I Built and Sold 4 Apps for $500K (My Exact Playbook)

🔹 Download The Mobile Apps Flipping Playbook: https://floriandarroman.com/lotts Lotanna Ezeike built and sold 4 mobile apps for over $500K in the last 18 months. In this episode, he breaks down his complete build-to-flip playbook: how to find ideas buyers want, validate with zero budget, build lean, scale with UGC, and exit fast. If you're thinking about mobile apps or want to understand the flipping game, this is the blueprint. Find Lotanna Ezeike on X: https://x.com/lottsnomad Chapters: 0:00 - Intro 0:47 - Why Buyers Over Users 2:12 - The Build-to-Sell Mindset 4:06 - From Failed Startup to App Flipping 5:52 - What Buyers Want 10:03 - What Buyers Look For 13:32 - What Kills Deals 15:58 - Where to Find Buyers 18:01 - Finding Winning Ideas 27:14 - Validation Before Building 30:51 - When to Kill an Idea 34:25 - Building: Shareability vs Retention 41:49 - Distribution with $0 46:47 - Scaling with UGC & Ads 51:08 - How to Exit 52:37 - Pre-Exit Preparation 55:50 - Don't Get Attached 58:45 - Why Y Combinator 1:04:07 - The Chip on My Shoulder 1:07:26 - Action Step: SensorTower --- Find me on X: https://x.com/floriandarroman Find me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/florian.darroman/ Get customers from Google and AI on autopilot: https://distribb.io Join 300+ founders building with OpenClaw: https://openclawlab.xyz Website: https://floriandarroman.com All podcast episodes: https://profitablefounder.xyz

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

So when I'm seeing apps that are doing a million, two million, I don't mind taking 10 or 20k, right? Because at the end of the day, if I'm making 10, 20k a month, I know I can sell it for 200k.

SPEAKER_02 0:08

This is lots. He built and sold four mobile apps for over half a million dollars. When everyone obsessed about users, he obsessed about buyers. But he had to fail for years before actually getting there.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

I ran that for about three and a half years, didn't end up working out. I went to like a low period where I kind of thought to myself, can I actually build?

SPEAKER_02 0:26

Then he made one shift. He stopped thinking about building the next big thing and started instead building to sell. Today he's here to share his exact playbook on how to make money flipping apps in 2026. From finding ideas to validation to exit. So lots. I like you because you say most funders are obsessed over users and you're obsessed over buyers. Can you tell me why?

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Yeah, uh, for me, I just don't think I think a lot of people try to stress over the kind of users that they get itself. And I'm thinking more about the background of those users itself, and I think that's something that's actually way more important, just because you can then target something that's very important to them and get them to convert from a free to paid user. That's kind of like my main thing. So when I build up mobile apps, I'm always like there's kind of three phases, right? There's the creative, which you use for either UGC or ads, and that gets people to install that. That's the kind of the only one function of that. Then your onboarding process is meant to be where you learn about the bio of that specific user itself. And then that's when you get into from a free user to a paid user. And then your main app is then actually all about retention. Um, and that's where it's kind of like if they're convert to a paid user, you're trying to increase that LTV itself. So whenever I speak to loads of like app founders and they kind of focus about retention at the beginning, I'm just like, no, that's not the most important thing right now. Like you need to you need users for you to retain in the first place. So the problem isn't right at the end, it's probably near the beginning, and probably more about the buy of the user as well.

SPEAKER_02 2:12

Interesting. So you've sold four apps for over $500,000, which is a lot. Congrats. Most funders can't can't even have like one exit. So, what is the fundamental difference between other funders and you, how you think?

SPEAKER_01 2:32

Yeah, so I think people forget that the buyers are human beings too, right? And what people tend to do is that they build an app, and one of two things happened. Number one, they don't build an app to exit. They always kind of think, oh, this is gonna be my life's project, and yeah, it's gonna make me billions of dollars itself. And then when they can realize it's not building, but making them billions of dollars, then they think to myself, oh, let me sell now while it's failing itself. Anyone who you're gonna sell to can see that in the charts. They can see the retention dwindling, they can see the install rates dwindling, etc. etc. So it doesn't really make sense. And the issue is that sometimes they think, oh, the buyers are haters, why aren't they buying my app, etc.? But essentially you need to keep something on the table for the buyers to be able to say, okay, cool, hey, I've done UGC and I've just done just MetaRads. There's so many other ways that you can use to be able to expand the reach of this app right now, um, and then also get more promotible. So I always tell them if there's like a graph of the growth of your app, you should basically sell your app at the point where there's still like 40% left of growth itself. Um, and then that's actually where you get your highest price. So for me, before I go into a project, I always make sure to build to sell, right? If it's my life's project, I'm not selling it at the moment. But if it's like uh something I want to sell itself, I make sure that certain things I put in place just to make sure it's definitely ready to sell.

SPEAKER_02 4:05

When was the moment that it changed for you from like building the next big things to just building to sell?

SPEAKER_01 4:12

Yeah, for sure. So for me, I originally um lived in London for 20 years and I had a VC backed startup in London, which did basically invoice financing for content creators with the FinTech. I ran that for about three and a half years, didn't end up working out. And to me, I think I went through like a low period where I kind of thought to myself, can I actually build itself? And luckily for myself, I was kind of like, fuck it, let me just kind of like create mobile apps and just see what the vibe is like over there. Um, also to build up my mojo, is then she was telling I can actually build something. And luckily for myself, this is in I think it was 2022 when GPT was first commercialized. So that meant I was able to ride the wave of AI. So my very first thing I built was something called Bible Buddy, which was an AI therapist for Christians itself. And it blew up like crazy. We had like 300,000 monthly active users, it was absolutely insane. Um, and then from there I was kind of like, okay, cool. I'm getting to understand the consumer psychology about certain things, I'm able to see their conversations and what's happening and being able to essentially prompt in a way that people really actually truly like. Because what I've realized is that consumers normally say one thing itself, but how they act and how they message things is completely different itself. So I think that was kind of like the first thing for me for sure.

