Buy apps that went viral and are now declining, then grow them again

Joseph ChoiAnd Celebs, this is like find your celebrity lookalike. This one seems like it could be newer, but it it's like a little bit less of a utility than the other ones?

Patrick Stuart-ConstantYeah, no, this so this one quite a simple premise: you upload your photo and uh you get to know which celebrity you look like. I really like this one. Like this sort of app uh and that's one thing we've been good at. It's spotting mainly by looking at data um apps which may look like a short-term viral sort of success. And you know, like that's one, we bought it, and like a lot of our apps, we actually bought after they had a viral peak when they were declining. The people selling it didn't really know how to like grow it from there. And so that's where we come in and we we buy it and then, you know, we grow it quite steadily. And, you know, with that it's big it's now 6 years old, and it's bigger than ever.

Joseph ChoiCorrect me if I'm wrong, but it seems like you have the utility apps that just seem like they integrate very seamlessly into, you know, existing user behavior. Like, like a lot of these keyboard apps, like the font maker and the stickers and the keyboard, auto paste, like you kind of have they're the yeah they're like sort of basic utilities, and it makes sense why these would be more retentive, and you just buy them, operate them, grow them.

Joseph ChoiBut then you have these other apps that are like seem like they could be underpriced because someone has this huge viral moment, they do really well with the app, but then it kind of falls off, but then you figure out that there's actually some deeper value that you could unlock here. Do you feel like you have those like two different strategies for acquiring?

Patrick Stuart-ConstantYes, definitely. And at the for us, it really boils down to can we scale this app over the long-term profitably, you know. And if we see that opportunity, be it on a more retentive or less retentive app, if we can buy an app and we can 20x its revenue and make a lot of money doing it, and, you know, make multiples and multiples of the acquisition price, then it's been a good uh it's been a good investment for for us.

Patrick Stuart-ConstantAnd you know, Celebs, for example, it's a good example. It looks like a very short-term viral sort of success, you know, an app which, you know, has a few weeks in the sort of spotlight. But it sort of taps into this universal sort of curiosity, it's like, you know, there's a bit of vanity there, there's uh, you know, just simple curiosity.