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Growth by Design

Conversations about how the world's best apps grow – with the founders, product leaders, and growth teams behind them. Real systems, real experiments, real lessons.

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3 years of community, 0 sponsors, $10M ARR: the Traininpink growth story episode cover image

Latest episode

S1 E6

30.10.26

3 years of community, 0 sponsors, $10M ARR: the Traininpink growth story

What if the fastest way to build an app is to spend three years not selling anything? In this episode of Growth by Design, we sit down with Matteo Minero, co-founder of Traininpink and Igeia and a former M&A and ECM lawyer at DLA Piper Italy, who together with his wife Carlotta turned an Instagram fitness page into a profitable, fully bootstrapped app at $10M ARR — with zero outside capital and zero sponsorships. Drawing on years of community building in Italy and a fresh push into international markets, Matteo unpacks why trust can't be bought, how organic, paid, CRM, and influencers fit together, and why the audience has to come before the product.

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About the show

Growth by Design is a podcast for founders, product leaders, and growth teams who want to understand how the world's best apps grow — intentionally, systematically, and sustainably.

We sit down with performance marketers, product builders, researchers, and founders to explore what actually works behind the scenes: the experiments, the systems, the failures, and the turning points.

No hype. No overnight success stories. Just real conversations about building apps that grow by design — not by chance.

All episodes

  • 15M users, 20 people, now agents - the thinking behind the switch
    S1 E5

    07.09.26

    15M users, 20 people, and a new role for agents - the thinking behind the switch

    What if the apps posting the best revenue screenshots are the ones nobody actually uses? In this episode of Growth by Design, we sit down with Seth Miller, founder and CEO of Rapchat, who spent 13 years building a consumer music app to 15M+ users and 100M+ raps recorded — then rebuilt the whole operation around AI agents. Drawing on a decade of consumer app building, a Series A, and the decision to get off the VC treadmill, Seth unpacks how to tell when your product has hit its ceiling, why UA-dependent businesses are more fragile than they look, and what changes when agents ship you TestFlights every day.

  • Paywall Optimization: How Subscription Apps Test Their Way to Growth Podcast episode cover image
    S1 E4

    15.07.26

    Paywall Optimization: How Subscription Apps Test Their Way to Growth

    In this episode of Growth by Design, we sit down with growth product manager Luke Longworth — an early Superwall adopter who's spent years optimizing paywalls and subscription funnels for apps big and small. No copy-this-paywall templates, no silver bullets. Just how experienced operators read the data, prioritize tests, and turn one screen into durable revenue.

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