SPEAKER_02 5:31

So before we deep dive into your playbook, because that's what you're going to share today, I want to reverse engineer first because as you say, you think about buyers and you are into the flipping game. So I want to understand what is in the mind of a buyer, and with your experience, what kind of app buyers want to buy? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

I think I always say the kind of things that buyers want to buy is one of two things. Number one, it might sound crazy, but something that taps into insecurities itself, and it's normally like a gendered thing. So, like, what are guys um insecure about, and then what are women insecure about? And then you kind of tap into that to help them discover that at the end of the day. And I think that's what buyers are interested in because there's just kind of this innate human thing. So, for example, I know so many Riz apps that help you chat up women, etc. And I know a lot of the founders, and they make a ton of money because there's just so much guys that are not really maybe to themselves, they don't feel like they're great at talking to women generally, and it's just it's an innate human thing as a guy itself. Like you want to impress women when you talk to her, they don't even feel that confident. There's even apps for height, like there's this app called Taller, I think it's called, and it's making like 40k a month, right? And it it apparently makes you taller, not apparently from stretching, etc. But again, people are paying for these things, and these are the innate kind of insecurities that I would say a guy has on that side of things, and again, it goes over to the to the lady side of things. Again, I'm not a lady, so I can't speak for women itself, but I see a lot of apps that do this kind of um AI kind of um what would I call it? I wouldn't call it makeup, but like um filters itself. There's a lot of time that people pay for these kind of things itself. And something I've seen that's very interesting is that when there's a market where people will pay a lot of money for physical procedure itself, there's normally like a another market that's actually bigger that people will pay for an AI adjustment of it. So, for example, I've seen apps where there's apps that'll make a woman look like she has more of a, I don't know, eight-figure or quick figure, I don't know, whatever they call that, that kind of like figure itself. Um, because a lot of women wouldn't want to go and have the actual procedure because it's dangerous or maybe expensive, whatever it is. But if it's a post on Instagram, for example, and there's an AI that can do that, that's only $30 a year, they will do that because they have like less risk when it comes to that. Um, so I definitely see that on both genders for sure.

SPEAKER_02 8:27

Okay, and why do like people want to buy? Like, I mean, we're talking about the end buyer, like the person who will buy your app at the end. So when you want to flip your app, why is he looking for that? Do you know?

SPEAKER_01 8:42

Yeah, he's looking for that. Again, I'm not necessarily reading their minds, but they look for that because it's an innate thing in human beings, so it's not just a phase that's happening itself, it's something that's always going to be there. The same way dating apps have been here for 20 years itself, is because guys are always going to want girls, right? Uh at the end of the day, it's not just some phase that's happening for two to three years. So for them, they're thinking, okay, cool, can we make a return on investment um with this purchase? And normally these buyers will purchase your app for normally two to three X your yearly profit. That's kind of like the average that you'd get. So in their head, they're kind of okay, if we purchase that, can we make that money back in the next three to four years plus more? That's kind of like how they think about things. And if you're just jumping on a trend that may be only a year long, what could happen is that your revenue can decline like dramatically.

SPEAKER_02 9:40

So the app has to be have to solve a really huge pain point. Um, yeah, a really huge pain point. And probably on the side you can um go on trends for UGC, like surf on trends, but the app has to solve something that will stay for a long time, right? For sure, exactly. It needs to be something innate, like something that's innate within human beings. Okay, interesting. And what is the first thing that a buyer looks in your app when he's going to buy it? Is it like MR, profit, churn?

SPEAKER_01 10:14

Yeah, I would say it's from the four times that I've sold, they care about what is the workflow that you go through to be able to get your installs in the first place. I think that's kind of the first thing itself. They don't want something that's too complicated. Um, they kind of want, like if you go to them and say, hey, I have this UGC army of 100 UGC people that I talk to every single day, they're a bit scared of that. Um, just because there's just so many moving parts at the same time. What they really want to hear is, okay, I've got this UGC program that's automated on that side, but then I run ads. And a lot of these, again, I normally sell to like um app studios. So these are um companies that own multiple apps themselves. So to them, it's kind of like look, we already have our um ads team, or they call a user acquisition team itself. So they already know MetaRad and TikTok ads, etc. So we just want to plug in your app onto what we're already doing already. So they want something that's very simple and not too much hands-on. So that's kind of like the first thing that I see them kind of ask for. It's like, okay, cool, how are you acquiring users right now? What's the price of acquisition? And then they also ask for um something they call like um how long does it take to repay your cost acquisition cost? So it's kind of like your repay period itself. So for example, with PreScreen, one of the apps that we did, we were acquiring users for 60 cents per install itself, and then those users we used to run ads, it ads in the app. So the user had to watch an ad itself, and then I think we were making like four or five cents per user per day. So then we knew, oh, actually, it takes about 12 to 14 days for us to be able to get that return investment. So the official term is called a payback period uh that they want to look at itself.

SPEAKER_02 12:03

Where did you learn all of that? Like, was it when you did your first sale that you learned all this thing, or did you learn that before and then you just like build your first app thinking I will flip it?

SPEAKER_01 12:15

Honestly, I'm learning all the time. So even when we sold Prey Screen, I think it was in July, I believe, I learned more things every single time. So I always tell people look, like, I'm not this savant that knows everything whatsoever. It's just more so I've just gone through these periods very quickly itself where I'm able to kind of learn these things. So I definitely think from my first exit, it kind of came out of nowhere. So I wasn't thinking to sell per se, but I know I wasn't building for my legacy for sure. So if someone came to me and we're like, okay, cool, let's sell it, let's just see how that kind of goes at that point. So that's kind of like how the first one went.

SPEAKER_02 12:50

If you watch this video and you're asking yourself, like, why do I ask all these questions first? I think, and you will tell me if I'm wrong, it's really important to understand, like before you build anything, who you're selling to. So if it's for you, for example, Lots, you want to sell the app to a buyer, so you have to study the buyer before. And if you uh just want to build legacy or you want to uh build an app to keep it for like 10 years, 20 years, then you have to study uh your potential customer, like ICP, a lot before uh trying to build anything. So, yeah, I just wanted to do this parenthesis if you don't understand why we do that. The next question is um, what kills most of the deals? If like you go into due diligence, and what is the thing that they often say, nah, I will not buy this.

SPEAKER_01 13:41

Yes, I I think. Can I explain it? People are sometimes in too much love with the app, kind of like Cupid, where they're kind of like looking for the highest purchase or purchase price itself. And I've seen this kill deals over and over again because they see a buyer that's interested, and then they feel like, oh, this buyer just loves me, so therefore, let me just keep on trying to pitch a higher and higher price itself, not knowing that that buyer is currently looking at 20 deals at the same time, they don't care about you that much, they don't think, oh, your app is so special, they're gonna spend the entire time on your app. It's kind of like they're kind of coming at a price, maybe you can bump them up 10% maximum itself. Um, but normally they have a certain strategy when they come to purchasing apps. And I've seen people kind of get too excited um by that and think, oh, yeah, they've got the balls in their core. So for me, I'm a very big person of I normally take the second or third deal. So let's say five people made the offers, there's one person at the top, then the second place, then the third place. I normally like go between second and third place because I optimize for what deal is gonna close faster. That's what I care about. And normally the difference between the first and the third deal isn't that much. Like, let's say you're gonna sell an app, let's say the top deal is telling you $300,000, the second deal is telling you, I don't know, $280,000, and the third deal is telling you $250,000. It's like I always tell people if this is your first time selling an app, the difference between $250 and $300k to you, it's nothing, really, at the end of the day. It's kind of like, bro, at the end of the day, you've got $250,000. So what you should optimize for is who's gonna have the likely, the highest likeliness of closing the deal itself. So that's kind of like what I tell people. And you also have some leverage on your side because you can then tell the third place buyer to be like, hey, I've got a buyer at 300 and a buyer at 280, but if you're able to close within the next couple of days, I will go with your deal. And they will feel the pressure and be like, you know what? Hey, we've got to steal here at the end of the day, and then then you're able to close the door.

