Make Ugly Ads to Grow Your App – Yuliya Lennox (Solid Starts)

0:00Nothing is too crazy and also nothing is too ugly. There is this famous saying like make ugly ads. I think we invented that and I believe in that 100% because people don't want the TV shots at any point that they want something that catches them on the first glance. You don't remember these skinny girls that were working out obviously, but you do remember something that shocks you and that it's completely about taking the person out of the grid of like of scrolling your uh feed. Sometimes your feed is so pretty that you need something ugly to take your attention

0:36from it. Hello, I'm your host David Bernard. My guest today is Julia Lennox. Working across some of the biggest apps on the planet, including Betterme, Replica, and Solid Starts. Julia has spent a decade doing one thing, growing apps. On the podcast, I talk with Julia about why founders belong in the marketing trenches more often. What makes ugly ads perform so well and why stable ad

1:00performance is actually a red flag? Quick programming note before we start the podcast. Julia will be joining me on YouTube live on July 30th, 9:00 a.m. Pacific, 1800 Central European time. I've heard from so many of you over the years that you love the podcast, but you end up in your car or on a walk just shouting into the void, "What about this or what about that?" So, now's your chance. Take some notes as you listen to the podcast. Listen carefully and join us on July 30th to ask Ulia some questions. Hey, Ulia. Thanks so much for

1:30joining me on the podcast today. Thank you for having me. Nice to see you again. Really looking forward to this conversation. Uh, we met in person just a few weeks ago at the WWDC mentioned party. You actually spoke on a little panel I hosted during the mansion party. It was so fun to get yours I thought it'd be great to have you on the podcast so we could do a much deeper dive. You didn't get to talk a lot on that panel was two other people and that you people were asking them questions a lot. But anyhow, you you've had quite a a career in mobile and so I wanted to go through

2:00some of your top lessons across all these different companies. So you were at Coca-Cola in the Ukraine doing like standard marketing and you got thrown into the deep end. Your first ever experience with a mobile app was BetterMe and you joined as essentially the CMO. Maybe we should start with just a little bit of what that was like and then we'll get into the the practical lessons and takeaways from all these different amazing companies you've been

2:25at. Thank you. Yes, I do think that the uh experience in better me was a shaping one but in the same time it is very similar what a lot of app founders are probably going through right now like at that time we didn't know anything and we were kind of like dipping our toes in the water and this is basically what what I see when a person launches their app they are trying they're looking at different angles they're trying to learn as much as they're they can and this is why I'm here now I want to talk about like 10 years of experience so that people don't make the same mistakes and

3:01also take some lessons that I had to live through. Some of them were painful but this would be like as you know better me is an amazing company that grew so much and I would like to talk about something that made them special and this is not looking for the uh stability in their performance marketing. They're performance marketing he heavy obviously. So when you're going into the business what I would recommend to you if for example you launch your traffic you spending some money you are like spending $100 $500 per uh day and then you see same CPMs same CTAs you see that like oh one user cost me $30 I'm

3:44getting $50. Yes I have my margin I will scale I will go further. This is bad for you actually. because you stop trying and you think oh my LTV or whatever it looks great I will I'm doing everything fine you are not doing fine you are doing very very badly because your first tries your first uh creatives your your first results shouldn't be good in any way they will be they will not be very good uh what you need to to see in your performance marking has there ever been a moment when you thought wow Wow, this is so much better than everything that I've done before where your CPAs went

4:27down, doubled down, when your amount of purchases tripled in one day. This is the moment when you know that this is actually happening for you. If it's just happening, it's not okay. But when it's happening all of a sudden with one creative, and it will happen with one creative, one concept, one something, that's when you think, "Oh, I kind of made it. I kind of understand what's what it's about now. So, never settle for mediocracy and always always be looking for those creatives that will move the needle to the points where you never expect it. You never expect it, but when it happens, you're like, "Ah,

5:06that's what you talked about." I love the framing you started off with that that uh all along the way, you know, from 10 years ago till today, there's always been change. You know, app tracking transparency was a huge change. you know, people who got really good at uh UGC in the last couple years, it was new. You had to write the playbook and and and really it seems like that that's where the outsiz returns are is not in the safe like this is what everybody's doing. It's actually writing your own playbook and figuring out the new thing where there is opportunity versus just doing what's been done before. And then I really like

