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20VC (20 Minute VC)

20Growth: How to Use Influencers to Scale Growth Insanely Fast | How to Optimise User Onboaring for Growth | How the Best Growth Teams Create Organic Growth and Community | Why LTV/CAC Models are BS with Ketty Slonimsky

60 min episode · 2 min read
·
Ketty Slonimsky

Episode

60 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Productivity, Relationships, Investing

AI-Generated Summary

Key Takeaways

  • Web Onboarding Economics: Palta drives 80% of new subscribers through web funnels instead of app stores, avoiding Apple's 30% cut while achieving higher retention through credit card payments and ability to charge premium pricing compared to mobile-first acquisition strategies.
  • Creative Volume Strategy: Successful paid acquisition on TikTok requires launching 1,000 creative variations weekly (70% permutations of winning concepts, 30% new formats), with TikTok needing 3x more creatives than Meta to achieve comparable performance and scale effectively.
  • Multiple Subscription Revenue: Companies should implement second and third subscription offerings embedded in the product (like body scanners or partner modes) which add approximately 20% to lifetime value, with first subscription covering customer acquisition costs and additional tiers driving profit.
  • Early Stage Unit Economics: Test new products with paid acquisition at 3-5k daily spend targeting 140-180% ROAS with three-month payback periods, using existing portfolio LTV models to estimate viability before twelve-month cohort data becomes available for validation.
  • Activation Over Acquisition: Users forget what features they purchased within premium subscriptions, requiring deliberate activation sequences post-purchase to demonstrate value and reduce churn, rather than focusing solely on acquisition efficiency or cancellation reduction tactics without addressing the gap between.

What It Covers

Ketty Slonimsky, Chief Growth Officer at Palta (builder of Flow, Simple, Xyng), reveals how to scale consumer subscription apps through web onboarding funnels, creative testing at volume, and building multiple revenue streams beyond single subscriptions.

Key Questions Answered

  • Web Onboarding Economics: Palta drives 80% of new subscribers through web funnels instead of app stores, avoiding Apple's 30% cut while achieving higher retention through credit card payments and ability to charge premium pricing compared to mobile-first acquisition strategies.
  • Creative Volume Strategy: Successful paid acquisition on TikTok requires launching 1,000 creative variations weekly (70% permutations of winning concepts, 30% new formats), with TikTok needing 3x more creatives than Meta to achieve comparable performance and scale effectively.
  • Multiple Subscription Revenue: Companies should implement second and third subscription offerings embedded in the product (like body scanners or partner modes) which add approximately 20% to lifetime value, with first subscription covering customer acquisition costs and additional tiers driving profit.
  • Early Stage Unit Economics: Test new products with paid acquisition at 3-5k daily spend targeting 140-180% ROAS with three-month payback periods, using existing portfolio LTV models to estimate viability before twelve-month cohort data becomes available for validation.
  • Activation Over Acquisition: Users forget what features they purchased within premium subscriptions, requiring deliberate activation sequences post-purchase to demonstrate value and reduce churn, rather than focusing solely on acquisition efficiency or cancellation reduction tactics without addressing the gap between.

Notable Moment

Palta killed WeatherWell despite strong retention because the migraine-focused product served too narrow a segment to reach 100 million revenue, demonstrating how portfolio companies get compared against Flow's 75 million MAU benchmark regardless of individual profitability or efficiency metrics.

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Episode Transcript

This is 20 Growth with me, Harry Stebbings. Now in 20 Growth, we analyze how the best growth leaders build growth teams, run growth experiments, and execute at the highest levels when it comes to growth. Today, we have one of the best joining us in the form of Kety Slonimsky, chief growth officer at Palta, the platform behind apps like Flow, the number one female health app with 77,000,000 MAU, Simple and Xyng AI, where she leads a centralized growth function across the portfolio. Before that, she was the first VP of product and growth at HeliosX, a £900,000,000 ARR bootstrap d to c health tech business, and she's also advised companies like SonderMind, Runner, Guardio, Cheddar, and many more. But before we dive into the show today, Secureframe empowers businesses to build trust with customers by simplifying information security and compliance through AI and automation. Thousands of fast growing businesses including Nasdaq, AngelList, Doodle, and Coda trust Secureframe to expedite their compliance journey for global security and privacy standards such as SOC two and ISO 27,001, CMMC, NIST standards, and more. Backed by top tier investors and corporations like Google and Kleiner Perkins, the company is among Forbes' list of the top a 100 start up employers for 2024, g two's best software awards for highest satisfaction recipient of the 2024 cybersecurity excellence awards, something I definitely never got in school myself. Learn more today at secureframe.com. And once Secureframe locks down compliance, Pendo makes sure your product truly lands with customers. Whether it's the software you build or the software you buy, your tech stack should be creating results, not creating roadblocks. Well, Pendo's no code software experience management platform makes your software better with tools to see where users get stuck, guide them with in app messaging, and constantly improving your UI. It's so easy that over 14,000 businesses use Pando to increase revenue, lower costs, and reduce risks. Businesses love the control. Engineers love the freedom. Everyone Start for free today at pendo.io/20product. You have now arrived at your destination. Katie, I am so excited for this. I've heard so many great things. I'm also a incredible fan of some of the apps you've been a part of building. So thank you so much for joining me. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. We were talking before about growth being kind of this weird discipline. I just wanna start with, like, when did you realize you were in growth? And what was that, ah, I'm actually a growth leader and I love it. I started marketing, switched to product led growth before they even called it product led growth. It was called a conversion optimization, like, fifteen years ago. Then I did monetization. Then I did some core product roles. And at some point, I started to go wide and broad. This is where one growth guru gave me an advice. You can do marketing and product. You should fit to one of them, …

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Books, tools, and gear mentioned in this episode

SignalCast may earn commission on purchases via these links. As an Amazon Associate, SignalCast earns from qualifying purchases.

Tools

  • by Secureframe

    💼 SPONSORS [Secureframe, https://secureframe.com]
  • by Pendo

    💼 SPONSORS [Pendo, https://pendo.io/20product]

Products

  • XyngBy guest

    by Palta

    Ketty Slonimsky, Chief Growth Officer at Palta (builder of Flow, Simple, Xyng), reveals how to scale consumer subscription apps
  • FlowBy guest

    by Palta

    Ketty Slonimsky, Chief Growth Officer at Palta (builder of Flow, Simple, Xyng), reveals how to scale consumer subscription apps
  • SimpleBy guest

    by Palta

    Ketty Slonimsky, Chief Growth Officer at Palta (builder of Flow, Simple, Xyng), reveals how to scale consumer subscription apps
  • WeatherWellBy guest

    by Palta

    Palta killed WeatherWell despite strong retention because the migraine-focused product served too narrow a segment to reach 100 million revenue

company

  • PaltaBy guest
    Ketty Slonimsky, Chief Growth Officer at Palta (builder of Flow, Simple, Xyng), reveals how to scale consumer subscription apps through web onboarding funnels, creative testing at volume, and building multiple revenue streams beyond single subscriptions.

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