SPEAKER_02 15:54

Interesting. And last question on this topic is where do buyers hang out? Because you were talking that you kind of buyers are app studio. If I'm building an app, I want to build like a B2C mobile app, where can I study my potential buyers? Like where do they hang out or where can I find them actually?

SPEAKER_01 16:17

Yeah, I think there's multiple, I think there's like three types of buyers, right? I think there's the app studios themselves. Um, I think yeah, app studios sometimes they hang out on Twitter. I would probably say oh X. Um, so a lot of the teams hang on X just to be able to see what's out there. A lot of them also scrape the App Store to see okay who's like top 100 in the App Store itself. So I think they let they a lot of them come out inbound for sure, um, the App Studios. Then there's a second time of buyers, which are more strategic buyers, where they specifically own apps that are within the same category. Uh so for example, if a Calais, for example, was to purchase another app that was also in the health and fitness space, that'll be more of a strategic buy-in. The reason why that'll be a strategic buy is because they already have the UGC in that health and fitness space. So they can just easily input your app and then they don't have to build any new operations, that side of things. And then there's always the wild cards, like randomly, someone that you just has money and it's kind of like, hey, I'm just interested in this space, that's kind of interesting, let me just purchase that. Um at the end of the day, you tend to see the kind of people maybe more so at marketplaces like um uh acquire.com, for example, um itself. So there's kind of like the three types of bias that I tend to see. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:40

Now let's deep dive into the playbook. So now that we know what is in the mind of a buyer, we know what he wants, what would you do if you had to start from scratch today, which is something that you often do actually? How would you find an ID, validate it, build it, distribute it, and exit? So let's start by the ID. Oh, what will you do?

SPEAKER_01 18:01

Yeah, idea-wise, I like to go single player. So, what I mean by this is a lot of people sometimes they build apps, will think about apps, and their original idea comes from there has to be two people using it, right? There will be like, oh, you need to invite somebody else, and then you get the experience. And I'm not saying that that's a bad thing, but I just I just think that's a difficult thing. And I'm very lazy. I like to go for the the path that's least strenuous at the end of the day. So I think a one-player game where the user can actually get the value on their own, and of course, there can be that extra benefit if they invite someone, but definitely the one player game is one thing for me. Then, number two, I like to actually stick on a specific gender itself, um, just because women and men think very, very differently um uh about things. Um I actually know a friend who's creating a great app right now, which is literally Chat GPT for women, um, itself. And I was kind of like, what does that mean? Like, isn't it the same thing? Um, but what we found is like generally that a lot of guys generally, again, not all guys, when they chat to AI, they kind of just wanted to get to the point. They were like, bullet point, tell me the exact thing. And then when he saw some of his friends who were women, they were very like emojis were in the chats, and he was just like, Whoa, this is so strange um itself. But again, we just think very differently, um, generally. So I would normally try to target a specific gender and really try to understand what is the core thing that they want. So, for example, when I created praise screen, me and my co-friendly created praise screen, I would say there's like a triangle of faith-driven people. And at the top is the is the least of them, and in the middle is like a medium, and then at the bottom is where the most of them are. At the top, I would say it's like priests, right? People who devote their life to Christianity itself. They are not using brace screen at all. Then there's people in the middle who maybe go to church every Sunday, maybe they'll use brace screen. But there's a vast majority of people who are the bottom of that triangle who maybe grew up in a Christian household, but they don't go to church um like like often, let's say, but they still want to feel that virtue signal of like, hey, you know what? Hey, at least I still do a prayer every day itself. So those are the people that we were targeting. So we got to a point where we were doing a hundred thousand prayers every single day. So this is people who weren't praying, but like because this app literally blocked the social media apps itself and they had to pray, it became a habit that we forced that then became essentially second nature itself. So that's something that we essentially saw.

SPEAKER_02 21:04

How did you find this um this problem to solve? Because it's really specific. You're Christian yourself, right?

SPEAKER_01 21:10

Yeah, yeah, I'm Christian myself. Yeah, yeah. Um, I think it was actually originally the first app I created was Bible Buddy. And when I made it an AI therapist, because I remember back then there was like Bible GPT and all that kind of stuff, and it was kind of like you say words, and then it just tells you, hey, here's the Bible verse that relates most to it. But then when I made it more of a therapist vibe, and it's kind of like your own mini journal that just lightly related things to the Bible verse, I could tell that people were opening up more. Then I realized that technology normally hits religion last place at the end of the day. And I was just like, okay, this is a market where there are people who would love this kind of technology, but they don't have access to it per se. So So therefore, their expectations aren't so high, right? For example, if you're gonna tell someone an AI voice model in San Francisco, if it's not replying within 0.01 seconds, they're like, ah, this is rubbish, right? But the fact that, again, in Christianity generally, outside of SF, the fact that it even is even responding in the first place, they're like, wow, this is actually insane itself. So for me, I then definitely thought, okay, cool, this is a market that I know personally, because again, I'm Christian myself. Um, and also I also know the audience on that end. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 22:36

And any other ID or how to find an ID, like you were talking about uh big pain points before. Would you do that today?

SPEAKER_01 22:47

Yeah, um, I'm trying to think what other idea something I always thought about, right, is again, it's just the difference between men and women. Um, I've seen the way guys show love is very different to the way ladies show love or experience love itself, right? So I've just seen generally guys don't necessarily care too much about dates and like flowers and all that kind of stuff, while ladies experience that more, and it's to them it's like a show of that kind of um love towards them. I've always kind of thought to myself someone should build an app where you put all the details of let's say you have a girlfriend, for example, you put all the details about her, what she likes, etc., so you don't forget. Um, and then the AI then comes and then literally pings you and be like, hey, it's I don't know, been three months since you have a day, you've had a date, or sent her anything. Um, she has some flowers, click this button. And then once you click the button, it books the flowers and sends it to a house. Just something very, very simple itself. I always thought those kind of apps would absolutely print. Um, just because guys, we don't want the stress. So we're kind of like, okay, cool, let's just make this super simple itself. And because we don't want the stress, we're not as susceptible to price change itself. So I think there could be a subscription side of things, but also you can definitely upsell them on the flowers and the chocolate, etc. etc. Um, so that's something that's very kind of like interesting to me that I think could be cool. I think there's also other app ideas around different tools that we already have, but in different regions itself. So to give an example, I remember one of my friends, ChatGPT first came out, and I think originally he had to like go on a web app to be able to kind of like actually use ChatGPT. And I think it was like six months before they reached an API for the mobile app itself, or an API generally. He was making 500k a month because he was able to use an unofficial um API basically and made it into mobile app. And it and then I think it was sold it for like $8.99 a week or something like that. And I remember I swore to myself, I was like, yo, the next app that's gonna come out, I am going to wrap that thing so quick. And I think it was uh maybe like a week or two weeks later, Suno AI came out, which was the music API uh music AI. And immediately, I think within four days, created an app. And then I basically exposed my cookie to allow other people to be able to generate songs on there and made a mobile app. Because I remember Suno AI originally, I think you had to like have a Discord for you to like actually access it itself. So, anyways, I opened my account and then my account got flooded with people coming in itself. There was a point actually that when you typed into Suno, if you typed in Suno into the App Store or Play Store, you would come up number one on there. It was us and Donor AI. I remember we were competing at the time. Um, and it's kind of like when this new trend come up, and then you go to like different industries, uh different regions. So we go to South America, like the Spanish-speaking countries, for example, and make sure you optimize for certain different languages. I think there's just such huge markets in those kind of things, even in France, for example, there's like huge apps over there that just focus on that market. Um, and I just think a lot of people say, Oh, yeah, this place is saturated, etc. etc. But I don't really believe in saturation generally. I just think, yo, there's 8 billion people in the world. The amount of revenue that apps are making is increasing every single year itself. That doesn't sound like saturation to me at all.

