My First Year at RevenueCat

My First Year at RevenueCat

One year ago today, I joined RevenueCat as a Sales Engineer.

After almost 17 years of running Chromatic – the agency I helped grow from 2 to 25+ people — I found myself in a completely different role, reporting to someone else for the first time in a long time. It was a bigger adjustment than I expected.

Letting Go of Chromatic

When I left Chromatic in early February 2024, I assumed I'd land a role pretty quickly. The sale gave me plenty of runway if I wasn't stupid, but I wanted to find my next thing fast.

I figured that building and running a successful agency would open all kinds of doors. It didn't exactly work out that way. It was crickets at first, and I was really missing my coworkers – some of whom I'd worked with for over a decade. To boot, I was still grieving mom's passing.

Most of the opportunities that did come across my bow were for other agencies, some were even competitors to Chromatic. And while I have a deep appreciation for agency life, I wasn’t sure that was what I was looking for next.*

I submitted applications to loads of companies I was interested in, for roles I thought I'd be great at – places like GitHub, Stripe, Contentful, Kickstarter, AllTrails, Headspace, etc.

Declined for every single one. That stung.

There were moments where I was sure I was making a mistake.

But I also applied at RevenueCat...and they were intrigued by my unique résumé. A company I was interested in was also interested in me.

I never planned to become a Sales Engineer. I honestly wasn’t even sure what a Sales Engineer did until a little over a year ago. But the more I learned about the role and RevenueCat's culture, the more it sounded like something I’d enjoy. The interviews were challenging, but I did enough to break through. Getting that offer felt damn good.


Why RevenueCat? Why This Role?

At this point, I already knew and respected RevenueCat. It was already powering subscriptions, reporting, and paywalls in NextGP – my first indie app – and was so damn easy to set up. I waited until the very end to sort out the paywalls and purchasing bits and it took maybe half a day for me to have it all wired up with RevenueCat. I thought surely I'd missed something. So, obviously it was good.

Side note: I have to thank Ryan Jones of Flighty for being the first to put RevenueCat on my radar all, the way back at WWDC 2019. It only took me 4 years to try it out:

"If you ever do subscriptions, just use RevenueCat..."

But I also have to tip my cap to Josh Holtz. The original Deep Dish Swift also had my gears turning about RevenueCat long before I'd considered selling my stake in Chromatic. I didn't know Josh back then, but I did love the vibe of that original Deep Dish. I remember thinking, "Damn, these are my people..." during that conference. RevenueCat was coming up left and right.

Early Struggles

The first few months were tough.

Going from Partner to individual contributor was a big shift. I hadn’t had a manager in well over a decade. I wasn’t used to wondering if I was doing a good job or whether anyone even noticed. I was used to knowing everything that was happening inside the company. I was used to having an impact every day: making decisions, shaping direction, motivating employees.

At the same time, I was trying to learn a product that turned out to be a tiny bit more complex than I realized. There was a lot to learn: different architectures, nuances across the app stores and our SDKs, loads of new acronyms, etc.

Assimilating into a new culture came with its own challenges too. Who's who here? What matters? Where are my people?

A Dose of Humility

If I'm honest, one of the biggest hurdles in those early months was my dumb ego. I came from a place where I had near complete autonomy. I felt important. Moving into an IC role made me feel some kind of way. And it surfaced some blind spots I hadn’t seen before, or maybe wasn't willing to see before. I was humbled early and often.

Finding My Place

Later in the year things shifted. I eventually found my footing with the product. I got really good at giving demos. I played a role in some of our biggest pitches. I started co-hosting some of our Bi-Weekly Office Hours. We closed some good deals.

Slowly, I figured out who was who, understood the culture, made some friends. I began seeing myself potentially being here a long time. Challenging, but in a good kind of way.

By the spring, I bumped up to Sales Engineering Manager. It felt like I was getting some of my leadership mojo back.

I now lead the SE practice, which brings together a lot of my past experience and marries it with some of the things I'm most interested in. I get to talk to developers every day, help them solve problems in their apps, and explain how all the RevenueCat pieces fit together. It's pretty awesome.

I’m excited to keep building the SE team, supporting our customers, and helping RevenueCat grow.

Year one is done. Here’s to year two. 🍻

* I did get into really deep discussions with an agency out of Boston – one that I would've jumped at the chance to work for, but alas, it wasn't meant to be.


Year One Highlights

Looking back, it’s kind of wild how much happened in one year:

  • Closed my first deal with a major Spanish football club
  • Helped pitch some of the biggest apps in the App Store
  • Represented the company and met with a bunch of customers at the first ever App Growth Annual
  • Made friends with Josh after all and took him out to the best pizza in Chicagoland.
  • Had a customer say this about me:
Thanks for reaching out — and for the fantastic demo. We move so quickly through things that we often don’t pause to appreciate what stands out. I just want to say: I’ve seen dozens, maybe hundreds of demos, and yours was on another level. Really impressive — congrats.
  • Traveled to Tokyo for try! Swift, which included a bullet train to Suzuka for my first F1 race!
  • Made some new friends at Deep Dish Swift 25
  • Attended my first BashCade and made my first trip to the mothership for WWDC25
  • More than anything though, I got to work with some extremely talented people. Engineers, marketers, PMs, executives — it’s an impressive group, and I feel lucky to be part of it.

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