Build a Subscription Business
12 weeks · 3 milestones
Launch a subscription model reaching 100 active subscribers.
Milestone map
Milestone map
3 milestones
Define what subscribers pay for, why they keep paying, and how you price it. Subscription businesses fail most often not at launch but at month 3–6, when the initial novelty wears off and the recurring value has to justify the recurring charge. The most important question to answer before launch is: what specifically happens if a subscriber stops paying? If the answer is 'they lose access to content, features, or a service they were actively using', the value proposition is defensible. If the answer is 'they lose access to content they could have downloaded anyway', the value proposition is accumulation, not subscription. Pricing tiers, trial logic, and cancellation treatment are downstream of this core question.
Proof required
Write a subscription definition covering: (1) what a subscriber specifically gets — named, not described generically; (2) what specifically happens when they cancel — what they lose access to; (3) your pricing model (monthly/annual, tier structure if any, trial length if any); (4) one sentence on why you chose this pricing over the alternatives you considered.
What gets checked
- What subscribers get is specific — not 'access to premium content' but 'weekly deep-dive analysis + private community + live Q&A with named experts monthly'.
- What cancellation means is specific — the value loss on cancellation is the test of whether the subscription value proposition is real.
- Why this pricing is chosen over alternatives — pricing decisions are made in a competitive context; the reasoning reveals whether it was researched or guessed.