Monday Sep 06, 2021
#78 :The opportunity for consumer subscription apps with Nico Wittenborn, Investor at Adjacent
On the enormous landscape of mobile apps, there are two special categories that have been grabbing a lot of businesses attention - SAAS (stands for Software As a Service) and App Subscriptions.
Both generate tens of millions of dollars for such companies as Slack, HULU, Netflix, Spotify and others. While there are obvious differences between these two, like it's a lot easier to get loads of users for a SAAS app (because all these people are employees of a particular company) as opposed to doing your best to reach out people who will benefit from an App Subscription app, but there are similarities too.
In this episode we've got Nico Wittenborn from Adjacent to tell us about these similarities and lessons that can be applied from the world of SAAS apps to the App Subscriptions.
Today’s Topics Include:
✔️Nico's career's trajectory: from re-selling refurbished iPhones to investing into big SAAS apps
✔️What is an App Subscription
✔️App Subscription model advantages and limitations
✔️Enterprise SAAS vs. Consumer App Subscription model
✔️SAAS and App Subscription apps growth indicators
✔️What's coming up in the mobile space
✔️ Android or iOS? both iOS and Android
✔️ What apps would Nico miss the most if he leaves the smartphone home. Not much, he does leave it on purpose to limit the time he interacts with the phone
✔️ What is missing from mobile app technology? Having better tools for the smartphone screen time moderation
Links and Resources:
Quotes from Nico Wittenborn:
"Yeah, it did. It sounds like a bit of exaggeration but in retrospect the iPhone definitely changed my trajectory.
It's not really new that we pay for something on a recurrent basis that we use for a long time, it's just for software it seems to be the evolution - first we paid for a license once for a product on a CD and now we pay on a monthly basis
The interesting thing is that after one or two years, if the company is still stick around, they're flatting out in terms of their reach and retention and so there might be a big drop in the first year for a company with an app subscription but the second year they almost don't drop anymore"