GTM Sauce

Ad Hoc Labs · B2C · privacy app studio

Buy small apps that fit your users' needs and sell them inside your main app

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What they did

In talks to acquire apps adjacent to Burner's privacy/communications brand, either as features inside Burner or standalone apps accelerated by Burner's funnel. Explicitly not an app farm: 'much easier for us to add five million in revenue to our app than it would be to take 500K app and turn into a $5 million app'. Goal is bundle-driven LTV and reaching a broader audience with a higher CAC target.
Stage
mature

In their words

Pivots, Funding, and Building Apps That Last – Greg Cohn, Burner

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David BarnardSo, then you mentioned build, partner, buy. So, we've talked about the build and that's a struggle launching a brand new app and a new category and a huge investment and everything. The build and partner sounds like it's been a nice value add to the existing app, but I know you're starting to consider buying as well. What does that look like and how are you thinking about that?

Greg CohnSo, first of all, the underlying goal there is speed, right? So, it's how quickly can you build things or validate and then build things or partner in things and how much can you drive growth as you get bigger and bigger, as well as deliver complex features to users more quickly, right? It's like if you have the idea to do something, our customers would love it yesterday, right? So, yeah, we've been in a certain number of conversations to acquire apps.

Greg CohnThere's a, I think I mentioned it earlier, a little bit of a, I don't want to call it a death zone, but it's a tough sledding range where you've got some traction and you've got some revenue and maybe you even have cashflow to fund a certain amount of growth, but where do you go from there other than grind, right? We survived it. We got through any number of years that we had a very small team, we had to figure it out and know UA specialists on …

David Barnard… of apps anymore. They're buying individual apps, but the whole idea of there is individual apps that scale us their own businesses and a portfolio of businesses. But this is a really different opportunity. I'll do the pitch for you. If you're in this space and you think your app would be meaningful to the Burner audience and to the Burner brand, his number will be in the show notes, text Greg an idea and pitch him on why he should buy your app.

Greg CohnAwesome. I mean, yeah, I couldn't have said it better. Thank you. But yeah, I mean, I'm not bullish on app farms, right? And I think that by and large has not been validated by the market. It makes sense why people thought it was a good idea. And so, some very smart people were operating in that strategy. But I think I wouldn't want to own 10 $1 million apps, right? I just don't think there's that much leverage in trying to scale things that don't connect to one another, right? Whereas having multiple multimillion-dollar apps that are complimentary to one another, it's much easier for us to add five million in revenue to our app than it would be to take 500K app and turn into a $5 million app.

David BarnardYeah. Yeah. If you're trying to pump and dump, Greg is a very sophisticated buyer. That's not going to work out, but it makes sense. You're looking for the sleep stories to the calm. You're looking for secondary product market fit to build out this... And so, almost...

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Tags: acquisition, bundle, cross-sell