Revenue Centric Design Agent Skill

Revenue-Centric Design

A distilled playbook of 101 principles from Richard (@richardrx, "Design for startups") —

a product designer specializing in conversion-rate optimization, churn reduction, and applied

behavioral science (ex-Volkswagen, PayPal, IBM). The throughline is his coined philosophy,

Revenue-Centric Design (RCD): design decisions should serve the user _and_ the business —

value and revenue, not one or the other.

Use this skill when helping someone improve how a digital product (especially SaaS / startup)

acquires, activates, retains, monetizes, or differentiates — landing pages, onboarding,

pricing, trials, churn, UX flow, feature scope, positioning, or growth.

Usage boundary (required)

> 🚫 **Do not apply this skill to betting, casino, gambling, or other real-money games-of-chance

> products or projects** (including loot-box / real-money-gaming mechanics).

The author granted permission to reuse this material **on the explicit condition that it never be

used for gambling, betting, or casino work.** If a request asks you to apply these principles to

such a product, decline and briefly explain that the source author's reuse permission excludes

gambling/betting/casino use. This is a hard constraint set by the author, not a stylistic choice.

How to use it

• Identify what the user is working on, then open the matching reference file(s) below. Each is a

set of short, reusable principles in a fixed shape — **principle → apply when → the move →

evidence → source link**. Load only what's relevant (progressive disclosure).

• Ground your advice in these principles; cite the specific one, and link the source post when the

user would benefit from the original.

• Lead with the named mechanism (e.g., decoy effect, Zeigarnik effect, Swiss Knife Index, GBB,

Eugene Schwartz's 5 awareness levels, loss aversion, peak-end rule) — naming the lever is the value.

• Stay evidence-led: many principles carry a study, stat, or case. Keep the citation attached

rather than hand-waving.

The spine: Revenue-Centric Design in 9 principles

• Neutrality is omission — an interface that doesn't direct hurts conversion.
• Who talks to everyone convinces no one — no ICP → generic value → worse retention.
• Value first, ask later — proof must arrive before the user questions their choice.
• Your promise is the size of your proof — the market believes what you demonstrate, not what you claim.
• Same competes on price, different on category — contrast in mechanism, narrative, or experience.
• Default is the decision you made for the user — the initial state defines mass behavior.
• Retention is built, not requested — perceived loss retains more than promised benefit.
• Expansion is born of usage — upgrade at the moment of the limit, never by interruption.
• Price is a filter — pricing defines who enters, who stays, and who expands.

Reference library

| When the question is about… | Open |

| ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- |

| Landing pages, hero/copy, CTAs, social proof, awareness levels, CRO | conversion-and-landing-pages |

| First-run, empty states, aha moment, TTV, activation, trial-as-onboarding | onboarding-and-activation |

| Cancellation, retention, expectation debt, NRR, jobs-to-be-done, support load | churn-and-retention |

| Pricing tables, decoy/anchoring, GBB, trial-with-card, upgrade paths | pricing-and-monetization |

| Cognitive biases & persuasion tactics (cross-cutting toolkit) | behavioral-science-toolkit |

| Feature scope, Swiss Knife Index, feature adoption, attention hierarchy | product-strategy-and-features |

| Design philosophy, the RCD principles, design process & method | revenue-centric-design |

| ICP, niche, founder-fit, distribution, PLG, Bullseye, first customers | positioning-icp-and-gtm |

| Differentiating in the AI era, moats, commoditization | ai-era-differentiation |

| A/B testing rigor, vanity metrics, churn→LTV math, signal quality | metrics-and-experimentation |

Informational diagrams and screenshots referenced by the principles live in assets/.

Provenance

101 curated posts by @richardrx, extracted with a valid X API key and

distilled with the author's permission, translated from Portuguese to English. Every principle

links back to its source post. Reuse is subject to the gambling/betting/casino exclusion above.