SPEAKER_02 26:36

So you either solve a pain point, or as you said at the beginning of uh this podcast, you say that you will find like um um physical thing that you can solve with AI, for example, like theologically or like uh physically, and the last thing is the trend. So you will jump on a new trend and wrap it as much as possible. For example, when mid mid-journey was there on um and you had to go on Discord, you will wrap it up and do a mobile app with it. So that's the three kind of idea you would get. Um, how do you validate it? You have the idea, what do you do after?

SPEAKER_01 27:16

I think a lot of people go into trying to build the idea immediately, and I'm kind of like, forget building. Like what you should do is get a Figma design of what like a shareable asset within the app will be itself, and then you can get UGC creators or yourself to post about that because what people don't understand is like when people post about an app, they're never like, oh, here's exactly how the app works in every single screen. They normally show you like one, two, or three screens of it, and they may not be a functioning app itself, but people may think that it is. So you can actually just be maybe payer designer or designing yourself, whatever you want to do, and maybe pay like 50 bucks or 100 bucks just to design three screens, and then in the UGC content yourself, you make it seem like it's actually a functioning app itself, and then you're able to see, okay, cool, is there's content market fit? And this is the thing I normally have a lot of fights with people on Twitter about is that people think UGC takes you to the promised land. They think, oh yeah, if I get viral every single day, I'm gonna get to $3 million um MRR just like Halligai. And that's just not the truth. What actually happens is that UGC is meant not necessarily for virality, but it's meant to take you to a place where you understand content market fit. And what that means is that you understand what hooks work and what hooks don't. So for me, when I'm doing UGC, I'm not trying to go viral. Viral, in the sense of it, is meant to be a black swan event, something you don't understand that happens randomly itself. You can't calculate virality. Anyone that tells you, Oh, yeah, I can make you go viral every single day, is lying to you at the end of the day. It's like for me personally, if I could see a hook that does maybe 10k, 5k, 15k views consistently, I know that there's something there. So even for Prey Screen, we had content that I think on the first day did 1k views, and then the I think second day did 900 views, and on the third they did 4k views. I was like, hmm, maybe there's something there. And we kept on repeating the same kind of hook, the same kind of visuals. We got to one that's 80k views, 100k views, or okay, cool. This is it. And then we ran ads on that, and then that was actually able to give us, I think it was like 60 cents or 50 cents per install when we ran ads on that.

SPEAKER_02 29:41

So you basically try to uh iterate to find the perfect ad template. It's funny because I I had um Julia from PlayKit just before, and she was talking about that. Like you usually hire UGC, then in the contract, you try to get the right to use the content of your UGC to do the ads, and when you get a winner, you just like modify it to do an ad, actually. So this is what you will do, but with your own content.

SPEAKER_01 30:09

100%. And this is why we were able to we launched Pre-Screen December 2024, and we sold it in July 2025, right? Um, we just grew it so quickly.

SPEAKER_02 30:22

Amazing. Like, I never thought about that. Like, and I feel like even with AI, you can also do crazy things now. You were talking about the Figma design that you will do, and it will be kind of a fake app, and you can animate that, you can send it to Grok or whatever, and just do animation, text typing, for example, so it will look like a real app, which is pretty smart. So you fake it until you make it. You have your your fake app. When do you know it's a time to kill the app, like to kill the ID? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:55

Um, I would say I would say if you're not able to find creatives that are doing paid acquisition of like a dollar fifty or less. Um, so I would say this is how I kind of range it. If you're you're running paid ads on that UGC content and you're getting a dollar fifty to two dollars, that's kind of like okay. It's kind of like maybe there's something you can improve on. If it's between a dollar to a dollar fifty, that's good. If it's less than a dollar, that's amazing itself. And the reason I say this is because let's let's use rule numbers, right? Let's say I am currently paying two dollars per install and five percent of the people that install actually convert to paid users, right? So let's say two dollars per install and I get 100 installs, so I'm paying $200 installs, and then 5% of those people, that's 10 people, then convert to to paid users at the end of the day. And let's say my subscription plan is I don't know, $20 a year or on average when you mix it together. So what we're saying is that we're paying $200 and we get $200 back. It may seem like, oh, that's breakeven, that's nice, but Apple takes their 15 or 30% from that, then there's taxes from that. So therefore you're actually in a loss at the end of the day. So a lot of people tell tend to tell me, oh, I need to work on my paywall and uh and you know, increase the conversion rate from 5% to something else. But the really key thing here is that the average, do you actually know what the average conversion rate is for the app store? From you uh from free to paid? No, I would say something like three, five plus three percent. Yeah, it's about 2.7% itself. Um, the average conversion rate from free to paid um on that. So therefore, I'm like, okay, if you're already at 5%, why are you trying to optimize something that's already above the benchmark? Um, already there's probably like a lower fruit to get, right? So with that example I gave you, imagine now you get better creatives and now you're able to get installs a dollar per install, right? So remember, you're still spending $200, but now you're getting 200 people to come into the app um on that end at the same conversion rate, right? So it's like now you're getting double the people. So if you're getting double the people and the conversion rate stays the same, you should actually get double the revenue. So that's actually the important thing to work on. So when I see people saying, Oh, I need to work on a conversion, I need to work on retention, I'm just like, okay, cool, what's your cost per install when it comes to the ads side of things? And they tell me, Oh, I'm paying $3. I'm like, that's the problem. If you can't find content that can help you reduce a cost per install, then it's basically kind of like no point.

SPEAKER_02 33:56

Okay. And back on building, so you have like you validated it. Um, you think there is a potential, or will you build it the fastest possible?

