two & a half gamers
00:18:42 · Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric
[00:18:42] S3: So Jakub, I think we've been dancing around the topic, but do you want to share a screen and show off their beautiful portfolio so we can see actually [00:18:48] S2: Yeah, the yeah, yeah. When you are starting to do so, I just want to go through like the high profile acquisitions they've made. So Evernote, we already talked about. There's FiLMiC, which is a popular professional mobile video camera app, whatever that means. Mosaic Group, bought assets from Mosaic Group from IAC four hundred Climb, yes, Robot Killer, which is a spam call blocker, then iTranslate. And then Meetup HopinStreamYard. Okay, I used actually StreamYard, which is a streaming service when I was on the Google webinar. There's Isu, WeTransfer, Brightcove, and Komoot, which is outdoor navigation for hikers and cyclists, And which was very... The last app was acquired in March 2025. Okay.
00:19:45 · Darius Mora, Jakub Remiar, Matej Lancaric
[00:19:45] S0: That's nice. So they're saying they're claiming to do about 5,000 companies in the top funnel of the acquisition. And obviously they talk to a lot of people, and then less than 1% makes it to the actual conversation stage. And this is something that also... Five years ago maybe, if you had an app that makes like some of them... Not huge, but if you just had an app that makes consistent money, there was very little people reaching out. Like at Reflectly, we did a bunch of acquisitions early on, fairly easy, and we could triple the revenue in a few months just by doing some optimization on the payroll, on the onboarding and nothing really changing the code, just some few things here and there without even driving UA, literally just on the onboarding. And that was easy. And now those same people, the same founders, they get messages every day from Bending Spoons like people and private equity and all these. Like the market has shifted significantly. Demand for apps is huge now. [00:20:44] S1: Yeah, for sure. We also see that in our sector, whereas a lot of people are actually switching from gaming to apps, because that expertise translates to [00:20:53] S2: some I wouldn't say changing or switching to apps. [00:20:57] S1: I think some friends literally just go apps. [00:21:00] S2: Really? [00:21:00] S1: Yeah. Why? Yeah. Because, you know, the monetization is kind of the same. [00:21:04] S2: Yeah, but it's like people think it's very easier, but I don't think that really applies. [00:21:09] S1: They get to get paid well.
00:21:09 · Jakub Remiar, Matej Lancaric, Felix Braberg, Darius Mora
[00:21:09] S1: They get to get paid well. [00:21:10] S2: I mean, then say they get paid well. I mean, it's [00:21:15] S1: slashing Like for we had that problem with Netflix and Netflix was poaching gaming people with one million year salaries and like, where did they get that? [00:21:23] S2: Ah, okay. [00:21:24] S3: I don't know, Darius, did you think gaming translates to app development? Because it's quite different, right? Or what's I your experience it's on that [00:21:33] S0: because I think we look at gaming of like, oh, gaming is a few steps ahead of us. And then we look at some of the obviously like gamification, but a lot of the monetization models and like payrolls and onboarding, lot of stuff, things and vents. From I was listening to you guys last episode, you're talking about how apps are a few steps ahead in some of these. From the marketing [00:21:53] S2: point of view, Darius, absolutely true. Absolutely true. Because people are definitely from the gaming industry, at least I'm borrowing the trends because it's usually the flow. It's e commerce apps games. Everything starts in like e commerce and apps. UGC came to fucking gaming like three years late. [00:22:12] S0: Usually it's like porn e commerce. [00:22:15] S2: Yeah, yeah, Yes. Okay. Yeah. [00:22:18] S0: It's where everything starts. [00:22:19] S2: Yes, that's very true. Okay, fair enough.
00:22:19 · Matej Lancaric, Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Darius Mora
[00:22:19] S2: Yes, that's very true. Okay, fair enough. [00:22:21] S1: Yeah, but regarding monetization and like, let's say design or progression is the other way around, where it's like games, apps, and that's the For instance, that's my case where like most of my non gaming clients are apps that are like, can you help us with progression? Can you help us with recurring spending, gamification systems, all these other things, which is completely natural to gaming people, whereas I show them some like gacha, for instance, like random drop chats, loot boxes, and it's like, oh, this is amazing. We never thought of that. [00:22:50] S2: Yeah, but it's not really applicable to every app out there. [00:22:54] S1: It's not, but you know, some of those get to be Duolingo. [00:22:58] S2: Obviously, it's rare than, you know, like every it's suitable for everything. [00:23:06] S3: Yeah, of course. Of course. [00:23:07] S0: We see that like, I think a lot of people where it's not suitable in the product, people will do it in the onboarding and in a payroll. So I'll see sometimes like payroll pops up. If you close the payroll, you then get like a little spinning wheel. Oh, you got 40% off the annual plan. You won this box. And like, that seems to happen as well. [00:23:25] S2: Yeah. Okay. Nice.
00:23:25 · Matej Lancaric, Jakub Remiar, Darius Mora, Felix Braberg
[00:23:25] S2: Yeah. Okay. Nice. [00:23:26] S1: Okay. So back to portfolio. Regarding downloads, do I get that right that there are multiple accounts, not just the Bending Spoons account for the apps? Because that would be my guess. Or because Sensor Tower is not that good always be tracking the scale of these giant conglomerates. Because I see only like 200 apps on this one, so I'm guessing there's definitely more. [00:23:49] S0: Yeah, they'll probably have more accounts, but we don't know what the accounts are. [00:23:52] S2: Yeah, exactly. [00:23:53] S1: So just wanted to put this as a disclaimer that this is not all easy. [00:23:57] S3: My friends at Codeway, they have many accounts that they publish under. That's not their main one. [00:24:03] S2: Yeah, you have also the, as in the top there's the Bending Spoons kind of tab and it says two seventy eight apps, but then there is a company hierarchy and then you can actually check it's Bending Spoons, Easy Tiger app, Fonts, Evernote, the Meetup LLC and all of these that I guess that they bought. [00:24:25] S1: But those are the companies here in [00:24:26] S2: the listing. Exactly. So I'm pretty sure like they have some other [00:24:30] S0: accounts Anyway, as so... And a lot of people in the app space, like if you start to do a little bit of grey hat stuff, [00:24:39] S2: a lot
00:24:39 · Matej Lancaric, Darius Mora, Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg
[00:24:39] S2: a lot [00:24:40] S0: of public accounts, one gets locked down, you can never put all your eggs in one basket. I've heard horror stories of people doing like 7 figures and Apple shuts you down from one day to another. There's nothing you can do. You can't reply, you can't explain yourself, you're done. [00:24:54] S2: Yeah. You're [00:24:54] S1: fine. This is this is very different to gaming because gaming is always usually just one account and the other accounts are just like hidden soft launches. [00:25:00] S2: Because in games, nobody does the gray slash black hat stuff. [00:25:06] S1: Because they don't dare to. [00:25:07] S2: Well, woah, woah, wait. No, no, I take that back. Nobody in Europe or US or that part. From the other side, it's very, very much happening. Just people don't know about it. Stay there. [00:25:28] S1: Next school's main account portfolio. Remini, the AI photo enhancer is pretty much the bulk of the downloads now. For last month, it was pretty much 10,000,000 out of 13 or 14,000,000. [00:25:41] S2: It's the most downloaded app from the portfolio. [00:25:43] S1: Yeah, exactly. And then revenue wise, which is only IP revenue, not ad revenue on top of it because? [00:25:51] S3: No. Clime, which is what we're going to look at later, actually has ad revenue.