App portfolio tactics

'Tentpole strategy': instead of marketing the core product (TaskMagic) with free info content, sell functionality via small, cheap standalone products. Step 1: build for the core customer's next problem (TaskMagic's buyers were business owners, agencies and freelancers who need sales). Step 2: keep it very simple and specific, e.g. Mail-Lead, a basic cold email outbound tool, because specific products ('cold outreach email for some sector') rank faster on SEO than a general one. Sell it to existing customers and let its own SEO attract new ones. It is its own product, not a white-label.

Analyzed Chatster (general AI chat) data, found users asking religious queries retained best, and built a dedicated AI Bible app for that segment.

Host diagnosed an addiction to building and shiny object syndrome: go cold turkey for 30 days, no new features, projects or ideas; goal $1,000 revenue. Gaurabh picked his two strongest products (attn.design and VueMagnet) and worked only on selling them.

Look for apps that look like short-term viral hits but tap a broad, lasting interest (e.g. celebrity lookalike curiosity). Buy them after the viral peak while revenue is falling and sellers don't know how to grow them. Judge on data: can we scale it profitably long-term and 20x revenue, making multiples of the acquisition price. Then run the studio's UA machine plus dozens of A/B tests a month per app to lift ARPU (the LTV/CAC loop).

Took the Cardstock sports-card scanner model and built 'basically the same app, but for Pokémon cards' (Scanémon) in 2025. Had Cursor's agent generate essentially everything; MVP done in one day.

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.

Bought a solo founder's music entertainment app at ~200K MAU (seven-figure deal, closed in two months). Hired a GM from Spotify to run it and grew the team from 5 to 15 people.

New products (Guitar, Sing, Draw) start as separate apps built by multidisciplinary 'pods' that move fast and independently, using the same early customer-discovery and growth playbooks. They grow in parallel with their own acquisition rather than being pushed from Simply Piano.

After Glam Up and Sprout, built two more apps in 3 months and grew them with the same design + UGC distribution system.

Thesis: going 0-to-1 ($1-2M ARR) needs work ethic, a decent idea and one strong channel, but 1-to-10 needs expertise across many channels. BlueThrone buys apps that found product-market fit, pays a premium for that, and scales them with a 70-person shared team (infrastructure, R&D, QA, distribution, growth, monetization, ad monetization, CFO, HR). Targets apps doing ~$400K to ~$15M a year, and only buys when it believes it can take the app to the next level. Founders can stay on or leave.

Replaced four white-label apps (pregnancy, post-pregnancy, general fitness, founder-brand) with one custom app ecosystem where users move across life phases; old apps kept running but not grown; declined two more scoped apps. Consolidation allowed a lower price for more content.

From a horizontal platform, pick an ideal persona and form factor and build a dedicated app (creator app vs PDF/ebook reader). Give each app its own brand and look so store searches for 'ElevenLabs' and for 'turn anything into an audiobook' each find the right app, while sharing a design system and tech. More small bets are being incubated.