When I think about subscriptions that one pays and forgets about, Netflix jumps to my mind, and I remember talking to a friend of its trajectory over the past year, with its drop (as of Jul 2026) down by ~37%.
Now, I’ve been thinking, wether all consumers feel what I feel, which is: subscription fatigue.
In the US alone, an average consumer has 5-8 subscriptions ongoing at any given time. I suspect that in Europe, we tend lower, due to simple availability scarcity, but thank God we do, because even with the current selection, it’s a choice. If those 5-8 subscriptions cost $111 per month, that can easily be 5% of your monthly salary.
Now fast forward to me: Hi, I’m Miruna, I’m a freshly launched Fractional Product Analyst, which in itself is a mouthful, but generally, I think about the numbers behind products at any point in time (case in point, wondering what could cause that Netflix drop, without having access to other data).
I have no salary right now, because I’m not a regular consumer anymore: I am a business launching off, pre-revenue, with recurring costs.
As a consumer, subscriptions are more of a luxury, a way to enjoy the money you’ve worked hard on. But when times are tough, you can cut them out fairly easily.
As a business, they all have a promise they need to achieve: are they driving value?
My subscription stack as a starting business and whether it’s still earning its place
My current stack looks roughly like this:
Stanley AI - An AI writing buddy, whom I use to make sure the spine of what I write is clear and easy to follow.
Linkedin Premium - Has been helpful with visibility, understanding more of my posts, if they perform, if they resonate, if the right people are finding me.
Squarespace - The host of my portfolio, through which I’ve navigated many existential questions such as “who am I” and “please add this cookie banner so I don’t get sued for collecting data I didn’t want to begin with”
Claude Pro - should I detail any further? My entire workflow is through it. By far best ROI.
Google Workspace - I’ve been using Zoho previously for my professional email, as a free client, but it was just not cutting it when I wanted to integrate some connectors.
They all serve a purpose. But every month I have to audit them and ask myself:
are they still promising what they originally did?
what is the cost to replace it vs. what is the cost to keep?
if I stopped paying for this tomorrow, will I notice it in a month?
I’m a pre-production product, and the goal is measured with success metrics
I try to treat myself as a product, currently in pre-production. I’m thinking of my goals in the next few months. One might think it’s obvious: get more clients.
But this is much like many products I’ve worked on, where the goal seems “so clear”: get more revenue / GMV / you name it.
Whenever I hear someone stop there, I feel like they are missing the beauty of what their product can offer: just start extending in different geographies, and you will see those metrics go up. But you’ve learnt nothing about the sustainability of your product.
For me, the growth looks different. By working backwards, we reach the following:
Get more clients ← Proposals accepted ← Proposals sent ← Discovery calls with clear outcomes ← Cold / Warm outreach.
And yes, I have a dashboard behind that funnel.
Not only is that important to understand, but it’s also important to know where you are as a product. “Proposals accepted” is a great metric, sure, but is it realistic to expect movement right now? It might be that you’ve just started cold outreach during the slowest month of European summer (it’s me, hi, I’m the problem it’s me). Your goal this month might be just sending out those cold outreach messages. Or maybe just researching who you need to speak to.
Thinking in months is where I was landing, because, knowing that, can determine if you can swap out some costs until it’s time to include them again.
Right now, I cannot expect proposals accepted to be a metric that is useful for a slow month. It might happen, but there’s a less realistic chance of it happening.
Evaluating against this month’s actual metric
As such, the focus is on number of Cold/Warm outreach.
So let’s evaluate against that:
The outcome seems simple. But the thought process is not. Those 2 subscriptions (Squarespace & Linkedin Premium) just cut my recurring cost by 50%. In a month where it's realistic that I won't use them, or where they won't move my metric right now anyway.
Or, frankly, where I can just replace them myself.
The question was never “can I afford it”, because I can. Easily so. The question was, am I focused in the right direction that makes sense right now?