Daniel Layfield: Lesson from Scaling Codecademy from $10M to $50M ARR #241 | SaaS District

Hello, hello everyone. This is your host, Akhil Jabbar, and welcome back to another episode of SaaS District. In today's episode, we'll be talking about what are the lessons from scaling Codecademy from $10 million to $50 million in ARR. Today we have our guest Daniel Layfield joining us. Daniel is the founder of Subscription Index, which is a consulting and advisory firm where he helps SaaS companies monetize more effectively. He brings deep experience in growth where he's driven more than $100 million in revenue growth with a strong focus on self-service revenue. So prior to Subscription Index, he led the growth team at Codecademy, where he scaled their ARR from $10 million to over $55 million in ARR before they were acquired for over half a billion dollars in 2022. So which we'll talk about more about that today. So Now he works with startups to improve subscription model revenue and build more sustainable growth models. So super excited to have you on the show today, Daniel.

Yeah, thanks, Akeel. Happy to be here.

So I'd love to get more into the details of Codecademy. But before we get into the weeds of what you're doing there, maybe you can just start a little bit about your story about the acquisition. And you know what you did at your time after the acquisition of Uber Eats and HomeFeed, where you— and how you think about product development and growth while you're working there. Yeah, sure.

So I started my career, my pre-tech career, kind of in management consulting and finance, which like I learned a ton in, but I found tremendously boring. I started an ad tech company which failed miserably before I knew what I was doing. So I got to Codecademy in probably like 2015 or '16. But the company was founded in 2011. So by the time I got there, like the product is figured out. It has a lot of traffic. The team that's already there and the founders did a tremendous job with like PR and marketing and building momentum in the company.

Yeah.

But we were really just at the beginning of starting the paid product. So kind of when I got there, we had a ton of free users, but we were like really, really bad at converting them to paid users.

Mm-hmm.

So I won't go into detail. I'm sure we'll go into the detail there in other questions. But like, we, I learned a ton about just like what makes consumer subscription and self-service revenue work at a bigger scale. So I was at Codecademy for 5 years. You know, I ran the growth team there. Growth to us was like really conversion and monetization as opposed to normal kind of like paid media acquisition growth.

Okay.

I left probably like a year before we were acquired, but maybe there was 250 people-ish there when I left. And then spent 2 years at Uber Eats running the home feed of Uber Eats, specifically the ranking and recommendation systems. So Uber Eats is about like half of Uber's revenue, and the home feed is a massive driver of that revenue as a whole. Then I spent 2 years just full-time advising and consulting with subscription companies. And now I work at a giant SaaS company called Diligent, which is awesome. Which is one of these kind of like biggest things you've never heard of. We're 2,000 people, we're like trying to get to a billion in revenue. Like, you know, we're, we're one of those like sleeping juggernauts you don't always know exists.

Yeah, but they're super effective and important into, into every, every ecosystem, right? So I guess, you know, whether it's Uber Eats, whether it's Homefeed, whether it's Codecademy, or now at Due Diligent, maybe you can just share a little bit. How do you think about product development and growth in your, in your day to day?

Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, so I guess I've spent like 10 years in product management now. I've probably been on like the intersection of traditional product management, like core product development work and growth work. To me, like the, the North Star of product development is like you're trying to get the highest ROI of user and business value for the resources that you're given.

Hmm.

So the question in product is typically like not should we do something? It's should we do this instead of all the other options we have and to like what level of scope and when?

Mm-hmm.

So when you're in like mature products and especially when you're, once you're past that kind of 0 to 1 phase, like there's a million things you can do. You can get to a top 10 list of 15, top 10 list of 10 or 15. But the tricky question is always like what level of scope in what sequence? And like, why do we do this thing first versus other things? To me, I think the cleanest way of thinking about it is like you get given resources by the company.

Mm-hmm.

You want the highest ROI for your investment in those things.

Mm-hmm.

