Apple opens the cancellation flow to retention offers · How Touch Grass hit 50,000 users

Apple now lets you show text, images or an offer when subscribers try to cancel, as App Store revenue growth stalls.

Rhys Kentish explains how Touch Grass hit 50,000 users on day one, and why he rewrote it to avoid a $20,000 weekly API bill.

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Monetization

Business

▶ YouTube · 46 min Launched by RevenueCat How Touch Grass hit 50,000 users on day one

Key takeaway: Rhys Kentish reached 50,000 day-one users for his app Touch Grass by leveraging App Store pre-orders and a "morning post" strategy to trigger a 24-hour global viral loop.

• Rhys used the App Store pre-order period to accumulate 40,000 sign-ups, which allowed the app to build momentum without the conversion friction of an immediate paywall.

• A "morning post" tactic involved posting to Reddit and Hacker News during UK morning hours so the content would be trending when the US East Coast and then West Coast woke up.

• With 40,000 pre-orders, the Google Vision API would have cost $20,000 a week, so Rhys stayed up three days straight before launch to switch to Apple’s free on-device Vision API.

• The app's marketing relied on a "one-sentence" value proposition: "I built an app to stop me doomscrolling by touching grass."

• A single tweet, encouraged by the creator of One Million Checkboxes, generated 1.5 million impressions and led to coverage from TechCrunch and Fast Company.

• The app uses a freemium model where users can block two or three apps for free, requiring a paid upgrade for more, rather than a hard upfront paywall.

• To combat high churn from users simply deleting the app to bypass the block, Rhys is adding an 8-bit gamified "Meadow" system where staying off the phone earns digital rewards.

Why it matters: This shows how a single developer can manage massive scale and virality by choosing on-device processing over cloud APIs and using pre-orders to sustain momentum.

Worth it: Yes, because it provides a specific blueprint for handling unexpected scale and a distribution tactic for hitting global time zones.

Watch on YouTube →

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▶ YouTube · 12 min Starter Story How Canary turned one viral video into a $25K/month app

Key takeaway: Ben Guez scaled the language-learning app Canary to $25,000 in monthly revenue within nine months by validating a viral social media concept and using AI coding tools to build the product without prior engineering experience.

• The app currently generates $13,880 in MRR from 2,000 paying subscribers, with 60% of users opting for the $79 annual plan over the $10 monthly option.

• Guez validated the idea by posting a single video of himself singing in French with lyrics; the engagement led him to build a dedicated Instagram page that has grown to 262,000 followers.

• The initial MVP was built in one month and described as "really ugly," but shipping early allowed for immediate feedback from the existing social audience.

• Guez, who first hired a developer, now "vibe codes" with Claude, which he calls a "game changer" for shipping features from user feedback.

• The monthly tech stack includes RevenueCat ($260) for paywall A/B testing, PostHog ($250) for analytics, Firebase ($200) for the backend, and OpenAI ($150) for in-app explanations.

• The marketing funnel uses ManyChat to automate the transition from Instagram comments to app store links, identifying "winner" organic posts to then scale with paid Meta ads.

• Guez noticed Duolingo users who still couldn't speak French remembered song lyrics, so he built around that.

Why it matters: This is a blueprint for non-technical founders to validate a niche via social media and use AI tools to maintain a high-margin business with a lean stack.

Worth it: Yes, because it lists a specific, priced tech stack and a concrete strategy for turning organic social engagement into paid subscribers.

Watch on YouTube →

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▶ YouTube · 32 min Founders Podcast What founders can learn from One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda

Key takeaway: Eiichiro Oda maintains one of the world's most successful media franchises by refusing to delegate moving elements of his work and designing exclusively for his own 15-year-old self.

• Oda has produced One Piece for nearly 30 years, reaching over 600 million copies in circulation by focusing on a target audience of one—himself as a teenager.

• He is fundamentally incapable of delegating and personally draws nearly every moving element, including people, animals, and smoke, to avoid subtle inconsistencies in the art.

• The creative cycle is a rigid seven-day loop: writing Monday through Wednesday, drawing Thursday through Saturday, and coloring on Sunday.

• Oda maintains extreme physical discipline, sleeping about three hours a night near deadlines for 15 years, believing that humans find truly new ideas only at their physical limits.

• He intentionally differentiates by drawing things that do not exist in a saturated market.

• To ensure quality in external projects, he acted as a guard dog for the Netflix adaptation, requiring they not release the show until he was satisfied.

• He manages complexity through documentation, keeping 17 separate notebooks for a single story arc and 4 dedicated solely to character abilities.

Why it matters: For founders, Oda's success illustrates the power of extreme creative ownership and the strategy of escaping competition through radical differentiation.

Worth it: Yes, because it provides a rare look at the operational discipline required to maintain a top-tier global franchise for decades.

Watch on YouTube →

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