Rafael Vivas left school for online advertising after seeing how much money performance media buying paid, convinced it offered far more upside than school.
AppLovin struggled to raise money despite being profitable, and Adam Foroughi's technology focus let it monetize at roughly double the rate of rivals.
AppLovin's stock fell from about a $28bn market cap at listing to roughly $3.8bn, yet Foroughi doubled down on buybacks and leverage.
The high school dropout whose relentless drive helped build AppLovin
Rafael Vivas left school at about 16 because online advertising offered more upside than a classroom, and that bet led him to help build AppLovin with Adam Foroughi. The company won through a founder-led, merit-first culture where leaders stay in the details and treat customers' businesses as their own. Investors doubted it repeatedly, and persistence through rejection and a 90% stock collapse is what paid off.
Takeaways
Merit outranks titles, seniority and school credentials. Vivas began performance media buying at about 14 while interning at his brother's marketing company. He already earned $1,000 a month online while his teacher made $25,000 a year, so he left school. He links this view to video games, which reward merit.
Investors rejected AppLovin even while it was profitable. Senra says Adam Foroughi tried to sell 25% of AppLovin for $1m and was turned down. Vivas blames the founders' untraditional background, while rivals had Benchmark and Sequoia behind them. Senra puts AppLovin at about $150bn with roughly 400 employees.
Better technology doubled monetization against rivals. Vivas credits Foroughi's relentless focus on technology. Rules and regression learning let AppLovin monetize at roughly double the clip of rival ad platforms when they competed head to head, which kept the company profitable without outside capital.
Leaders stay in the weeds instead of delegating. AppLovin runs lean with few management layers and no peer managers, and the CTO still writes code. Return on ad spend is the main metric. Vivas treats advertisers' businesses as extensions of AppLovin's own and calls customers asking them to spend an extra $5,000 a day.
Small details, including contracts, decide outcomes. Mark Rosner, former Zedge CEO and later chief revenue officer, asked for fifteen minutes before signing Foroughi's NDA and then redlined it. That taught Vivas to care about contract detail. He cites The Score Takes Care of Itself about Bill Walsh's 49ers.
Buy back stock when the market panics. AppLovin listed at about $28bn and fell to about $3.8bn, down over 90% and dropping almost every day for roughly 200 days. Foroughi bought back stock and levered up the company, which Vivas calls one of the greatest returns ever.
Frugality and persistence are the real edge. Vivas says his hobbies cost about $15 a month and he avoids lifestyle creep. Nadir Khan called him one of the most persistent people he had met. His best advice is to stay in the game and build something that outlives him.
How Lion Studios was built, and the burnout after
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Partner Cheetah Mobile squeezed AppLovin while Vivas stayed up until 4 or 5 AM managing it from the United States.
Wanting to dominate games rather than depend on partners, AppLovin created Lion Studios to distribute games from top developers, with its best partners in Europe and Asia.
Game5 Mobile, a husband, wife and younger brother team, released Happy Glass, which earned close to $100m.
Lion Studios grew to over $250m in revenue profitably within two years, drove over 20 games to number one and passed 3bn downloads.
After working nearly all waking hours from 26 to 28, Vivas burned out and stepped away to start a family despite pleas from Harold Chud and others. He returned after the NYSE listing.