Phil Carter

In your own words, what’s your role in the app business right now?

I advise consumer subscription apps on how to maximize their growth by helping them optimize subscription pricing and packaging, new user onboarding, lifecycle marketing communications, paywalls and trial strategies, and other parts of their product experience.

I also help them accelerate organic growth through viral word of mouth, incentivized referral programs, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), App Store Optimization (ASO), and other channels so that they are less reliant on paid advertising. I’ve worked with dozens of consumer subscription apps with an average net promoter score (NPS) of ~90% and an average client duration of >8 months.

How did you end up working in apps? / get started?

While I was at Stanford Business School, I was also the first employee at a peer-to-peer car-sharing app called Wheelz that let users reserve a vehicle, locate it on Google Maps using GPS, sound the horn to find it in a crowded parking lot, and lock and unlock the car, all through their smartphone.

This introduced me to the magic of mobile apps, and after we got acquired by Turo, I spent the next decade investing in mobile app startups as a VC at Trinity Ventures and then leading product and growth teams at multiple $1B+ mobile apps including Faire, Quizlet, and Ibotta.

What are you most excited about in apps right now?

Artificial Intelligence represents the single biggest technological innovation of our lifetimes, and the most important breakthrough for consumer mobile apps since the launch of the iPhone in 2007. Not only does AI create the potential for entirely new products, but also business model innovation that allows founders of consumer apps to monetize their products in new ways. This will usher in a new renaissance within the consumer tech ecosystem, and I’m excited to be a part of it as an investor, advisor, and entrepreneur.

Is there anyone you’d like to shout out to who has influenced your journey in the app industry?

Yes, thank you to Matt Glotzbach and Nitin Gupta, who hired me at Quizlet and gave me the amazing opportunity to build Quizlet’s product growth team. Thanks also to Arjita Ghosh, Sal Bertucci, Mike Blau, Laura Oppenheimer, Cori Shearer, Gaelle Lauzier, Kara Hafez, Austin Bay, Ali Eslamifar, Vanessa Jespersen-Wheat, A. J. Ohiwerei, and everyone else who made Quizlet’s growth team “magic”, both while I was there and since I’ve left!

Thanks to Brian Balfour for teaching me how to be a growth leader, both directly as a mentor and indirectly through Reforge. Thanks also to Casey Winters, Elena Verna, Yuriy Timen, Ravi Mehta, Adam Fishman, Ely Lerner, and the entire Reforge Partners network for all the support they gave me when I first launched my growth advising business in 2023.

Finally, thanks to the current and former consumer subscription product, marketing, and growth leaders who have been featured guests in my Reforge course on Consumer Subscription Growth and contributed to my blogs posts on the topic, including Mike Duboe (General Partner at Greylock), Gina Gotthilf (former VP of Marketing and Growth at Duolingo), Cem Kansu (VP of Product at Duolingo), Ravi Mehta (former CPO at Tinder), Arnaud Moline (VP of Product at Flo), Ozzie Osman (co-founder and CTO at Monarch Money), Parsa Saljoughian (VP of Strategic Finance at WHOOP), Ivan Selin (CPO at AllTrails), Ketty Slonimsky (Chief Growth Officer at Palta), Owen Smith (VP of Audiobook Product at Spotify), Martina Tam (former VP of Marketing at Masterclass), Jason van der Merwe (Director of Growth Engineering at Strava), Collin Walter (VP of Corporate Strategy at Oura), Dun Wang (former Chief Product and Growth Officer at Calm), and Brent Zajaczkowski (Senior Director of Product Growth at Noom).

What’s in your app tech stack?

Given that I’m a solopreneur who runs a growth advising business, I don’t have a complex tech stack. However, I’ve worked for companies that use a broad range of SaaS tools across the entire growth stack, including Google Analytics, Amplitude, Mixpanel, Loops, RevenueCat, Churnkey, Paddle, Superwall, Braze, Customer.io, OneSignal, Growthbook, Eppo, Optimizely, VWO, LaunchDarkly, and many more.

What do you like most about working in apps?

I love the community of independent app developers and startup founders who make the consumer app ecosystem so vibrant, I love the spirit of innovation they have fostered, and most of all, I love the immeasurable impact their creations have had on the personal and professional lives of people around the world.

What one thing would you change about the app industry/market? Where do you think there’s an opportunity for apps / or unmet needs?

If I could wave a magic wand and change two things, I would lower the app store fees taken from Apple and Google, and I would reduce the dependence so many consumer mobile apps have on Facebook and other advertising networks.

These two changes alone would dramatically improve the unit economics of existing mobile apps and create opportunities for thousands of new mobile apps that aren’t currently financially viable. They would also allow developers to fulfill many unmet needs by exploring smaller niches that can’t currently support sustainable mobile app businesses.

If you weren’t working in apps what would you be doing?

I’ve always loved reading and writing. I particularly enjoy fantasy and science fiction novels and am currently reading all the Harry Potter books to my daughters Kinley (7) and Liana (5). If I wasn’t working in apps, I like to think I would be a novelist and/or a screenwriter.

iOS or Android?

iOS.

What app(s) have been most useful to you over the last year?

Any Netflix/ TV show recommendations?

Game of Thrones, The Last Kingdom, The Rings of Power, The Chosen, Ted Lasso, and so many more…

Is there anything else we should know about you?

In addition to being a growth advisor, I also teach a Reforge course on Consumer Subscription Growth.

I also write about consumer subscription growth online. If you’re interested in learning more, feel free to follow me at @philgcarter on Substack, LinkedIn, and X. If I can ever be helpful, please feel free to check out my website at www.philgcarter.com, which has links to my email and social media accounts.

Do you know someone driving change and growth in the app industry? Nominate an app leader here.