Firewall · B2C · robocall blocking app
Launch separate robocall-blocking and business-number apps
Neither got real traction; one was killed by an Apple feature
Failedportfolio
What they did
Ad Hoc Labs built Firewall (robocall blocking) and Dialed (business phone numbers) as standalone apps with full launches and hardening, competing against incumbents like RoboKiller. Firewall was sherlocked when Apple shipped Silence Unknown Callers and never reached Android.
What happened
Neither worked at scale or got real traction in the App Store; now prefers adding features inside Burner.
- Stage
- Scale (mature)
- Effort
- Two thoughtful, intentional, quite expensive from-scratch builds with full launches
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · Pivots, Funding, and Building Apps That Last – Greg Cohn, Burner“We have Burner, it's our flagship app, but we also launched an app called Firewall and an app called Dialed to respectively do robocall blocking and business phone numbers. And neither one of those has worked at scale for us.”
“We did all the launch things and all the hardening and quite expensive to build apps from scratch and neither of them got real traction in the app store”
Related topics
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More from this episode
- Burner: Test a throwaway phone number by posting it in real Craigslist adsFlood of calls and 10-100x the response of the old app; confirmed a real problem
- Burner: Demo the unreleased app to people at SXSW and collect a waitlistNew York Times interview and a panel slot; $50K revenue on launch day
- Burner: Charge $1.99 upfront and price credit packs to cover phone costsAbout $50K revenue on launch day
- Burner: Drop the $1.99 download price once there is money to cover free users
- Burner: Try a freemium version of an app where every free user costs moneyDidn't scale without lots of capital; stayed a premium, paid-first app
- Ad Hoc Labs: Skip the next VC round and run the app at breakeven insteadBreakeven or profitable for 6-8 years, grew past $10M a year
- Burner: Add a monthly and annual plan with unlimited texts, calls and photosBiggest single jump in revenue in company history; subscriptions now 90%+ of revenue
- Burner: Phase out one-off credits so everyone goes through a subscriptionFairly high churn from short-term users; founder now thinks credits might have fit them better
- Burner: Capture people already searching for a second phone number instead of running brand adsSeveral million downloads a year of high-intent users; press-driven users didn't convert
- Burner: Add caller lookup for unknown numbers to the premium planVery popular and a driver of premium upsells; founder didn't expect it to win
- Burner: Offer 8 plans so short-term and long-term users pick what fits
- Burner: Let people choose on the paywall whether to take a free trialVery positive A/B test result; no numbers given
- Burner: When someone deletes their number, offer them a new oneRetains some users into a second number; 20-30% of new subs are returning users
- Burner: Add a white-label VPN inside the main app's premium planDrove a lot of premium-tier growth, but cost more to build than it should have
- Burner: Use paywall tools so the product team can launch tests without engineersFrom 1-2 paywall tests a month to several times that; about 1 in 4-5 wins
- Burner: Judge paywall tests by projected customer lifetime value from day-8 and day-30 data
- Ad Hoc Labs: Buy small apps that fit your users' needs and sell them inside your main app