5:42that the framing of of like you shouldn't seek out too much stability because that means you're not swinging for the fences and it's a swinging for the fences that really like give you those outside returns as well. Fun fact actually you you're talking about UGC's and the first people that were with UGC's in the fitness uh sphere. It did happen around 2017 and it was banded spoons that just got into the IPO. So like they're switching it a little bit and getting all their traffic

6:13and then building their company. Obviously it's not just about that but like for them finding those UGC angles first really helped them a lot. So um yeah you're right. So other than just setting the expectations of the marketing team that you should expect some big failures and you should expect some uncertainty and some you know big movements. How do you organize around this idea? And how do you find and try weird things that are going to give you that? And then also maybe there's some amount of safeguards you should put in place to not go too

6:45crazy with it. No, nothing is too crazy. And also nothing is too like if I can say it nothing is too ugly. There is this famous saying like make ugly ads. I think we invented that and I believe in that 100% because people don't want the TV shots at any point that they want something that catches them on the first glance. if you like and it is hard to do that and now that that I'm returning to like creative marketing a little bit I I have to stop myself knowing this and telling this on all the podcast all the time that please please don't make the

7:22prettiest don't listen to to Claude when they like tell you which creatives to create and then they give you a 15-second creative no don't do that always be like first second you need to understand what you're selling and what you're doing this is uh Uh this is very very important. Yes. So um guard rails should be around really knowing that you are not a marketer that is a Coca-Cola marketer that sells a brand that is 200 years old that is like known by everybody already. You are selling something that nobody knows about basically. And when you come to traditional marketing actually what they tell you first like when you're

8:02launching a brand you should a brand you should start with uh something that is super about the product. So for example you're launching juices on the market and there has been like never been a juice company on the market. First you need to talk about how good they are for your health. They they you need to talk about how they are nutrition nutri nutritionist how how you get nutrients from them and then you go to happiness and the feelings and more. So when you start and with performance marketing we are kind of always on this starting point. You should be about the product that you're selling and obviously about

8:42the pain that you are solving for the users. And if I can actually like talk about it a little bit more, I want to tell like a lot of people come to me sometimes, not a lot of people, some people come to me, one or two people have come to me and asked me a question about launching their product and a lot of times it's they come up with the idea and they're like, I've already hired a developer or I am a developer. I'm vibe coding it. I know that you are a big vibe coder, so obviously you know what I'm talking about. And it pains me so

9:13much to always tell them start with marketing first. No, you you cannot like vip code the whole product and then hope for it to be needed. Just start with marketing. Sell a PDF, sell an idea, sell something and then refund because you don't have a product. It's okay. just see if you if there are enough people even interested uh in this product because you can do something that is very interesting for me and for yourself and I feel it all the time. I'm like, "Oh, not even I my husband really likes aquariums and he thinks, wow, we will do this apps for all these aquarium people and it will be so popular." And

9:55if we did marketing because I'm obviously stopping him from chasing his dreams, many bad wife. So if if we did that, we would see that the audience is very small, that it's very expensive to bring new people to the app, and that we would never like make the uh monetization happen. So don't think that your idea is bad, but always prove it with marketing before you actually put

10:19some money into launching something. This is my super heartfelt advice that also I fall into the traps all the time. So yeah, everybody does. Well, let let me let me push back on that because I'm curious your thinking and maybe I'm just, you know, naive on this front, not having done it myself, but for an aquarium app, would there not potentially be a way to make that kind of app work with UGC? Because I imagine there's like, you know, people who are into aquariums are very much into, you know, aquarium related content on, you know, Instagram and and then and aquariums are expensive. I mean, you

10:58know, the the the fish are expensive, the maintenance is expensive, the fake plants are exp like everything about that. I I've never had an aquarium, but I've looked at them and like it's so expensive and and so that's maybe a category where you can charge a lot and then there's enough of a kind of uh dedicated niche where you could create

