Revenue Projections

​

Where we actually are

Every projection starts from the real baseline, not an imagined one:

---

​

Assumptions (with benchmarks)

​

Pricing

​

Funnel

​

Unit economics (per subscriber)

Full worked examples in Pricing Strategy. Summary: Includes RevenueCat ~1%, AI cost cap ≤$2.50/user/mo, and a 2–5% refund leak. Apple’s cut is 30% in each subscriber’s first year unless SBP enrollment is confirmed — enroll immediately, but never model 15% flat in Year 1 without that caveat. Apple refunds are discretionary (no guaranteed window); the 2–5% leak line covers them.

---

​

Stage-based projections

Rather than pretending to know Month 14’s MRR, we gate projections on milestones. Each stage lists the conservative / base / stretch outcome and the condition to advance.

​

Stage 0 — Prove the machine (pre-launch, now)

Revenue: $0 by definition. The work is Rollout Plan Phase 0: sandbox purchases, restore, webhooks, TestFlight paid beta. No revenue projection is meaningful until a stranger can give us money.

​

Stage 1 — Launch → first 100 subscribers

Advance when: 100 paying subs AND trial→paid ≥ 35% AND month-3 churn trending under 8%. The binding constraint is traffic — at ~300 visitors/mo, organic alone yields roughly 3–9 installs/mo. Reaching Stage 1 in any reasonable time requires the launch marketing push (App Store featuring attempts, Reddit/content, share-card loop) to multiply installs well beyond what the website alone provides.

​

Stage 2 — 100 → 1,000 subscribers

Advance when: a repeatable acquisition channel exists with known cost, churn ≤ 6%, annual mix ≥ 30%. This is the stage where creator/influencer-partnership spend math (gifting and sponsorship cost per install vs the ~$95–115 net LTV from Personas & Journey) first becomes decidable. Paid ads are never part of that math — no paid ads, period (founder decision).

​

Stage 3 — Scale (1,000+ subs)

Only at this stage do the old doc’s ambitions (creator partnerships at scale, $1M ARR talk, Studio/v4.0 monetization) become legitimate planning topics.$1M ARR requires ~7,000–7,500 Pro subscribers at the blended ARPU — roughly 200,000+ cumulative installs at base-case conversion. That is a Series-of-decisions away, not a Year-1 line item.

---

​

Worked Year-1 model

A concrete, honest Year 1 given a real launch push on top of current traffic: Year-1 exit expectation: roughly 20–120 subscribers and $250–1,400 MRR. That does not pay for the company — Year 1’s actual deliverables are a proven funnel (real trial→paid and churn numbers), a working share-card loop, and clean unit economics. Revenue is the instrument reading, not the goal.

---

​

Sensitivity: churn × trial→paid

MRR at Year-1 exit for the base traffic case (2,000 downloads, 10% install→trial): Two readings:

1. Trial→paid is the highest-leverage lever pre-scale. Moving 30%→50% (paywall quality, onboarding, first-Notebook moment in the trial week) is worth more than any churn improvement at this size.
2. Churn compounds later. At Stage 2+, each churn point is worth thousands of dollars of MRR; this is why the win-back/dunning work in Rollout Plan Phase 2 matters even though it’s irrelevant at 40 subs.

If trial→paid comes in below ~30% for two consecutive cohorts, that is the trigger to run the rejected no-trial Option B as an A/B test (see Pricing Strategy — rejected alternatives).

---

​

What would make the old aggressive case real

The retired draft projected $919K gross in Year 1. For the record, that world requires all three of:

1. Traffic ×100. ~12,000 installs/mo implies on the order of a million visitors/mo of app-intent traffic — versus ~300/mo today. That is earned only through viral TikTok organic reach, creator/influencer partnerships at scale, and compounding SEO — there is no paid-ads shortcut (no paid ads, period — founder decision, independent of platform policy).
2. Proven conversion at the top of benchmark ranges. Sustained 5%+ net install→paid and sub-5% churn — numbers we can only earn with data, never assume.
3. Capital. Creator/influencer-partnership spend (gifting, sponsorships) at a $5–15 effective CAC only pencils once LTV is demonstrated (~$95–115 net); funding tens of thousands per year of partnership budget before that is burning savings on an unproven funnel. Paid ads are not the lever at any stage — no paid ads, ever (founder decision).

Also retired with it: the $149K Founders sellout (600 lifetime units assumed sold into an audience of ~10 visitors/day) and 15% flat Apple economics in Year 1. If milestones in Stages 1–2 are hit ahead of schedule, this section is the checklist for responsibly re-opening the aggressive case.

---

​

Dashboard once live

---

​

Related

• Pricing Strategy — Model of record, unit economics, rejected alternatives
• Rollout Plan — Phase 0 purchase-proof through Studio v4.0
• Personas & Journey — Who converts, and LTV assumptions
• Tier Comparison — Canonical feature-by-tier matrix