It's traditionally not something like product management, maybe old school product management, like thinks that much about, 'cause so many people are VC funded and they're not used to thinking of like dollars spent in product development. But if you use like a US-based team of engineers, designers, and PMs, A sprint, a 2-week sprint probably costs $50,000. So like you need to be building stuff that gets you more than $50,000 back or you run out of money. Right.

So I guess it's really about, I guess, prioritizing and learning how to prioritize as effectively as possible and then being able to show that in terms of results and in your decisions of how you decide to prioritize your actions and then sequencing them.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, love it. I mean, it's important. I'm just like investing in anything, just as an investor myself, anything I look at, you know, filtering, understanding the best deals, the best ROI. It's the same in any business model as well. So I guess looking back at, you know, Codecademy's journey, let's talk a little bit about that. What would you say are some of the biggest moments or decisions that you said had the biggest impact on that scale that you mentioned from the $10 million to that $50 million in ARR when they came in that self-serve model? What did you apply? What did you think that really made that difference there?

Yeah, I'd say like Codecademy is, I'd say, a classic startup story where The like hidden second trap for startups is, can you turn something with product market fit into a business? So everybody talks about like the zero to product market fit phase, but a lot of companies still die after product market fit. And it's almost like it feels like you're kind of there when you have traction.

Mm-hmm.

But reality, like you need to build a growing business, especially if you've taken VC or investor money that like justifies your multiples. And allows you to control your own future, return money to investors, sell, or stop raising money and just be a traditional profitable business. By the time I got to Codecademy, again, it's like product market fit was figured out. We had tons and tons of traffic, but we were not good at like even the basics of monetization. If you think about like kind of the 3 things that matter in product development and growing companies, it's kind of like the user acquisition side. The, like, user value creation side and the monetization side. And together, especially in a subscription company, they form kind of like a loop. So, like, you find users, they see value, they pay you, you use that, those dollars to redeploy them into acquisition. Codecademy is much more based on SEO and our really, really big, high-quality free product than we were paid media. But everybody has that kind of, like, loop going on in Very few companies until they get almost into dire straits, like, work on the monetization side. Typically, like, they set prices, they never touch them. They never tweak their trial models. They never work on payment processing. They never work on their cancellation flows. And they just kinda hope that, like, the, the value creation side and the acquisition side will be good enough.

Hmm.

But the sad thing is, like, especially in the age of AI, like, you don't know when your window's gonna be. You don't know when you're gonna get a good, a good acquisition offer. You don't know when the market's gonna shift from underneath you.

Exactly.

So a bunch of like SEO-based companies from 4 years ago are now getting their lunch eaten because like what was a very established channel just changed all of a sudden. Exactly.

Would you still say that's a powerful and established channel today? Like looking, you know, would you say that's a powerful phase of growth and how you apply your thinking to it?

It's a good question. Like I, My, honestly, my background is less in the acquisition channels and more in the, like, what you do with the traffic once you have it.

Hmm.

I'd say the things I see in talking to companies is companies that can grow really, really fast now are typically using like TikTok or a short-form video channel pumped out at high volume, converting to a consumer product. It's a, it's another thing that's like not talked about in my opinion enough is like the fit between your acquisition channel and your product. Like if you sell something visual, To consumers, like TikTok is currently a really, really great channel. If you sell like a B2B email API, it's not right.

Yeah, that makes sense. What would you say are some of the most critical decisions? So it seems like you're very, you know, skilled on the optimization piece, right? As the traffic comes in, how to optimize that traffic to convert, right? So can you share anything else that maybe helped unlock some of that next phase of growth beyond that $10 million AR mark?

Yeah, definitely. I'd say the— if I were to categorize what matters in monetization, it's really— I put it into kind of like 5 buckets. There's like how users like find and onboard to your product and do you get them like into the habit effectively.

Mm-hmm.

