Five great reads (4 / 17 / 2025)
GTM lessons—hiring, pricing, ICPs, channels, & “why most consumer apps stall.”
Most Consumer Software Doesn’t Fail on Product. It Fails on Monetization. (Monica Villar)
As I like to say, “Price is your most important product feature.” Villar flips the LTV obsession in consumer apps: there are no whales, so growth comes from converting the users you already have. Lower CAC by treating monetization as a first‑class product surface: strategic, iterative, and tested. She debunks the twin myths of “just raise LTV” and “optimize top‑funnel,” then offers a playbook for nudging more people from $0 → something more than $0 with regret‑free, loop‑reinforcing pricing paths. Breakout apps will win by iterating on monetization as relentlessly as on features or distribution. About 6 min. (link)
Stop messing up your Growth‑leader hiring (Adam Fishman)
Fishman dismantles the “hire a unicorn VP Growth right after Seed” trope. He maps the four failure modes (timing, expertise mismatch, miracle‑seeking, org alignment) and offers a stage‑by‑stage rubric: founder‑led → hands‑on architect → functional exec. FWIW, this closely mirrors what Peter Kazanjy recommends for sales leadership. If you’re between Seed and Series A, bookmark it. About 10 min. (link)
AI Monetization: how to price what you’ve built (Janna Bastow)
A thorough menu of direct vs. indirect AI revenue plays—add‑ons, standalone SKUs, bundled lifts—and a candid warning that “bundling works now, but won’t forever.” Includes real‑world cost/usage benchmarks and a mini‑decision tree. 17 min. (link)
How Life360 nailed its ICP and 5×‑ed revenue (Kunal Thadani & Gaurav Hardikar)
Great case study of a consumer app pivoting from “location sharing” to “family safety.” Four tactical plays—tiered memberships, free crash‑detection hook, reframing competitors, and kid‑tracker hardware—show how tightening the ICP unlocked ARPU and a 2024 Nasdaq listing. About 12 min. (link)
Does every marketing channel actually suck right now? (Emily Kramer, MKT1)
This is the kind of back-and-forth we used to see on Twitter! Kramer’s spirited rebuttal to Andrew Chen’s “every channel sucks” rant. She walks channel‑by‑channel with what’s still working, argues that “little channels” scale when powered by community & creator ecosystems, and reminds us that product and differentiated marketing win together. 15 min. (link)
Bonus! A blast from last year that came up on a client call when discussing, what else, a PM deciding between multiple GTM opportunities:
The power of paper models in decision‑making (me)
A back‑of‑the‑napkin model beats analysis paralysis when you’re sizing a GTM bet. About 5 min. (link)