SPEAKER_01 34:09

I mean, now there's like vibe code, anything, rock, there's just so many ways to build these kind of things. I would probably just put an MVP straight. Like for me, I'm always kind of like there's one or two things. It's either I do the app is extremely shareable, or the app has super high retention. And for me, I like to go to the extreme cases for each one. So when I say, for example, the app is high retention, that means of course people are coming back over and over again. Is there a way I can I can make that a force-in function? So for PreScreen, we had 60% day 30 retention. Those are Duolingo numbers, and the reason we had that is because we literally blocked your apps, so you had to come to our app itself for you to unlock your apps, right, at the end of the day. And some people are so scared of that because they think, oh, maybe the user won't like it and all that kind of stuff. But you have to remember the user installed your app from an ad, went through your onboarding, then paid for your product, and then chose to block their apps itself. The user understands that they have a problem that they're trying to fix at the end of the day. So that's something. If I wanted something to be super high retention, I would definitely go around, okay, cool. Can I block their apps or can they let or tell me what apps that they want to be blocked? And that way I can increase the retention because now it's a forcing function. Because the issue is like when you try to do stuff like, you know, send notifications to try and reel them back in. People have seen this all before. They've just ignored the notifications. Most people's phones are actually on DD, anyways. So it just it just doesn't really make sense at all on that side. Then there's the shareability side. So I create something called Magic Music, which is with a wrap around sooner, yeah. And what I found was that people don't share apps at all. So no one's kind of like, hey, you should test out this app, etc. I remember someone made this song about like I think Cinnamon, Cinnamon and their friend or their boyfriend or something like that, whatever it is. And then they sent that to their boyfriend basically. And we had a web app where you could send a link to a friend and it'll open a web view, and they can actually listen to the song for free. But then there was a big green button that said create your own song.

unknown 36:23

Right?

SPEAKER_01 36:23

It's kind of like if a friend sent to you and like, oh, I said create the song about you and how I don't know, you're bad at basketball, I don't know, whatever it is. Um, you'd be like, Oh, this is funny. Let me create my own song now. And then you click the button, you download the app, and now you may send it to your other friends as well. And everyone's just all laughing. So everyone is sharing this shareable asset, which is the song itself, not knowing that it actually is sharing the app at the end of the day. So that's something that's very interesting for me. Um, and those are kind of the two things I would look for for sure when I'm trying to build something. Not because anything else doesn't work, but I always look for the easiest path.

SPEAKER_02 36:58

So it's funny because I feel like your brain always thinks about marketing. There's like no part of like technicality or you really have to build the app so it's fast, or things like that. For you, it's all marketing.

SPEAKER_01 37:13

100%. Uh like I think like that's like 95% of the apps now, right? I mean, AI is here right now, so building is not that much of an important part, and people don't mind like a simple app with one thing. Like, I've literally seen apps where you scan a plant itself and it's able to just tell you like it like what kind of plant it is at the end of the day, and they're making like 100k, 200k, 300k a month, right? At the end of the day, I've seen apps where it's telling you the different processes that happen within a plant, it tells you photosynthesis, for example, and it's making 300k, 400k a month. So it's like once you're able to find that kind of app or that kind of angle, it's then for you to be like, okay, cool. Is there an angle that can come out with the users that they have a specific problem or something that you actually want to solve and just focus just on that? Like I keep on saying, there's 8 billion people in the world, right, at the end of the day. So when I'm seeing apps that are doing a million, two million, I don't mind taking 10 or 20k, right? Because at the end of the day, if I'm making 10, 20k a month and it's profitable, let's say 80% plus, I know I can sell it for 200k right at the end of the day if I if I do it for like six months.

SPEAKER_02 38:29

Just to come back on one thing, um what is it about blocking the app to say that? Like, what is it?

SPEAKER_01 38:38

Yeah, it's it's it's what I think about, right? It's like there's a lot of people that download apps that want to do something daily. But what happens is that life happens. You have so many notifications, you know, you wake up in the morning, you have Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, etc., and you kind of forget. So something I actually wanted to create was something, also the last app was called Prey Screen. I wanted to create something called Brain Screen because there's some people that um download, I think the app is called Elevate. I think it was like a brain training app or something like that. You do like word games or stuff like that. I was like, why don't you just block your apps and you have to do like a word or or do like a brain game real quick to actually unlock your apps itself? I think that would absolutely clean up and make so much money on the end. Because a lot of people want to train their brain, want to make sure that it on top of things, etc., train their memory, etc. You just have to have a different form factor of it. And okay, can I block my apps so that before I do TikTok, I have to actually do like a quick brain game that may take me 30 seconds, 35 seconds at the end of the day. Remember the colors, remember the patterns, whatever it is, and I have to actually beat one of them for me to actually unlock my apps itself. So I think that's actually a very nice force of function for sure.

SPEAKER_02 39:53

So you're talking about blocking other apps, not yours. For example, I will block Instagram, Twitter, and uh TikTok, and every time I open one of them, I had to pray.

SPEAKER_01 40:04

Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what we did. Okay, that's what I didn't understand. It was so crazy that we had people paying praying four times a day, um, every single day itself.

SPEAKER_02 40:14

No, but I love that. I think there is a guy you did that on uh X as well, and it was like you have to do 10 push-up every time you want to open another.

SPEAKER_01 40:22

Yeah, yeah, I remember that.

SPEAKER_02 40:25

Okay, well, that's clear now. Um, and just to complete this part, like how do you build your app? Like, what tool do you use?

SPEAKER_01 40:35

Yeah, um, so it's been a while since I blew I built apps. Um normally I just honestly, this is before the whole AI boom, right? When it comes to like a lot of the apps that can build apps itself. So normally I'll just kind of get either a developer on Upwork itself, and then we kind of build out together. And it cost me like maybe $500, $1,000 maximum on that end. But I think that's because I knew exactly what I wanted to build. I spend 90% of my time in the onboarding process. That's actually the most important part of an app, just because that's the part where you convert a free user to a paid user. I have now seen people vibe code um itself and able to launch an app um pretty quickly. Um, so there's a guy, um, he created an app called Preyalock, which is basically a similar concept to uh PreyScreen itself, and I think it's about to hit 40k a month this month itself. And I remember when he first DM'd me saying, hey, like I'm gonna do something similar to PreScreen, I really want to do this, etc. And I was just like, yeah, go ahead with it and just let's just see how it goes. And it's it's now doing more revenue than PreScreen was doing before it sold. Um, so I think there's just so many ways to go about things right now.

SPEAKER_02 41:47

Okay, let's talk about distribution. We talked a lot about that already, but let's say I have zero budget, um, I can't really invest into UGC. What would be my first step if I want to promote the app? Let's take the ID that you had at the beginning, which was um what was it again about the dating?

