What if your paywall is actually too good-looking to convert?
In this episode of Growth by Design, we sit down with Hanna Grevelius, CPO at Bruce Studios, to unpack one of the most counterintuitive ideas in mobile growth: why simpler — even "ugly" — paywalls often outperform polished ones.
Drawing from her experience across subscription products in golf, fitness, and pet apps, Hanna shares what actually drives retention, why users churn right after converting, and how teams get misled by the wrong metrics.
Why engagement matters more than downloads
The biggest mistakes in subscription and paywall design
How to build products people love, not just use
What passion-driven apps (fitness, hobbies) teach us about retention
How to avoid the 'metrics trap' that breaks product teams
Lessons from building Petmates
Anastasiia Avramenko on scaling an app from 20K to 16M installs with minimal spend — the systems, experiments, and lessons behind sustainable growth.
Vasyl Sergiienko (ex-Meta, Google) on why classic growth playbooks break in health & fitness — and what actually works instead.
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