Then you have kind of like the trial model itself. So almost in all consumer products with the exception of like short consumption cycle information, you want some like risk mitigating step. that makes users feel comfortable purchasing the product or trying to start to purchase the product. B2B, I think there's more options. Consumer, it's typically like a free trial model of some form. I mean, Codecademy, I shipped a big trial optimization and another PM shipped a big trial optimization. Each of them increased conversion like 40%. So it's like, that's a massive change in your ability to convert free traffic to paid traffic.

Mhmm.

I'd say after that is kind of pricing. So If you think of the traditional, like, levers in consumer products, it's both like the price threshold, what packages you use, and a hidden one is like the ratio between your short-term and your long-term plans. So most consumer subscription products are not in the, like, never-ending life cycles. So I define the never-ending life cycles as like rent, insurance, food, cars, entertainment. Like these human habits, like, never go away. Mm-hmm.

Right.

Like until someone disrupts Spotify, like you will stay on Spotify, right? Until the world changes around them. But a good chunk of consumer products are shorter term. So they're like edtech, they're fitness, they're diet, they're dating, where these habits kind of like come and go. And you can dramatically like stabilize the revenue base of your company the more people you get into long-term plans.

Right.

So we probably shifted a very small fraction of our users from annual plans to the majority of our users into annual plans. It like dramatically accelerates the cash flow you grab upfront if you want to redeploy that cash into other things. Payment processing is always a pain in the ass in consumer subscription companies. It's a problem that never goes away. So instead of trying to charge a user 12 times, you charge them once. So your payment-based churn goes down dramatically. Users like psychologically commit to the product more. It's one of the few like tactics that raises all boats. Uh, after that, I'd say it's like a big, uh, hidden lever is also payment processing.

Mm-hmm.

So the more international your user base, the more you need to figure out like local payment gateways, local price packages, showing the right currencies, et cetera, like setting the price levels correctly around the world. Uh, and to me, the final one, which again has a massive impact in shorter-term cycle products, is cancellation flow tactics. So I'd say the big cancellation flow tactics that work in consumer products are kind of like pausing Offering discounts or upgrading and downgrading plans for the especially edtech products where people kind of come in and out of the habit. So people don't wanna learn to code forever. They go through like intense periods of wanting to do something and then they wanna go off and do something else.

Right.

So pause was really effective for us. So you let users pause for 1, 2, or 3 months and then they come back and like you don't permanently lose them. I'd say other tactics that I see effective other places, especially like dating is a good one, is like reactivating dormant users. So like if you're dating, you might be in a relationship and then break up and then leave the relationship and then you'll be reinterested in the application.

Right.

So really, like, I think exactly, I think a lot of the tactics really have to fit the core problem, right, that users have. Like if they hated your product, like pausing won't matter, right? So like I met my wife on Bumble, like I'm not gonna pause my Bumble subscription. Like we're married with 3 kids. It's like I'm never using Bumble again. Like, exactly. So it's like nothing they could do will reactivate me on that product. But for a good chunk of users, they can. I think a mistake startups make is like they just kind of like spray and pray tactics. But like the more you fit the tactic to the problem and it becomes like an actual reason, right, that fixes something, the more impactful it'll be.

When it comes to, let's say maybe for Codecademy or, you know, maybe say B2B SaaS, have you seen, you know, you mentioned the freemium versus the trial. I'm kind of curious from your experience, you ran some experiments there. What results do you see? Do you suggest, you know, freemium generally so people can try the product Um, you know, with a limited usage of product abilities, or have you seen better results with, you know, giving them full access and, you know, but a trial basis and then switching to a paid?

I think it's like, uh, Brian Balfour, who founded Reforge, has a really great article called The Forfeits. And you basically need alignment between like your acquisition channel, the problem, like the users and your market and pricing. And like the tighter alignment you have between all of those things, the better. So freemium works really well in markets that have a lot of users. So really good freemium conversion rates are like, like excellent is like 7%.

Hmm.