11:18content that speaks directly to that. From your perspective, was it just too small of an idea or do you think it's still just too hard to reach those people and you just couldn't charge enough to make it worth it? No, I I I do have to say thank you for telling me that because obviously we believed in this idea. We wanted to do it, but we wanted to do it before Claude and like I I even like came to Lovable, made my first like u sketches and stuff, but I I'm not a VIP coder at any point,

11:45so I gave up before trying it obviously. So, it is it is a good idea. We agree on that. Please don't steal it. Anyone who listens to it, please don't steal it. But uh yeah, it is probably very doable. Anything is doable. Let's be honest. But we also need to understand what is the reason for doing it. So uh if for example you want to be making like I don't know 20k per month so that you just don't have to go to work a 9 to5

12:11job. Yes, that's like an amazing idea. But if I came with that to a VC, I I would probably not have the LTV tok that would be needed to like sell the app. Could you do partnerships with uh uh with brands and sell uh specific products? Yes, probably a good idea. Yes, I will do that idea. So, thank you David very much. But what I was talking about is that uh see like but just because it was a good idea, you agreed with me. If it was a not very good idea, you would be like, "Yeah, you should try. You should try. Of course, you're like because we all want to support

12:50people around us and we would be like, "Yes, this is such a great idea." Like this is how like Eastern Europeans and American is super Americans are super different because you seem to always be supporting ideas and uh supporting people around you and in our countries it would be like who would need that? Nobody would need that obviously. So yeah, that's that's different mindsets, but yeah, so don't don't fall into traps

13:15by by having the support of your family. That's also like a a big one probably. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. And and I guess like what that what that even boils down to in your framing is even to get to that 20k a month in profit that you would be able to quit your 9 toive job unless you're just like an amazing UGC or like you know find creators that you could pay dirt cheap or find affiliates or like you know there are a lot of creative ways to do it but if it were just kind of traditional performance marketing you'd probably be having to spend 100 200k to ek out that 20k a month now. And

13:51and it would have to be a full-time job. Let's be honest. Like yeah, it's hard to it's hard to bootstrap. I mean, and maybe this is really good for people to hear who are just starting out. Like it it is really hard to bootstrap to that level. Uh especially on paid because you could just spend every dollar that comes in into paid marketing and then you're you're working full-time and not actually making any money. The beauty of subscriptions though is like if it's at all retentive, then by the next year, you should start cash flowing a little better. And so then, but then you got to

14:22think about it as like this year-long investment where you're working full making almost nothing to hopefully get it off retention in year two to make it work. So, back to kind of your original point, it's like it is it's probably a pretty hard app to bootstrap into uh and would take a lot of work. Well, talking about bootstrapping, actually the second app that I moved to was fully bootstrapped and when I uh joined it, it was doing like 35k per month in traffic with a lot of spending. So, it was quite a challenge and it actually taught me something that is also very important for all the app founders and it is don't

15:04look for a silver bullet. Don't look for a CMO. Don't look for a person that will save you from your own troubles. It will happen if you meet someone great if you're super super lucky. But most of the times if you are the founder type, you will figure it out in marketing yourself and you need to put a lot of effort into understanding marketing. You are probably a smart person that have understood much harder things in your life. And please don't think that it is it's not hard. It it it's not hard at all to understand marketing but to feel it with your own hands. This is

15:39something that every founder needs to know why I'm talking about it here because like it it was an app called Eva Learn English and at some point it was number two after Dualingo and uh it has an amazing team and um the founder he actually was super into marketing. He was on every marketing meeting. He was doing it all himself. He was thinking of creatives himself and like when I left he actually was like well I want to do it. I want to do it because it's also my passion. It's my product. I want to make sure that I talk about my product in a way that is uh like that people will

16:13understand it and I appreciate that greatly because in people when they understand that they love their product enough to actually promote it and to talk about it very very much. Uh and uh so basically you should do it all yourself on like we talked about at some point about like the first one person uh one person startup unicorn startup something like that like where you don't need anyone anymore and this is the first sphere where like I do still think that you need developers because that's too hard to understand to for any normal person sorry but I do think that marketing is something that like everybody is a marketer and you can