SPEAKER_01 42:09

Oh, the dating. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, in terms of I don't know what I'd call it per se, but it's just something for guys, so that you know you kind of like you're able to put details about your girlfriend or maybe your girl you're talking to, whatever it is, and then the app is able to remind you of things or suggest things that you should purchase for her, etc. And then the very important thing is that you have one button to click itself, and it just orders the thing to her place or whatever it is. So that's the that's the very important. I don't know, maybe at the end of this, we'll name it something at the end of the day. Um, I think or you didn't read that if you had zero budget itself. What I'll do is you've got to put a camera in front of yourself, right? You just have you have your phone and just flip the camera and just float the camera in front of you, and then being able to talk about specific things. So, what is the reason why a guy would want to do this? It sounds it sounds bad, but fear is a stronger emotion than love right in a day. So the fear of losing your girl that you actually really like itself, I would actually also tap it into that itself. So when I'm doing UGC, it'll probably be like, hey, like again, I'm not a camera person to be honest, but it would just be something like um I like me and my girl were going through X issues, blah blah until I found this app that's able to make me understand her. Something like that itself. Because what would happen is it's two pronged. Number one, guys will see that and be like, Oh shit, what's that? Because that's a shared experience within guys sometimes at a certain age. And number two, girls will see that and send it to their boyfriends and be like, Oh, see, he was able to. Something out at the end of the day. So I think that's the kind of content I'll do. And I make sure to do that like once like every single day itself. Um and be able to see, okay, cool. Is that something that's able to get a good amount of views? Again, I'm not looking for virality at all. Because what I've seen sometimes is like people post content and they think, oh, when's my two million views coming? Where's my 10 million views? And they they want someone to play violin for them, etc. And I'm just like, no, you just need to find a type of hook that's five, ten five to tenk views consistently, and that's something that definitely works for sure. So that's something that I'll do.

SPEAKER_02 44:38

It's funny, it makes me think there's this couple, they're doing Instagram, they will be perfect uh um influencer marketing for you, but they are like basically playing roles of like everything that your girlfriend says or your boyfriend say, and they they translate into what they really mean. And like this is the kind of thing you know to understand like the woman and the man in a couple, and that will work actually perfectly. So yeah, I think it's uh pretty cool idea.

SPEAKER_01 45:07

Honestly, I think I think honestly, it would make like I think the only issue with this idea is the logistics of it. Like, if there wasn't logistics to it, I think it would be a really great idea. I think the logistics part of like having to order things to someone's house, etc., that adds complexity to it. I think it definitely adds more revenue, um, for sure. But honestly, like if I had a button that I can just like if there's like an AI that just told me, hey, you haven't been on a date in three weeks. Here's this you've told us this about her, for example, and here's this restaurant itself, and I can just literally click one button, and it just the AI agent goes and books the thing completely, that would be amazing, right? Uh at the end, because for me, I don't want to have to think about going to this, calling them up, sorting these things out, or even when it comes to presence, I'm like, that's not the way I show love generally myself personally, and I'm pretty sure there's probably a lot of guys that out there like me because we're just kind of like trying to focus on other things, which can be more long-term things, but again, some women think differently, right? They kind of want to feel the now itself, and maybe some guys don't experience things the same way. So if there's a button that's gonna like, hey, she likes flowers. I don't know, Valentine's Day is coming up, just click one button, and then these flowers are being brought to you. You'd be like, fuck it, yeah, man, cool. Like, I don't want the stress, right? At the end of the day. That's a good idea.

SPEAKER_02 46:40

Okay, so you will do like all the video yourself, you will like iterate until you find the hook. You find the hook, you see that you get views every time. When do you hire UGC and how do you do that?

SPEAKER_01 46:53

For me, if I'm able to find type of content that works, I normally want to hire a lot of UGC content creators. Um, normally like five plus itself, just because I want to see is it like a black swan event where it's only my type of content that's working, or can I make different variations of that same type of content that's gonna work? Because what I then do is that within ads, I add them within the same ad set, right? So for people that don't know how Meta ads works, for example, it's that you run a campaign and within the campaign, there's an ad set, within the ad set, there are ads, right? So every ad set has a different budget itself. So if you put an ad set and say, hey, I'm gonna spend $100 a day, if you have 10 ads within that ad set, those 10 ads are sharing the $100 budget itself. So it's not $100 per ad, it's $100 shared within the 10 ads. And then you're then able to see, okay, cool, which ads here are giving the lowest cost per install, for example. And those are the ones that you know are your winners. So for me, I'm trying to how I structure things, I have like 11 TikTok accounts or 10 TikTok accounts, different creators creating really similar-ish content. And then I repost all of them onto one Instagram account, which is like my branded Instagram account itself. And then I run ads on that. The reason I run ads on that is because then it looks like a normal post itself. Um, so therefore you get to see all the comments, etc. And when people then go onto that channel, for example, they're seeing varied content itself. So they think, okay, cool, this account is live itself, which then can increase the conversion from someone viewing an ad to actually going and installing it in the first place. And that's the whole job of the ad. The ad is just to get people to install. The ad is not to get people to convert to paid users. Your onboarding kind of is. So that's for me, type of funnel. I'm kind of like, okay, well, let me focus on getting people into the app. Once I get into the app, then my core focus of that is then seeing something we call the completion rate. Completion rate shows when someone's downloading your app and seen the first screen, what percentage of people are actually getting to the end of your onboarding. You want that to be like at worst case, 85%. The absolute worst case itself. So you need to be able to see what steps in your onboarding are causing the largest drop-off. So, for example, with Pre-Screen, we had two screens actually that caused larger drop-off. I unfortunately was too liberal, let me say, and we had a gender, probably ask people's genders. And for me, you know, I'm kind of like cool, whatever. So I had male, female, and another. And then because it was a Christian app and I put other, people were like, what the fuck? What do you mean other blah blah blah? Like shouldn't be male or female, blah, blah, blah. So we had like at least like a 30% drop-off. Like I can literally see it. Like people will see that screen and then just literally come off the app completely. So I was just like, oh fuck, sorry, I forgot. So then I just literally removed that screen from the onboarding, and then everything was then more stable. So that was that was the first thing. And then the second thing is that we used to ask for the screen time permission, which is a permission that you need from Apple to be able to block people's apps. Um, we used to ask for it in onboarding. Um, and people used to like that because it was kind of new to them. So then we removed that from onboarding to after someone had actually paid itself. So that's kind of like something that we've seen on our end.

SPEAKER_02 50:24

So if I sum up, I found a pain point. Then straight away after I think before well, I validate the app with like what we talk about, the Figma style. Then before thinking about all the features that I have to build, I think about one feature that will either get share, or what is the second one?

SPEAKER_01 50:49

Um either retention.

SPEAKER_02 50:51

Retention. Yeah. When I when I get that, I build the onboarding, which is like for you the most important. And I think about how I keep these people actually in the app. Yeah. Did I sum up everything? That's 100% correct. Okay. And now that we have an app that makes multiple million a month, thanks to you, how do we exit?

