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Subscription partners
Collaborating with other companies to bring Blinkist to the people
Blinkist
web platform
B2B2C
growth
Where did this come from?
Blinkist had the million dollar opportunity to partner with other companies who wanted to integrate the app into their catalogue and with that offer it to a wider audience as a perk of their own subscription. With that specific library or Klarna Premium users can use Blinkist as well.
The outcome
Via Library Ideas, millions of library users are able to use Blinkist as a perk now. The latest addition is the Library of Singapore. Now more and more Klarna Premium users join in as well. Blinkist earns a commission whenever subscription partner users sign up.
How did we get there?
Problem/Opportunity
This was a top down project. Blinkist's leadership team got in contact with 2 first potential partners who wanted to integrate the Blinkist app into their offer catalogue which would be a side revenue stream. Internally they looked for 2 people who could own this project. My colleague Carina Robinson (Fullstack Engineer and me took over. The main question was how we could connect our signup process and database to theirs. Later on another interesting topic came up: Some customers wanted to hide specific categories inside the Blinkist app. How could this be done?
After that we later on involved our Data team to set up the analytics that were needed for the partnerships with other companies.
HOW MIGHT WE
enable distribution partners to sell Blinkist as part of their bundle or perk?
and how might we make this as pleasant as possible for potential users?
Metrics
This went live not that long ago. We're mainly looking at the signup rate here as Blinkist earns a commission for every user that signs up through a subscription partner.
Solution
When I started out my colleague was still deep in another project so in the beginning I partnered up with Langdock (Claude Sonnet) to set up the basics. I talked it all through with the AI partner and in that workflow also asked how I could best support my Engineering colleague when she'll be able to join the project. I then set up a Figjam file to function as our base.
Talking the project through with Claude Sonnet: Outcome – overview and steps
User flow I create with Claude as a base for me and the engineer I worked with. With this she was able to talk the tech infrastructure through with another engineer who supported her.
Jobs to be done to understand the user better. Suggested step by Claude which made complete sense to me, so I added it.
Screenshot from Figjam: User flow, tech considerations and system check, schema overview
Market research (my Berlin Library card came in handy here)
I took then care of visualising the high-fidelity flow, finalised the UI including all error messages and translations to German, Spanish and Portuguese. Through the weeks I supported my Engineering team mate with implementation and took over stakeholder communication.
Release
Library Ideas went live in Summer 2025 with Klarna following a few weeks later. We saw signups for both pick up fast, which is wonderful to see.
Iterations
The main part of the project is done but smaller bits pop up here and there. They are more on the technical side, so I can only support with stakeholder communication or as emotional support.