triumph even when the odds are against them. Season 5 - The Burden: Death & Deceit in Alliance On April Fools Day 1999, 26-year-old Yvonne Layne was found murdered in her Alliance, Ohio home. David Thorne, her ex-boyfriend and father of one of her children, was instantly a suspect. Another young man admitted to the murder, and David breathed a sigh of relief, until the confessed murderer fingered David; “He paid me to do it.” David was sentenced to life without parole. Two decades later, Pulitzer winner and podcast host, Maggie Freleng (Bone Valley Season 3: Graves County, Wrongful Conviction, Suave) launched a “live” investigation into David's conviction alongside Jason Baldwin (himself wrongfully convicted as a member of the West Memphis Three). Maggie had come to believe that the entire investigation of David was botched by the tiny local police department, or worse, covered up the real killer. Was Maggie correct? Was David’s claim of innocence credible? In Death and Deceit in Alliance, Maggie recounts the case that launched her career, and ultimately, “broke” her.” The results will shock the listener and reduce Maggie to tears and self-doubt. This is not your typical wrongful conviction story. In fact, it turns the genre on its head. It asks the question: What if our champions are foolish? Season 4 - The Burden: Get the Money and Run “Trying to murder my father, this was the thing that put me on the path.” That’s Joe Loya and that path was bank robbery. Bank, bank, bank, bank, bank. In season 4 of The Burden: Get the Money and Run, we hear from Joe who was once the most prolific bank robber in Southern California, and beyond. He used disguises, body doubles, proxies. He leaped over counters, grabbed the money and ran. Even as the FBI was closing in. It was a showdown between a daring bank robber, and a patient FBI agent. Joe was no ordinary bank robber. He was bright, articulate, charismatic, and driven by a dark rage that he summoned up at will. In seven episodes, Joe tells all: the what, the how… and the why. Including why he tried to murder his father. Season 3 - The Burden: Avenger Miriam Lewin is one of Argentina’s leading journalists today. At 19 years old, she was kidnapped off the streets of Buenos Aires for her political activism and thrown into a concentration camp. Thousands of her fellow inmates were executed, tossed alive from a cargo plane into the ocean. Miriam, along with a handful of others, will survive the camp. Then as a journalist, she will wage a decades long campaign to bring her tormentors to justice. Avenger is about one woman’s triumphant battle against unbelievable odds to survive torture, claim justice for the crimes done against her and others like her, and change the future of her country. Season 2 - The Burden: Empire on Blood Empire on Blood is set in the Bronx, NY, in the early 90s, when two young drug dealers ruled an intersection known as “The Corner on Blood.” The boss, Calvin Buari, lived large. He and a protege swore they would build an empire on blood. Then the relationship frayed and the protege accused Calvin of a double homicide which he claimed he didn’t do. But did he? Award-winning journalist Steve Fishman spent seven years to answer that question. This is the story of one man’s last chance to overturn his life sentence. He may prevail, but someone’s gotta pay. The Burden: Empire on Blood is the director’s cut of the true crime classic which reached #1 on the charts when it was first released half a dozen years ago. Season 1 - The Burden In the 1990s, Detective Louis N. Scarcella was legendary. In a city overrun by violent crime, he cracked the toughest cases and put away the worst criminals. “The Hulk” was his nickname. Then the story changed. Scarcella ran into a group of convicted murderers who all say they are innocent. They turned themselves into jailhouse-lawyers and in prison founded a lway firm. When they realized Scarcella helped put many of them away, they set their sights on taking him down. And with the help of a NY Times reporter they have a chance. For years, Scarcella insisted he did nothing wrong. But that’s all he’d say. Until we tracked Scarcella to a sauna in a Russian bathhouse, where he started to talk..and talk and talk. “The guilty have gone free,” he whispered. And then agreed to take us into the belly of the beast. Welcome to The Burden.