So like if you can't survive off 7% conversion, it's not gonna work super well, especially like if your free product doesn't have material cost to provide or if you can't offset it with ads. Also freemium and kind of the product-led growth style of work. Like those conversion tactics work really well when the users can self-activate. So like if you're selling like a, I don't know, software to power grids and you need a giant forward-deployed engineering team to customize it to them, like PLG is not gonna work super well because they're never gonna see the value of the product because they can't install it correctly themselves.

Right. Interesting. And then you were mentioning about the You know, other assumptions? Is there any other assumptions as the company scaled that you saw, um, you know, users changing or behavior that you monitored and helped you kind of shift in how you structured your strategy?

Yeah, it's a great question. So this is like roughly the period of time between like 2016 and 2021. Um, so when Codecademy starts in 2011, we're like the best thing on the internet to learn to code, like hands down. where there's kind of like no other option for a year or two. Before I joined them, I was a really passionate user of the product. 2015 and '16, it's like there's other specialized learning platforms that are coming up. YouTube's becoming a thing. 2017, '18, like boot camps are becoming a thing.

Mm-hmm.

And that market's like starting to serve people who wanna become professional engineers. And the market is kind of like continuing to fragment under us. Codecademy, we had kind of like 4 core user personas, which we called like the, the hobbyist. So someone who like is learning to code for fun, the student, what we call the upskiller. So someone who's like an Excel-based analyst and wants to be a Python and SQL-based analyst, or someone who wants to be like a career programmer. As we learned and we collected more data and we got better with time, and also as the market changed around us, like we realized kind of like the career upskiller was really our bread and butter.

Mm-hmm.

Like students never have money. Uh, hobbyists like don't have a burning enough problem where they like want to pay for the product unless they're really well off. And like bootcamps are getting better at serving the aspiring engineers. So we kind of really honed on that from like a, a messaging and content perspective. Uh, it's a thing I frequently see as like a missing building block of startup strategies is they don't like really, really, really understand their personas. So typically speaking, like you have a few of them and like one of them is your highest LTV potential persona, right? And like, that's who you should focus on.

It's my, my question is, you know, I hear that a lot, right? So you have, you've now dialed in, this is our LTV, but, you know, you also have these other people who are coming in driving, you know, users signing up. Some of them are paying. How do you, you know, besides the messaging, is there something you've done in the product Or in your service and your offering that, you know, maybe eliminate— helped eliminate those people from coming in? And—

Yeah, it's a great question. I think the— I'd say the easy steps to do is you need some way of segmenting your user data. So the very common one is like an onboarding survey. So you need to figure out what to put in the onboarding survey. There's a bunch of like persona research methodologies out there. Like my kind of hot take is like, most of them are a waste of time. Like, I think like the founders, if they've been in the market for 2 or 3 years, can kind of guess, right? Like, I've been writing a blog for 2 years, I can guess my own personas just by talking to people. There's like the, like, $2 to $10 million ARR founder, there's the VP of product at the $10 million plus place, and then there's like someone in a growth team who just like wants to read to get better. I bet like you could probably guess the personas of this podcast. Just because you've talked to enough people and that's helped you shape the product. So you wanna be able to capture enough data that you can, like, segment your user, your usage metrics by these. Easiest way to do it is an onboarding survey. Some products, if it's like a marketplace, you might be able to tease it out of the usage data.

Mhmm.

So like at Uber Eats, like, we didn't do persona onboarding, but like, we know where you live, we know what you order, we know your basket size. So you can kind of like tease it out of the data itself. Once you have persona buckets, like kind of, you know, call them whatever makes sense to your team, I would then go through your retention data and all your meaningful metrics and segment by those. Typically you'll see like a couple obvious bad choices.

Hmm.

