Comment by Nek_12 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Nek_12 | Hacker News Reader

Built this solo as a side project alongside day job. No external funding, 100% bootstrapped. $45k cash reserves gives me runway, but 3 years with these metrics has me questioning if there's a path forward.

Tech stack: Kotlin Multiplatform, Compose Multiplatform, targeting Android/iOS/WearOS. 99% crash-free rate, 4.2* rating. The app works - users just don't stick or pay.

The regularity pattern (CV) analysis was eye-opening: active power users have CV <0.5 (consistent daily routine), churned power users have CV >0.7 (boom-bust). But when I analyzed paying customers, only 15% match this pattern. Most revenue comes from people who try it briefly and churn within 1-2 billing cycles.

If anyone wants to dig into the data, I'm happy to share: - Anonymized GA4 exports - SQL queries for usage pattern analysis - Onboarding flow breakdowns - Retention cohort data

Posting this because after 3 years I'm stuck between "one more pivot" and "shut it down." Hoping someone sees what I'm missing.

I don’t grok all your lingo, so I may be missing something, but if you’re blind to anything it’s this: if users don’t have to pay, they won’t. No matter how valuable they say the service is to them.

At least one super-famous bestselling author tried to serialize his novel online with voluntary payments, and had to abandon the experiment. Nobody payed.

Fair point. Two of my Level 100+ users have zero subscriptions - the free tier works for them. But here's the twist: I DO have paywalls (alarms, AI chat, analytics, infinite history). They just don't care about those features, or work around them. The one power user who IS paying (CV 0.86, irregular schedule) stopped using it 7 months ago but forgot to cancel. So the question becomes: are the wrong features locked? Or do power users just not need premium features?

I even ran an A/B test (hard vs soft paywall):

- Started by "recommendation" from popular entrepreneur - 3 months, 3k users - Baseline (soft paywall, can skip): 0.8% conversion - Hard paywall (must activate trial): 0.6% conversion - Revenue tracking broken (Firebase showed $0 both variants) - Killed experiment yesterday.

The only thing that occurs to me is the example of one of the few online services I pay for: Kagi search, for which I pay $10/month.

They have a bunch of features that I don’t care about and never use (AI, their web browser, ...). I just need their core search product (because Google is useless). Instead of putting features behind a paywall, they offer search free of charge up to a certain number of searches per month (I think). It’s enough to learn if their search is good enough to pay for. I pay to continue to use their core service more frequently (and I guess it’s the same with most of their paying customers).

Your customers seem to find value in your core service but don’t want to pay for the extras. Maybe you could apply the Kagi model?

Power users like the Level 177 user are getting unlimited value from the core. They complete 800+ habits/month on the free tier. The extras aren't compelling enough to upgrade.

Kagi model applied to Respawn would be: free tier gets 50-100 completions/month. If you're crushing it like the Level 177 user (800/month), you pay to keep using the core.

This makes more sense than what I'm doing. I'm trying to monetize peripherals when the core is what they value.

The risk: does limiting completions kill the habit-building momentum? If someone hits their limit mid-month, breaks their streak, do they just churn instead of convert?

But worth testing. It's at least aligned with value - heavy users pay, light users stay free.

If you try this, please let us know how it turned out! Good luck.

This attitude doesn't reflect poorly on the users. Outside any kind of charity situation, if you pay for something that is free it makes you a sucker. You need to make sure users understand that paying makes them savvy/smart or otherwise benefits them.

Right now, paying for my app DOES make you a sucker - the Level 177 user proves it. She gets full value free.

The Kagi model Lee mentioned above would flip this: free tier is limited (50-100 completions/month), heavy users pay to continue. Then paying makes you smart (you're getting 800 completions/month for $5), not a sucker.

But that requires confidence the core is worth paying for. And based on my conversion data (0.8%), most people try it and decide it's not.

So maybe the real issue is: the core isn't valuable enough to limit. And if I can't confidently say 'this is worth paying for after 100 uses,' then I don't have a product.

One thing I have observed (but this is in B2B) is that developers can be a lot more cautious around asking for money than they should be. Sales can often tell customers they need to pay and they will pay. Complaints about cost are part of the negotiation process in this environment. In B2C I don't know.

I’m not criticizing the non-paying users. But I wouldn’t go so far as to call those who pay when they don’t have to “suckers”. I don’t think I’m a sucker for tipping people when I don’t have to, or for dropping money in a street musician’s hat. I’m happy to pay for what I’ve received, when I can.

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