RevenueCat Shipyard 2026
Digero: The Nebula for YouTube Chefs
A creator-owned recipe platform powered by RevenueCat subscriptions
The Problem
The recipe app market is broken for everyone involved.
For Home Cooks
Recipes are scattered across YouTube videos, food blogs, and screenshots. You watch a 12-minute cooking video, scribble down ingredients, and lose them in your camera roll. Existing recipe apps are glorified bookmark managers with no connection to the creators behind the content.
For Cooking Creators
YouTube's biggest food creators — channels with millions of subscribers — generate billions of views but have no direct way to monetize their recipes. Recipe apps scrape their content without permission or compensation. The people who feed millions of families earn nothing from the apps saving their work.
The gap: No recipe app treats creators as partners. The entire category extracts value from creators rather than sharing it.
Target Audience
Primary: Home Cooks Who Watch Cooking YouTube(ages 25–45)
- ◆Follow 3-5 cooking channels regularly
- ◆Cook 3-7 meals per week at home
- ◆Currently save recipes via screenshots, bookmarks, or notes apps
- ◆Willing to pay for tools that simplify their cooking routine
- ◆Care about supporting the creators they follow
Secondary: Mid-Tier Cooking YouTubers(50K–500K subscribers)
- ◆Looking for monetization beyond AdSense and sponsorships
- ◆Want deeper engagement with their most dedicated fans
- ◆Interested in selling cookbooks, equipment, or digital products
- ◆Need analytics on which recipes resonate most with their audience
The Solution
Digero is a mobile recipe app where subscribing directly supports the creators who feed your family.
Users import recipes from any YouTube video, website, or physical cookbook using AI-powered extraction (Google Gemini). They organize recipes into collections, plan weekly meals, generate shopping lists, and cook with a hands-free voice assistant. The AI Sous Chef answers cooking questions in real-time — “Can I substitute almond milk?” or “What temperature for medium-rare?” — while you cook.
What makes Digero different is the creator layer built on top. Cooking creators partner with Digero and earn revenue based on how their audience engages with their recipes. When users save, cook, share, or rate a creator's recipe, that engagement directly translates to earnings.
Monetization Strategy
Three-Tier Subscriptions via RevenueCat
Free
$0
10 recipes, 5 AI chats/day, 3 cookbook scans/month
Plus
$4.99/mo
Unlimited everything, creator exclusives, meal planner, Instacart integration
Creator
$9.99/mo
Everything in Plus + creator dashboard, product shop, payout eligibility
The 50/50 Profit Split
Digero operates on a Nebula-inspired profit-sharing model. After operating costs (App Store fees, infrastructure, RevenueCat platform fees), 50% of net profit goes to a creator pool distributed based on Recipe Engagement Score (RES).
RES Weights Engagement by Intent
| Action | Points | Intent Signal |
|---|---|---|
| Recipe save | 1 point | User wants to cook it later |
| Rating | 2 points | User is giving direct feedback |
| Share | 3 points | User is recommending to others |
| "I Made This" cook | 5 points | Highest intent — someone actually cooked it |
A creator's monthly payout = (their RES / total platform RES) × creator pool. This rewards creators whose recipes people actually cook, not just save and forget.
Why This Model Works
Nebula proved it.
The creator-owned streaming platform proved this model works for educational YouTube. Digero applies the same economics to food — a category with higher engagement frequency (people cook daily) and stronger purchase intent (grocery spending, kitchen equipment).
RevenueCat enables the infrastructure.
Webhook-driven revenue tracking feeds directly into Convex (our real-time backend) to calculate creator payouts. Entitlement-based feature gating controls access at the API level. Subscription state syncs across RevenueCat, Convex, and OneSignal for targeted messaging based on tier — free users see contextual upgrade prompts at moments of peak motivation.
Creators become the distribution channel.
When a creator with 200K YouTube subscribers tells their audience “get my exclusive recipes on Digero,” the creator acquisition cost drops dramatically. The creator is incentivized to promote Digero because their earnings scale with their audience's engagement on the platform.
Unit EconomicsProjected at Scale
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Average Revenue Per User | $5.50/mo |
| Customer Acquisition Cost | $8.00 (via creator promotion) |
| Lifetime Value (12-mo avg retention) | $66.00 |
| LTV:CAC Ratio | 8.25x |
| Gross Margin (after App Store fees) | ~70% |
| Net Margin (after creator share) | ~35% |
Growth Flywheel
The subscription revenue and creator payouts grow together, creating aligned incentives across the entire platform.
Built With
Submitted to RevenueCat Shipyard 2026.
Ready to cook with Digero?
Join the Exclusive Beta