And then you'll probably see like 1 or 2 good choices. If you have 1, like great, focus there. If you have 2, it's a little bit more art than science of who you want to focus on. So like for Codecademy, this is granted like 6 or 7 years ago, but my recollection is there was a bigger debate between like the career upskillers and the aspiring engineers than there were between the hobbyists and the students. The hobbyists and the students, like we kind of know, aren't good fits. It's pretty clear in the data.

But so once you have that data, is there anything you're doing to, you know, not allow them in? I guess that's my, my, or to filter them out?

Yeah, it's a good question. I think if you collect them organically, there's nothing wrong with them being in the user base, right? I would not like pay to acquire them.

Right. Got it.

So it's like a classic PE move is like they get really good at persona segmentation and they like focus everything on the best ones, right?

So there's no point down on them, right?

You double down on what works and you like have enough of a cash stockpile to make up that LTV on the back end.

Yeah.

I think a secondary input though is like, this should be kind of in the mind of your product teams when you're building features. So to stay at the, in the Codecademy example, like Codecademy had like a classroom product that was kind of expensive to support. And it was a big driver of traffic that teachers could come in and build through classrooms, sign up users in a class, and then kind of like see their scores. Like this ended up getting killed in a code migration, but we decided not to rebuild it because like it doesn't do that much for the business even though it brings in a lot of people. Maybe there's like a really long-term brand play here that like 8 years from now, these people are in the job market and they remember Codecademy. But going back to product management fundamentals, like, is that the best use of this time right now? Like, probably not.

You know, but you, I guess in this case, so we're talking about how do you connect a product roadmap to measurable business impact, you know, one being obviously the clear one, which is revenue. But if you've already built this and you're like, okay, this is a branding exercise, a tool, we've already created it, it's probably going to pay back in 8 years, why kill it, I guess? Is it just because it's energy and time and it's taking up attention? Or do you— or maybe there's other things you can think about.

Good question. That specific example, like we moved learning environments and we had to rebuild it and we opted not to rebuild it. But I think kind of the point you're hinting at is something I believe strongly in. It's like products should be guided typically not by revenue, but by a concept called North Star metrics.

Mm-hmm.

North Star metrics are really like the intersection of user value and business value. So like picking them is like a little tricky. So if you were like Duolingo, your North Star metric is probably something like, like completed lesson packs or completed questions or something like that. So if users come in and keep learning, like they'll probably stay on the product. And if they keep learning enough, they'll probably convert. No North Star metrics are perfect. Typically start with like high-level counts. And just like something that's really, really simple to measure. But then when you get to kind of like product roadmap building, this is something Uber was really, really good at is we had pretty well-defined North Star metrics. And because we'd all been like working in a relatively predictable business at this point, I was there in like 2021. So like the, the business is worth billions at that point.

Mm-hmm.

In a product roadmap, you typically have like categories of investment. So if you're in the like fighting for your life startup stage, like ignore this, it doesn't matter to you yet. But once you're like established and you're weighing where to spend money. A framework that's helpful in a product roadmap is thinking of it kind of like an investment portfolio. So you'll have like your big shots. So this is like the stuff you'll do to move your North Star metric. You'll have some level of like either like technical debt or paydown. So like you need to upgrade something in the backend that doesn't produce any user value, but you have to do it to keep velocity high. And then you have a bucket of just stuff that just kind of has to happen. They're like, if you don't pay it down, the product just starts to look crappy with time. Typically, the way we thought about this at Uber, which changes a little bit company to company, but like, you should measure what percentage of your engineering hours in a quarter you put in each of those buckets.

Hmm.

So Uber is really big. So we were something like 40% big swings, 30% tech debt paydown, 30% run the business. But like, depending on your lifecycle, that, that changes a lot. The, the key thing is to like, to really debate the big swing stuff. Do like good headroom analysis on what could work. Do good engineering analysis up front. Because like the, the way companies die and teams get fired is like you spent 6 months doing something that did nothing.

Hmm.

And then you like, you lose half a year of engineering time.

