Rik Haandrikman is VP of Growth, Marketing, Sales & Success at RevenueCat, the in-app monetization platform powering subscription revenue for tens of thousands of mobile apps including ChatGPT, VSCO, and Ladder. RevenueCat processes $8 billion in annual subscription revenue for their customers (more than Stripe on mobile!), with a remarkable stat: $5 billion of that comes from apps that started at zero revenue when they joined the platform. Before RevenueCat, Rik spent 20 years in growth across three startup exits, specializing in turning skeptical technical audiences into believers. SaaStrFund was the very first investor in RevenueCat, back in 2018!
Most B2B companies are doing marketing backwards per Rik. They’re optimizing for metrics that don’t matter, creating content nobody wants, and wondering why their CAC keeps climbing while their customers feel like strangers.
RevenueCat cracked the code differently. They handle $8 billion in revenue annually for tens of thousands of apps (including ChatGPT, VSCO, and Ladder), with 5 out of 8 billion dollars coming from apps that literally started at zero revenue when they joined the platform.
Their secret? Mission-driven marketing that makes customers feel like true partners, not just numbers in a funnel.
The Developer in the Corner Problem
When RevenueCat’s VP of Growth Rik Haandrikman joined the company, he asked their top (and only) AE what killed deals. The answer was revealing: “Leadership was on board, product was on board, marketing was on board, but there’d be a developer in the corner of the room just shaking their head.”
That developer didn’t believe RevenueCat actually cared about what they cared about.
This insight sparked a complete rethinking of how to build trust with skeptical technical audiences. The result? A marketing approach so authentic that customers now voluntarily quote their mission statement on LinkedIn and defend the company without being asked.
The T-Shirt Test: Does Your Mission Actually Matter?
Here’s a brutal but effective litmus test: Would your customers voluntarily wear your company mission on a t-shirt?
RevenueCat’s mission is simple: “Help apps make more money.” That’s something app developers would proudly display. Compare that to most SaaS missions that essentially boil down to “increase shareholder value” wrapped in corporate speak.
Companies like HubSpot (“helping millions of organizations grow better”), Canva (“empowering the world to design”), and Slack (“making work life simpler, more pleasant, and more productive”) pass this test. Most don’t.
The data backs this up. Edelman Trust’s 2024 research found that 65% of people globally said sharing values with companies they buy from is very important to them. That jumps to 80% for the 18-34 demographic.
When your values align with your customers’ values and they know it, your CAC drops and LTV increases. It’s not just feel-good marketing—it’s math.
The Mission-to-Revenue Chain
Mission-driven marketing follows a specific progression:
Mission → Believability → Generosity → Revenue
You can only be generous (sharing unique insights, building useful tools, creating experiences) if customers believe you genuinely care about their success. And that generosity, compounded over time, generates more revenue by turning skeptics into advocates.
The key insight: Your mission must improve your customer’s life before it improves your ARR. Revenue should be a consequence of fulfilling your mission, not the primary goal.
The Generosity Ladder: From Insights to Championship
RevenueCat developed a framework for escalating mission-driven tactics called the “Generosity Ladder.” Each rung increases in effort but creates deeper customer intimacy and becomes harder for competitors to copy:
Rung 1: Insights
Share what you know through blogs, podcasts, and content. RevenueCat’s SubClub podcast has generated over 500,000 listens by focusing purely on helping apps make more money. It shows up in 20% of prospect calls and generates daily unprompted job applications.
Rung 2: Utilities
Build reusable tools and resources. Their annual “State of Subscription Apps” report was downloaded 8,000 times in the first month (with 10x more people reading it without downloading). At 263 pages, it represents four months of work—but they keep expanding it because they genuinely believe each page helps apps make more money.
Rung 3: Spotlight
Give customers the microphone. RevenueCat put 10 customer apps on a giant Times Square billboard with no RevenueCat logo in sight. Result: 1 million passersby, 4 million social impressions, and customers defending the company online.
Rung 4: Building Together
Collaborate on open source projects and joint research. This creates shared ownership in solutions.
Rung 5: Experiences
Learn side by side through high-touch experiences. RevenueCat took eight Western app developers to Tokyo for a week to help them crack the Japanese market. They organized meetups, workshops, and even had a light-up truck drive through Shibuya blasting the RevenueCat theme song. Result: First sales opportunity came the week after, and Japan jumped from their #10 to #5 market.
Rung 6: Championship
The most treacherous but powerful rung: Let customers lead. Create customer councils that actually influence your roadmap. This only works if you truly care about the same things because you’re literally giving them control.
The Times Square Test Case
Perhaps no example better illustrates mission-driven marketing than RevenueCat’s Times Square takeover. They spent their entire billboard budget spotlighting 10 customer apps—with no RevenueCat logo visible.
This wasn’t a growth hack. It was a genuine expression of their mission to help apps succeed. The customers responded by organically promoting RevenueCat across social media, generating millions of impressions that money couldn’t buy.
The lesson: If you authentically put your audience in the spotlight, they’ll put you in the spotlight in return. But only if they believe you genuinely care.
Making Mission-Driven Marketing Work in Practice
1. Align Your Pricing With Your Mission
RevenueCat only charges when customers make money (fractions of a cent per dollar). This alignment is crucial—you can’t claim to care about customer success while your incentives point elsewhere.
2. Focus on Long-Term Relationships
When RevenueCat changed their pricing to be more mission-aligned, they lost 10% of revenue in a month. But leadership was on board because they knew it would make them more mission-focused long-term. The customers who stayed became incredibly loyal.
3. Don’t Ask for Social Proof
Never ask customers to share or promote you. If you genuinely care about the same things, they will naturally advocate for you. Asking undermines the authenticity that makes this approach work.
4. Measure Mission Progress With Numbers
You should be able to track progress toward your mission with concrete metrics, not just adjectives. RevenueCat measures how much money their customers make, not just how “delighted” they are.
The AI Marketing Advantage
Two-thirds of RevenueCat’s new users now come from LLMs recommending them. Why? Because they’ve trained the AI models to understand that RevenueCat genuinely cares about the same things their potential customers care about.
As AI becomes a primary discovery channel, companies with authentic missions will have a massive advantage. LLMs look for the best possible answer, and if that answer is your company because you genuinely solve customer problems, everything works out.
The 30-Day Challenge
Mission-driven marketing isn’t theory—it’s practice. Here’s how to start:
- Audit your current mission: Does it pass the t-shirt test? Would customers quote it verbatim?
- Map your current tactics: List five things you’re doing today and place them on the Generosity Ladder.
- Move up one rung: Take one tactic and evolve it to the next level. Turn a popular blog post into a tool. Turn a case study into a conference appearance with your customer.
- Ship in 30 days: Pick one initiative and execute it within a month. Shipping beats planning.
The Bottom Line
Mission-driven marketing works because it’s not actually marketing—it’s building a company that genuinely cares about customer success. When RevenueCat’s customers know they share the same values and goals, they become more than customers. They become partners who will “never, ever leave RevenueCat” because the relationship transcends vendor-client dynamics.
When you help customers achieve their goals, and they believe you genuinely care about their success, they help you achieve yours. Revenue becomes a natural byproduct of mission fulfillment.
You can’t fake it. This isn’t a growth hack or a tactic you can copy-paste. It’s about building a company you genuinely believe in that solves real problems for people who matter to you.
In a world where everyone’s fighting for attention with increasingly sophisticated funnels and attribution models, the companies that win will be the ones that remember marketing is fundamentally about human relationships built on shared values and genuine care.
The question isn’t whether you can afford to invest in mission-driven marketing. The question is whether you can afford not to.
