Reflective Apps · B2C · app portfolio studio
Buy under-monetized apps and fix their paywalls instead of spending more on ads
First deal paid back in 12-18 months; 30-35 apps bought over 5 years
Workedportfolioexit-mapaywall
What they did
In 2020, with iOS 14 hurting ad tracking, compared spending money on ads vs buying apps. Bought Done (habit tracker, bundled with 5-6 other apps) at a 'pretty good price' because it was under-monetized, then improved paywalls and in-app subscriptions. Keeping the asset, user base and tech (resellable later) made acquisitions more reliable than ad spend. Repeated for 30-35 apps 2020-2025 across journaling, habits, fasting, money tracking, calendar and mindfulness (Mindfulness App to round out categories). Buying apps was usually the better use of capital, except in January when ad spend won.
What happened
Done's price recouped within 12-18 months; built a 30+ app portfolio later mostly sold to Codion
- Stage
- scale
“we paid uh a pretty good price for it, but it was quite under-monetized, um there was room for growth. We knew that there was improvement in like paywalls and in-app subscriptions that we could make”
“we acquired the app and then within sort of 12 to 18 months, we made our money back”
“Do we buy more apps or do we run ad spend? Most of the time, buying more apps was a better way to grow”
Related topics
Get tactics like this every Monday
New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
More from this episode
- Reflectly: Pay small creators in each country to read a script, then run it as Facebook adsDrove ~$3-4M ARR, but ad spend matched revenue
- Reflective Apps: Run your own creator team: train them, brief them, and automate hiring through payment~250 regular creators, thousands of videos; drove tens of millions of downloads
- Reflective Apps: Post every video on your own TikTok first; put ad money behind the ones that take offCheaper testing off-peak; breakouts pushed four or five ways
- Reflective Apps: Test each video with $10-20, move winners to bigger campaigns, let the best 1-2 take 90%1-2 evergreen videos took 90% of spend; run by one media buyer
- Reflective Apps: Once a video holds a few hundred dollars a day of ads, have creators remake itSometimes compounded; the top viral video failed to copy across 20-40 creators
- Reflective Apps: Spend about 75% of the year's ad budget in January, when installs cost halfDone hit #1 free app in the US on Jan 2-3, two years running
- Reflective Apps: Test ads Dec 26-28, raise spend Dec 28-30, and 10x it on January's first SundayGuest's playbook from his ad accounts; no separate numbers
- Reflective Apps: Put a famous person's voice behind the video as the hookOne video hit 50-60M views, then a cease and desist; AI-voice copies partly worked
- Reflective Apps: Give creators strict briefs: 10-15 second videos, 25-27 cuts, POV phone shots, trending soundsSet a quality floor across ~250 creators; results still varied
- Reflective Apps: Recruit creators with 2K-20K followers by DM, send them to a creator page, then test them2,000+ creators on the books; ~10% became regulars, 1-2% of those went viral
- Reflective Apps: Pay creators $30-40 a video, raise to $100 for reliable ones, and add bonuses for hitsKept creators loyal long-term vs pure performance pay
- Reflective Apps: Hire agencies to produce creator contentDidn't work across many agencies; replaced with an in-house team
- Mindfulness App: Sell the app to employers, using stress tests to prove it lowers staff stress