When I hear that, it sounds kind of like, you know, capital allocated to maintenance, capital allocated to maybe operations, and then capital allocated to growth. And I kind of like that model where, you know, you should think about— we said something like 30% to, you know, hey, we need to maintain this thing or it's going to collapse or fail and we got to keep it. And then there's, you know, operating steady state. And you said 40% growth. Is that, is that the number used in that case?

Yeah, I think this changes a lot based on the maturity of your product and the maturity of your company. So if you're like a 10-person startup and you're still in your growth phase, you might be doing 70% big swings, right? And like, your codebase isn't that old. It doesn't need a ton of technical debt paydown, right? Typically, the more mature the codebase, the older the product line, the more you end up paying technical debt.

Yeah, that makes sense. This last question for you, Daniel. This has been super great. Maybe any other lessons you'd like to share from your time at Codecademy that you see many product teams maybe overlook or get wrong today here in 2026, and that they can, you know, maybe implement and improve?

Yeah, I'd say typically speaking, like the biggest wins we saw in Code— at Codecademy, same with Uber, is like it was the 3rd or 4th shot at a problem. So like it's a really tempting— let me take a step back. When you're working in product development, your life is like kind of run by project trackers.

Mm-hmm.

So like it's really tempting to start a bunch of small stuff in parallel. Because it makes you look super productive in company review meetings where like you're doing 18 things and they're all on track. But like what matters is the results.

Mm-hmm.

So like in reality, like 16 of those things can fail and if 2 hit, like great, like our numbers are looking awesome.

Right.

Mistakes I think we made in retrospect is like we moved on too fast from problem spaces because like the longer you work in a problem space, like the engineers get more efficient because they know that part of the code base. Like your instincts get better, you know your numbers better. And you're getting feedback by either launching features or launching A/B tests and seeing what works or doesn't work.

Right.

Like we launched a 7-day trial at Codecademy. We saw a huge impact. In retrospect, like we should have followed that with a 14-day trial and a 30-day trial and a 10-day trial. But like, it's something about being in a space too long. Like, you know, there's, there's pressure to move on. You wanna try other stuff, but like doubling down on your winners and optimizing your winners.

Love it. Super, super good advice. Um, this has been great, Daniel. Um, we're looking ready to shift gears, shift into the, the personal rapid-fire questions. Yeah, let's do it. Yeah. All right, Daniel, what's, uh, one activity you enjoy outside of work that gets you into a flow state?

Oh, I love jiu-jitsu. I love like anything, uh, kind of like complex systems based. So I love like the chess aspect of jiu-jitsu.

Love it. What's one piece of advice you wish you had known? If you can go back, you would tell your, say, 25-year-old self?

Yeah, I think I should have, uh, explored careers wider in my 20s. So like, I think I stayed in finance and consulting probably too long. I was there for like 7 or 8 years. Like, I should have left after 5. Like, I think your 20s is really like a great time to go wide. And figure out what resonates with you. I got tremendously lucky that I found the thing I love doing on, like, my second career attempt. But, like, if that didn't hit, I would have, like, started to not run out of time, but it's like your 20s, you have no responsibilities. Like, like, it's almost when you should push the boundaries and fail. Because, like, once you start, like, needing to build a real life in your 30s and having kids and getting married, like, it's, it's much, much harder.

It's a totally different world. Yeah. Daniel, what are some of the biggest challenges you're currently facing in order to continue to grow yourself? Meaning, you know, what keeps you up at night these days?

The biggest thing I'm thinking of right now is like the coming AI coding wave and what that means for product development. Uh, I heard a good joke, which I think of every day. It's like, I don't know if like the LLM-based coding will make product managers more powerful than ever or completely obsolete. And it, like, it, my opinion, like changes a little bit day to day. I'm currently in the more powerful than ever.

Yeah.

Thought.

Yeah.

But like the, the LLMs get 40% better every month.

I know. It's insane. You're talking about like Cloud Code and, and some of those tools? Yep.

