Reach your next phase of growth.
We bring the proven strategies and systems from working across dozens of consumer subscription products, and put them to work to reach your growth goals with speed and confidence.
Moved the paywall behind the value moment and rebuilt the paid account.
“I love that he focused on ROI and came in opinionated with priorities for the company.”
Selected clients
- 24
- companies worked with
- 9-figure
- revenue growth driven at a subscription leader
- 200%+
- improvement in conversion rate and CAC at that company

Michael Berliner
Founder of Otter Growth Advisory. Michael led product growth at MasterClass through its pandemic-era boom and built PLG at Calm from the ground up. Now he works hands-on with founders and product teams to find their next phase.
How we work
A month to set the plan, then one area at a time.
Month one sets your strategy and key projects. Then we take one area at a time, three to four weeks each, with a weekly call and Slack the whole way.

Results
“I love that he focused on ROI and came in opinionated with priorities for the company. Michael's super flexible. He added value at every level of the engagement. And I would work with him again.”
“You saved us a good one to two months of iterating on process and tooling, because you supplied the whole package. Here is the growth experimentation team package. Let's apply it and start shipping. That was the biggest key value I could point to and say: yes, this was worth the money and the investment.”
“A lot of people work with consultants, and when the consultant is gone they feel like they have nothing left. This is money spent that endures.”
Michael led our conversion and pricing growth teams for several years. He is truly an artist in this domain, with incredible intuition on what is going to work and relentless execution on fast iterative experimentation to prove hypotheses quickly.
We brought Michael onboard before our Series A to lead our growth efforts, particularly around testing and experimentation. Since then we have tripled our headcount and 20x'ed our user base with millions of subscribers.
How we help
Growth Strategy & Roadmap
We find where growth comes from and where it leaks, and hand you a ranked list of what to do first.
User Acquisition
We audit your channels, rebuild the account and creative, and leave you a testing plan that scales what works.
Conversion & Product Optimization
We review every screen from install to paywall and hand you the ranked fixes.
Activation & Retention
We find the early actions that predict who stays, then redesign the first session around them.
Pricing & Packaging
We research what your users will pay and give you the plan structure and price tests to run.
Team Building & Mentorship
We assess your growth team and give you a plan for the gaps that matter.
Fractional CPO / CMO
We embed with your leadership team and run product and growth alongside you, hands-on.
Resources
Latest thinking
How do you get more people to allow notifications?
Show a primer screen that ties notifications to the user's own goal before the permission ask. Yazio cites 78% opt-in. How Runna and Headway do it.
Should every onboarding question say why you're asking?
Yes. In the copier study, adding a reason took yes from 60% to 94%. Strava gives three reasons and a privacy line on one onboarding question.
What makes subscription app onboarding convert?
From 100+ app teardowns: onboarding is the product. What each step must do, plus the patterns in wellness and health and fitness flows.
Growth notes, in your inbox
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