Is it possible for a consumer subscription app to raise venture capital? The conventional wisdom is that it is much easier to raise funds for a B2B startup than B2C. B2C is usually driven by performance marketing, has significant churn, and is much harder to survive in a competitive market. So, without some significant traction and a stellar team, it’s probably indeed hard to raise VC money for a subscription app. But if you have the right ingredients, you can raise. Especially now, when a lot of investors are looking for AI B2C plays. The most recent example is the Simple’s app $35M Series B. The app initially was targeting the trending fasting movement. But now it’s a more comprehensive calorie tracking, fasting, and AI coaching around a healthy eating solution.
Simple App metrics.
According to company’s CEO comments in techcrunch over this funding round Simple app currently has:
$160 million in ARR
700,000 subscribers (i.e. 228$ per subscriber)
the company previously raised $10M before the current $35 million Series B
source: https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/01/kevin-harts-vc-firm-leads-35m-series-b-for-weight-loss-app-simple/
Interestingly, if we look at the sensortower data the app is doing around $260k in gross monthly revenue, or just around $3M in annual revenue. If the CEO’s claim of $160M revenue is accurate, this means that most (like 98% ) of the revenue goes through Stripe / outside of the app store. Using web funnels with stripe or other web acquiring option become a trend in recent years, as it allows to skip Apple’s rediculous 30% commission and provides better attribution data. But 98% from web funnel for a mobile-first product is quite surprising.
Checking the data further, the company’s website has a blog post announcing the raise. But in this post, there is no mention of 160M revenue. The post claims $100M revenue in 2024 and 800k subscribers. This gives a more reasonable $125 revenue per subscriber.
Source: https://simple.life/blog/raise-announcement/
So something is not adding up. Another weird thing, the number of installs in sensortower is very low for a mobile app with $100M in revenue. So there is some magic going on. It will be interesting to keep an eye on the company and its future announcements.