The, the individual coding LLMs as well as like the, I don't know, almost like app builder tools like Lovable or Base44.

Absolutely.

So much of your life as a younger product manager is just coordination of like teams, trackers, meetings. And if you go from an engineering team of 8 to an engineering team of 2, One, it's like, it's awesome if you already know what you're doing, but it means it's harder for people to get started in product management because there's just less of those APM jobs. Right.

Yeah. Daniel, who or what are some of the best 3 resources? These can be books, mentors, or people you follow in the space who you said have been most instrumental to your success over these last few years.

Yeah, great question. I mean, my current boss is a guy called Yukon Lin, who was my VP of Product at Codecademy, who I think is one of the best product leaders out there. And he like kind of tapped me on the shoulder and told me I could be a good PM when I didn't know what the field was. So like, I got, again, incredibly blessed and lucky that that just kind of like happened to me and I ended up going down this path. Product management is really like kind of an apprenticeship job where like you have to learn it by doing it and you learn most of it by watching the way other people do it. So like the best advice is that you find people who are legit and you work for them.

Right.

Because like, I mean, there's better product management content out there now, but even like 3 years ago, almost nothing written. was by, like, the great product leaders. Because the great product leaders are, like, rich and they retire and most of them don't write books. Like, they go own vineyards. I think after that, a lot of the Reforge content is really, really good. Like, I took their engagement and retention course, which, like, really shaped the way I think about that. They pivoted to AI. I'm not 100% sure if they offer that anymore. But, like, their content I thought was really, really strong.

Um, any other, or is that 2 or 3?

Yeah, I'd say that's kind of it. I mean, I, I wish I could give you all great, uh, tips on the way AI will change coding, but like, as of, I don't know, it's beginning of January 2026, like, it's changing so fast that I'm mostly just using the LLMs to try to figure it out myself.

Yeah, exactly. In a month from now, it'll be a different answer. So, uh, Daniel, what does success mean to you today? Whether it's personally, business, financially, life, I guess there's no right answer.

Yeah, that's a great question. Like, I think, you know, I, uh, have 2, soon to be 3 kids. Success for me is like kind of being able to control my balance.

Hmm.

I'm like super fortunate that like I can live in Austin, Diligence based in New York. Um, like we have a super interesting setup where like most of our engineers are in Hungary. So like I work super hard from kind of like 6:00 AM to like 2:00 PM. But like I also get time with my kids after that.

Right.

And like, that's a very intentional choice that like we moved out of New York to be able to like spend a ton of time with kids when they're young. I think it's a mix of that and just being able to like control my path in the future. Like, you know, I don't know how old you are, most of my audience is, but I just turned 41 and it's like, it's almost like 40s really is the start of when you start to feel like competent in a job for me. When you start to like your friends that, you know, you drank with in bars when I was younger are now like legit people in the industry.

Yeah, they're the leaders. They're the ones calling the shots and making the big decisions.

Yeah, exactly. Whereas like, you know, everyone was just like a 22-year-old in New York when I knew them.

Exactly. Totally different world. Love it. Love it, Daniel. That's awesome. So I guess last question, where can founders or anyone from our audience get in touch with you, learn more about you or your company? Where should they reach out?

Yeah, totally. So I write everything I know basically on my blog at subscriptionindex.com. It's pretty tailored for consumer and self-service revenue founders. Um, I write pretty much everything I do there. I don't do a ton of consulting anymore because I'm kind of focused on Diligent. Uh, but if you ever want to reach me or write anything, I write there weekly. We cover everything from, uh, monetization tactics, product management best practices, trials, pricing, paywalls, uh, and stuff that I've seen like work myself in the industry.

Love it. So we'll add the link to the show notes, guys. Make sure to check out daniel@subscriptionindex.com. We'll add the link to the show notes as well in the Thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate everything you've shared today.

Yeah, thanks, man.

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