SPEAKER_01 51:18

I think exiting, I think it's it's easier for me now because I've done multiple exits, but I think just talking about your journey on Twitter on X, the main thing that you can do on the end, is just talking about your journey on that. Being able to talk about okay, how you're trying to acquire users, how many users that you have so far, essentially. So that's something that I've seen is that's very, very helpful on that side. And then people are able to then see, okay, cool, what kind of apps you're building, how you're doing things, a lot of buyers see that kind of stuff. And people just love graphs, just generally, at the end of the day, especially if it's a hockey stick, right? At the end of the day. Um, and that's that's how that's actually how PreScreen was sold. I I think I tweeted about it and I was kind of like, hey, Prey Screen, we're doing, I think it was 120 or 130k or R, looking to sell, etc. And like I had so many people hit my DMs, right? Because they've seen the journey from the very beginning. So it wasn't like a new app that they had to learn about, etc. Um, and then the buyer came very quickly on that side.

SPEAKER_02 52:14

Last question on this playbook. I exit myself not long ago, and I understood like I exit a few times, and I remember that I learned the first time I exit that I actually need to have a proper Google Sheet with the profit and loss, you know, with everything before even talking to a buyer. Is there anything that I should prepare before I actually exit?

SPEAKER_01 52:37

So something I recommend, right, is that and no one whispers this to you at all, is that I remember when I did my first app, I did a lot of the logins in my own um email itself. So now when you did a transfer, it becomes an absolute pain to do so because when you're trying to transfer to another email, then sometimes Google's kind of like, what's going on? There's something happening, blah, blah, blah and then they block your account and it just makes everything much longer. So when you're building a new app, every login for every third party has a new email for that specific app itself. Um, it's just very, very important to do so because it makes the transferring so much easier. And I've been through this pain multiple times, and I just never learned itself. So if I was gonna have another app called, I don't know, remote.com, I don't know, whatever it is, blah, blah, I would have info at remote.com and every single service, the email, the mix panel, the superwall, adaptee, or so revenue cat, whatever, always the same email. So that when you would then want to do the transfer over, it's just like, oh, here's the email and here's the email password. Everything else logs into it. So that's what definitely something I would do. Because that normally takes the longest time for sure. Um, I'm trying to think anything else that I would do. Um, I think, yeah, definitely having that clean PL for you to be able to understand, okay, cool, what's the revenue I'm getting? What's the cut that Apple's taking from me? Make sure you apply for the. I actually heard this when I was in Houston. Um, make sure you apply for the Apple Small Business Program, um, where they only charge you 15%, I think, for your first million dollars that you make on the App Store. Um, just so that you can have a higher margin when you could end up selling to the to the companies. Um, something that's very annoying is that when you're building the app, especially for the first time, you're probably releasing a new version like every other day, right? When you just launch the app, release a new version. And when you want to transfer the app to someone else, you need to discontinue every single version that you've ever done. It's uh so it's it's a very tedious process of like, oh, I have to like this can you discontinue the test flight version of 1.1.1, 1.1.2, 1.1.3. You have to do for all of them. So it's like you have to basically leave the place spotless. So it's a bit kind of like crazy. Um, it's kind of like giving them like a fresh account at the end of the day, but it's something that you have to kind of like stay ahead of. Um, but um, yeah, I think this is kind of like the advice I'll give when selling at the end of the day. I think there is something about making sure that your buyer is someone who's serious because some people try to basically waste your time itself, ask so many questions. I never want to be the buyer's first acquisition itself, just because they just take so long, they're normally very scared about certain things, and they can just lock you up in a process that just takes a very long time. And for me, like I said, this is why I don't go for the number one highest price. I'm kind of like whoever can close the quickest is something that I'd go for for sure.

SPEAKER_02 55:50

Um, last one about the playbook. I think it was the last one, but this is the last one. You did it multiple times, you built, you sold. What is the most important thing in this playbook? Like something that makes you able to repeat that again and again and again.

SPEAKER_01 56:08

I think it's not getting attached to the idea. I think that's something that is very helpful. It's kind of like putting on a puffer coat um itself. It's kind of like you don't want it to be this such special thing to you that you start having this kind of warped view um around things. I'm very kind of like, hey, an idea is an idea. If someone offers me 200k, 250k to sell it, I'll sell it. Even though I think, yes, there's this possibility that it could get to it could get to million or whatever it was at the end of the day. I think that's something that really helps for sure, which then goes into the whole thing like I said earlier, which is know whether you're gonna sell this app or whether this is your lifetime mission at the end of the day. And there's no such thing as in-between itself. It's either it's your lifetime mission, like you know internally when something's your lifetime mission itself, and you know internally when it's not, and when it's not, you're probably good to sell, right? At the end of the day, and also like it's good because you get some kind of um, I wouldn't say street cred, maybe I'm showing my age a little bit, but it's kind of like you show like it adds to your resume, let me say, to be like, okay, cool, you've sold an app a couple of times, like the end of the day, you're like a trustworthy person, etc. You get to increase your network because you have to remember when you're selling an app, you sell it to one person, but you may speak to 10, right? And then the next time you sell an app, you now know 10 other people that can actually buy your app at the end of the day, and they've seen before when they didn't get the deal, right? So, to give an example, actually, by the person, the the people that bought Bible uh Pre Screen, Pre Screen was the fourth app. Bible Body was the first app. There were people who were gonna buy Bible Buddy, um, but they basically didn't end up getting there in time to be able to kind of do the purchase. They bought Prey Screen at the end. They reached out to me and they were like, hey, we heard Pre Screens on the market. Apologies for taking long the last time, and they moved super quickly. I think we closed the deal like in three days itself. Again, not something that I pre-did myself, but it's just kind of like something I would kind of believe in. The more time you're in the market, the more time you show your expertise in that market, you increase your surface area of luck. Um, at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_02 58:28

Beautiful. Before we jump to the next part, uh, I would drop the link actually in the description about this playbook, so you can come back to it, the written uh version of it. So yeah, it would be easier to get back to that. I have a few more questions because you've successfully done it solo for four times now, and I saw you are with YC now. So why combinator? Why?

SPEAKER_01 58:55

Yeah, so like me and my co-founder actually built the last app together. Um, so we met on YC Co-Founder Match about three years ago. So he was based in Canada, James, and I was based in London, and we've just kind of like building things together, and then we kind of thought to ourselves, look, we built this app, scaled it together, and we saw this thing that we saw that's rampant in multiple industries, which was that we didn't want to pay content creators a fixed fee, right? It felt kind of things weren't aligned. Like content creators want a fixed fee because they can just earn money and it doesn't matter how well the post does at the end of the day. We kind of wanted something aligned where it was kind of like, okay, cool, maybe I may pay you like a base fee, but most of the conversation comes from the amount of views that you get. So can I say, hey, I'm gonna pay $400, I don't know, per video, $200 per video, but major conversations could be like a dollar per thousand views that you get. And that way we're both aligned. If you get loads of views, I pay you a lot of money. If we didn't get a lot of views, I didn't pay a lot of money. So we then end up thinking to ourselves, okay, can we build a way where companies that can number one easily track and number two easily pay globally at um content creators generally based on performance itself. So we call it a payroll for performance, and we see it in other industries too. So a funny stat is like 50 million, 50 trillion dollars, sorry, is spent a year pay to people for the work that they do. But if you have uh if you employ that company, if one month you don't really do much work, you get paid X amount, but the next month, if you do a lot of work, you still get paid exactly the same amount. Doesn't really make sense. Like it's very, very inefficient. So we really think that generally the world is moving to a place where people should be paid on performance and outcome rather than the hours they've worked. Because the hours they've worked doesn't actually show the performance itself at the end of the day. And we're starting with the industry of creators because it's something that's already happening here, right? It's like YouTube, for example, has spent over 100 or paid over $100 billion to their content creators. They don't pay you a fixed fee every month, they don't pay your salary, is based on the amount of views that you get and what your CPM is at the end of the day, four months at the end of the day. Same things in sales. Sales, they pay you a base salary, but most of your compensation actually comes for the amount of commission that you get from the sales that you get at the end of the day. So we're already seen as peripheral in different industries, even in the e-commerce and affiliate, etc. So we want to be that kind of like um payment infrastructure to that specifically.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:36

