Consumers rely more and more on mobile apps as critical tools in their everyday lives. There are collectively anywhere from 80,000 to 110,000 new apps added per month to the iOS and Google Play stores combined. And the average smartphone user interacts with ~10 unique apps per day and ~30 per month. On top of that, the increasing proliferation of consumer and prosumer AI apps have been a massive boon to the consumer mobile economy - consumer mobile app payment volume grew 25% in 2024 and is upwards of $70B now (and forecasted to continue its acceleration in 2026).

I think about my own typical day as a data point for this. Wake up, check my Oura app for quality of sleep, go to a CrossFit class and log my score into Beyond the Whiteboard, ask Perplexity how much recovery time I need for a mild shoulder tweak, read the Wall Street Journal app on the way to work, go on a pre-dinner run and log it into Strava, head to a work dinner and log the wines we had into Vivino, watch the latest Solo Leveling episode on Crunchyroll before bed, and then finally go to sleep using Dark Noise for ambient sound. By the time I end my day, I’ve interacted with nearly 20 apps that I pay for (maybe more).

Source: BCV team analysis and Sensor Tower

With this explosion of app reliance and overall growth comes increasing complexity. Building a robust monetization stack can be notoriously challenging. For developers, code can be hard to write, time-consuming to maintain and full of edge cases. For product, marketing and finance teams, having a full view of business performance is hard to find and adjust in one place.

In comes RevenueCat – one of the most important pieces of infrastructure for the mobile economy you’ve likely never heard of. They’ve quietly grown from a mobile billing infrastructure tool into a Shopify-like platform powering monetization for consumer businesses across mobile and web. For market penetration context, if you have an iPhone, there’s a 95% chance RevenueCat is powering your in-app activity.

RevenueCat enables engineers to build features simply, plus provides analytics, integrations and tools to grow. Product and marketing teams can obtain deep customer analytics to make data-driven decisions and grow revenue, with tools to manage pricing, customers and experiments. In turn, consumers can easily pay anywhere and access their purchases from every device.

I’ve had the pleasure of seeing the growth of both the business and the founders, Jacob Eiting and Miguel Carranza, firsthand – having initially led the Series A while at my prior firm, Index Ventures, back in 2020. Subsequently, I was on the board for more than four years.

What was then a tool that replaced an army of billing engineers has morphed into an entire platform solving problems from payments to customer analytics, powering over one-third of all new subscription apps worldwide from OpenAI’s ChatGPT to Notion, Perplexity and beyond. Altogether, more than 50,000 apps now rely on RevenueCat to manage subscriptions, consumables, lifetime purchases, and—newly—virtual currencies, making it the go‑to platform for developers looking to monetize their product.

From a macro perspective, RevenueCat represents a picks-and-shovels play in the rapidly growing ecosystem of AI-powered consumer apps. Seeing a business accelerate three years in a row (58%, 70% and 77%, respectively) is a rare feat. This is represented by the rate of new customers integrating into the platform having more than doubled in the last six months.

The secret sauce of the business is still its founders. Co-founders Jacob and Miguel have an authentic passion and empathy for app developers. Having previously built a No. 1 app in the Apple app store, and also having worked at Apple, they created something they wanted for themselves and their friends in the developer community. And to see their maturation from two dev-first, engineering-oriented founders into the leaders they are today spanning all aspects of the business from product development to go-to-market is remarkable. I’m equal parts proud and energized.

However, this business goes far beyond consumer subscriptions. Recent launches include: Paywalls, a drag-and-drop paywall editor that lets developers build, configure, deploy and test paywalls without touching code; Web Billing for off-app store transactions; and virtual currency support, which is an increasingly popular approach to monetization in AI and gaming. Every new feature and product further illuminates the breadth and velocity of product releases we’re excited to support.

On the domain front, RevenueCat plans to expand further into fintech, solving developer cashflow constraints caused by net-45 app store payout cycles. RevenueCat also plans to roll out features that help developers acquire users, optimize conversions and boost retention – a holistic approach to running a thriving consumer app.

I’m thrilled to announce today that we’re leading RevenueCat’s $50M Series C-2 alongside friends at Index Ventures, Y Combinator, Adjacent, Volo Ventures and SaaStr Fund. A personal high note: after a brief eight-month hiatus, I’ll rejoin the board. We couldn’t be more excited to partner with Jacob, Miguel and the rest of the RevenueCat team for this next phase of growth!