Founder of Pando and working mom just launched her new subscription-based ($5/mo) community. Congrats, @sarahcude. 👏🏼
I'm curious why you decided to go with a paywall. While there aren't very many examples of this, I find paywalled communities very interesting.
@sarahcude@rrhoover Thanks for posting this!! Personally, I think "paywall" is kinda an outdated term and applies more to sites like The New York Times.... do you consider Netflix a "paywall"?
But to your broader question: I guess I would flip it and ask why anyone in 2018 is building a new consumer Web platform with an ad model. Look at Snap or Twitter. The companies who succeed to build huge, differentiated platforms STILL can't manage to build defensible ad platforms in a world where FB and Google dominate 80% of the digital ad spend.
So point 1: It isn't a good way to build a large company anymore.
Point 2: it's inherently abusive to users. The people who *built* Facebook are saying it's bad for society and won't let their kids use it. We commissioned a study with Survey Monkey that showed that 85% of women have witnessed mom shaming on social media and more than 30% see it all the time. Women are the most active users of social media platform and the most abused. "Mommy wars" are not a natural state for some "catty" group of women... we've been baited into it by ad-based platforms that need engagement and page views.
Building something with a subscription based model feels like defying gravity. All we have to do is give each user $5 a month of value. That's it! We get profitable off a little more than 10k users and control our own destiny. We can go public off just a few million users. And this is one of the last massive underserved markets on the Web.
More to the point: We can do that without the words "bad mom" EVER appearing on our site. WE CAN MAKE WOMEN FEEL GOOD ABOUT THEMSELVES EVERY TIME THEY USE US.
In pitching the company I spoke with several investors who are no longer backing ad-based models. There is going to be a wave of companies like these and I'm just grateful we're on the front end of it because I think in another five to ten years fighting for share of wallet will be a greater challenge.
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@sarahcude@sarah_lacy Are you able/willing to share your thinking about not splitting the difference by making a freemium service? I see you have a 1-week free trial, but would be interested into some of the reasoning for choosing a pure subscription model rather than doing a pay-for-premium-features model.
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As a not-mom I don't have any use for this myself, but I will pass it along to my friends. I am excited at the possibility of a subscription social media site being viable, so will be rooting from the sidelines.
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