Amazing, and that's why you're backed by YC now. You like you needed fund or did you need help? Did you need the community? Why why did you join?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:47

I think definitely community was a big part um for us. You kind of want to be part of those kind of like big dreamers um at the day who want to do the big swing. Again, I've built build this model multiple ads before. These are like again, these like I said, these were not my big swings. These weren't my like lifetime goals at the end of the day. It was more so okay, cool. Can I get revenue? Can I get some cash? Can I prove to myself that I can actually still build at the end of the day? So I think that's one thing. And I think number two is like the part amount of people that they've backed before. So for example, they backed deal, right? Deal was essentially doing payroll or global HR and payroll at the end of the day for cross-border contractors. And we essentially want to build deal, but for performance work at the end of the day. So, what's other perfect place to go than than wire combinator at the time?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:41

I understand that 100%. And this one, are you building for flipping? Are you building for the legacy?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:50

I believe is more so the legacy side of things. Um, it's not something where we know we're actively looking for buyers right now at the moment. We're just trying to find, okay, cool, what is the wedge that we start with? What are people super interested in at the moment in terms of the software that we're building? And right now we have like loads of amazing customers, right? So one of our customers is the biggest language learning app in the world for kids itself, and they use us to be able to scale their marketing um with UGC. And the reason they're able to scale is because now there's no risk, right? The risk with work of UGC before is that oh, they have to you have to pay them up front, you have to pay them the set fee, no matter how they work, right? And that was the risk you always have to analyze every single time. But now, if it's like, okay, I'm gonna pay you a dollar per thousand views. If you get a lot of views, we pay you a lot. If you didn't get a lot of views, we don't pay you a lot. Now the risk is mitigated at the end of the day. Because now you can actually calculate and say, okay, cool. If I have a $100,000 budget, that guarantees that I'm gonna get 10 million views regardless. Anyhow, it works. It could be a multitude of like 1,000 creators, it could be three creators at the end of the day. But at the end of the day, we know that we're gonna get X amount of views because the math just kind of like makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:07

Something that impressed me about you is that you're a machine, man. Like you've been building and flipping for a while now. I saw your list of all the businesses that you built even before the app. And I exit uh in July, and it's pretty hard, like you know, to get back on track, to just like get back to work, build a new thing. What is your secret for you to keep momentum? You you flip, you go to the next one, now you're just like done with flipping apps, mobile apps, and you're with YC and you're building your legacy. What is the secret for this momentum?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:48

Honestly, I think it's just a chip on my shoulder. I think that's really what it is. I think I always tell people I'm not this kind of savant that just knows everything. It's just I've been through a lot of pain itself. Like, you know, when you come out of university, for example, or your first ever business, you spent four years of your life trying to build this thing and it ends up failing, it just hurts you in a certain type of way. Um, and it that that business is also in the create economy, right, at the time. And and I I I strongly believe that a create economy is so underestimated itself. I still believe that I went about it the wrong way the first time. So that's definitely like hands up for sure. Um, but I think the chip on my shoulder comes from like in my head, I know that there's still so much room to grow, and people still underestimate this kind of industry itself. So when people say, Okay, cool, you're a machine, you're able to do this, what's actually driving me is this fire in my soul that's kind of like look, I failed before, people thought it was a failure at the end of the day, but I know that I was right to some extent. I just need to go out there and prove it.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:00

Exit that you did, like the four last flipping that you did, helped you build this um confidence that you have now? 100%.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:10

100%. I think it helped. I think the exits helped, but I think also the people I was around helped a lot more than that. Just being able to see like bigger dreamers. Again, I was originally from London, right? I lived in London for 20 years. And I moved to San Francisco officially last year, about like 10 months or 11 months ago. And it's also interesting because in London, for example, the goal is like, oh, you have a million-pound business. That's kind of it. And I'll never forget when I came to SF with some founders, and they were like, oh yeah, we know we're just making a million. Oh no, no, I don't, so I don't know. So I I asked them how much they're making, I was like, oh, is it a million? Whatever, blah, blah. And they were like, oh, a million a month. And I was just like, oh wow. Like I've never seen that kind of thing. Because obviously in London, it's like a million pounds a year. It's kind of like, wow, you've made it itself. And people were making a million a month and not happy with it. They were like, no, we need to scale much faster at the end of the day. So I think it's more so around the people that are around and also like my co-founder, right? It's like being able to have someone that you can kind of like joust with about different ideas and be able to communicate it in a way that you both understand. So I think that's something that was very important to me.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:22

If someone has stayed with us until now, watching this video, with everything that you shared today, what is the first action that you should do in the next 24 hours to actually get started or do something about it?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:39

So I would say number one, take a fresh start and go to sensortower.com. When you go to Censor Tower, look at the top apps in each category and then look for apps that are doing the same kind of thing at the end of the day. I think I look for, I think it was, I think it was in entertainment specifically. And there were like six or seven apps that were doing basically the same thing, short dramas. It's kind of like TikTok, but it's kind of like one-minute episodes itself. And I'm kind of like, yo, and they actually hire real people, like basically like C tier actors, to be able to do these kind of like a series. I'm like, yo, AI video is getting really good. Why can't someone actually maybe get writers or maybe get AI to do some script writing, storyboarding, etc., etc., and actually create their own short stories at the end of the day that is like with some kind of AI video model, maybe Cling, maybe Sora, whatever it is. I think there's just something interesting around that. So for me, whenever I get very excited when I see the same apps sharing like the pedestal on the top 20 or top 25 apps, because for me that shows me that it's oh, there's money here at the end of the day. So that's something I kind of look for.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:59

Amazing. Well, lots. Thanks for your time. It was amazing to have you. I'm sure that everyone who have listened to that will get a lot of insights and will build crazy things after that. So thank you again.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:12

No worries, anytime, and I hope no one uh um I know from my side I always talk about my negative past, but I hope no one plays the violin for me, is sure. But um, but yeah, I think there's definitely a lot of money to be made, um, for sure in the app industry.