Subversive
Subversive
Podcast Description
Subversive is a podcast dedicated to sharing stories from the best consumer subscription apps in the world. We'll bring you lessons for how to grow your consumer subscription business, including insights and inflection points that led to exponential growth from leaders at category-defining companies and innovative startups.
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
The podcast covers a range of topics related to consumer subscription models, including international expansion, product-market fit, and user acquisition strategies, with episodes detailing companies like Ladder's coaching model on TikTok and Canva's pricing adaptations for global markets.

Subversive is a podcast dedicated to sharing stories from the best consumer subscription apps in the world. We’ll bring you lessons for how to grow your consumer subscription business, including insights and inflection points that led to exponential growth from leaders at category-defining companies and innovative startups.
DashPass has stayed at $9.99/month since its launch back in 2018, a choice the person who built it believes is exactly right: Jimmy Liu, the original creator of DashPass.
He joined DoorDash in 2016 to run the San Francisco market, back when the company was losing $12 per delivery there, and spent his early months personally emailing every first-time customer to understand what wasn't working. Those conversations became the foundation for DashPass, and Jimmy used them to convince a skeptical leadership team to bet on subscriptions for food delivery years before it became an industry norm.
He eventually became DoorDash's Head of Product for New Verticals, and DashPass members now place about 75% of DoorDash's US grocery and retail orders.
Before DoorDash, Jimmy founded his own startup called GymFlow, an experience that instilled him with the ownership mentality and hustle that shaped his work at DoorDash from day one.
In this episode, Jimmy breaks down:
- Why DashPass's first version was unprofitable and the three levers that fixed it
- How an A/B test that kept compounding proved DashPass was working
- How DashPass helped DoorDash expand into grocery, retail, and other verticals
- Why Jimmy believes keeping DashPass at $9.99/month can maximize long-term growth
- Why DoorDash could become a personal assistant for the physical world
- How DoorDash out-executed a better-funded Uber and an earlier-to-market Grubhub
Jimmy Liu:
- Website: https://www.doordash.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmyliu2/
- X: https://x.com/jimmay
Phil Carter:
- Website: https://www.philgcarter.com/
- Substack: https://philgcarter.substack.com
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/philgcarter
- X: https://x.com/philgcarter

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