16:57understand it as a founder you need to understand it definitely I don't know like uh do you agree I I was thinking of an example where you're talking um the latter CEO Greg have been on the podcast a couple times and that's one of the things he talked about was that they were really struggling with marketing and he as a CEO was just like okay I got I am going to figure this out and then I'll pass it off to somebody else and I I think that you So probably something more CEOs even even of like bigger company today like not just bootstrapping but even if

17:31you're already at a fairly large company and and you're you know running the company or if you're a marketer at the company you should be encouraging your CEO or whatever that like when there's a big hurdle the CEO should probably be pretty hands-on trying to solve that specific thing and this is something I I respect a ton about Revenue Cat CEO Jacob. It's one of the things he's done really well over the years is when there is a big blocker or a new thing that like we really need to push on, he gets really involved in a way that I think, you know, shows the company this is a

18:05priority. It also like engages all his experience and knowledge and effort and like passion to like make it work. Like a founder is just going to have the passion to make it work in a way that an employee just never will. No matter how good of an employee, there's just a difference. And so, yeah, I I I totally agree and and I would say not just for bootstrapping, but you know, any CEO when you're facing a roadblock should should really jump on that and get into the nitty-gritty and help be part of the the solution. You know, it's funny when

18:36you were talking earlier about ugly ads. It reminded me that the the most kind of shocking ugly ad that I saw in probably it was probably the time you were there at BetterMe was this like really gross like belly fat ad. It's the best one. It's the best one. I love it so much. Yeah. And that that ad, I mean, I saw it for years after that, so it must have been an incredibly performant ad. It was one of those things where it really grabbed your attention because it was almost shocking to see this like illustration with this like fat just hanging off the front and and it's like to your exact

19:16point like I vividly remember that one specific ad from like a decade ago because it was so like shocking and that's kind of the point, right? The point is that it got people's attention. Um do do you remember that ad specifically and then any other thoughts online? That is the best ad ever. I loved it completely. Yes, it was invented during the time I was there. But uh it also means that you have a very good eye for it because you know uh you don't remember these skinny girls that were working out obviously, but you do remember something that shocks you and

19:48that like this is this is the thing. Yes. Uh it's completely about taking the person out of the grid of uh like of scrolling your uh feed and uh like sometimes your feed is so pretty that you need something ugly to take your attention from it. So yes, this is this is why it works for sure. How do you think about those kind of ad as you do become a brand though? So like for example I was just talking about ladder like ladder is at a point in scale and kind of what they're trying to do you know they partnered with a massive influencer actually like movie

20:25star music star and so like at their level they wouldn't want to run that kind of ad like when do you think you shouldn't be doing those kind of ugly ads when does it actually tarnish the brand or are we just too precious about brand everybody should be trying those kind of ads I I shouldn't say it Because what if my future employer I hope not to have future employers but like uh what if they see it but brand is something like unless you are something like I don't know Coca-Cola brand is something that doesn't exist and nobody cares about your brand but you and I do agree that

21:02it is very important for some brands to have the uh the integrity and to like not do certain things but you don't have to um for like let's talk about this particular uh example you can have Hillary Duff doing her thing amazing amazing ads like love it love the uh the messaging stuff will like and at that panel I actually asked them like do you think it will bring you the eye that you're hoping for and they're like well it's a brand marketing like obviously you cannot like do the ROI yet and that's the thing like Nothing brandy will ever work as good as something performative. So you don't you don't

21:48have to choose actually if you think about it with meta with everything that we are doing. You want to run um awareness ads please be my guest like do that spend your money it will not bring you anything short term. If if you need shortterm results you go performance. You you don't say your brand you say fitness app. to say uh whatever like horoscope app whatever you are doing and this way you can still do performance marketing and then uh and have your results and then you can afford brand marketing but other than that yes I I don't believe in brand marketing and I I wish all the best to ladder obviously

22:29but I don't think like you know you said like oh they're so big that they are at that point already are they though like at which point do you become so selfobsessed that you think that you are now like you know the Nike or or whatever but the Nike is playing different game like we are playing the uh monetization app subscription game and like they don't have any other choice as well like their products wouldn't sell if you were making them ugly they are selling the prettiness we are selling uh function and that is something that is different there yeah I agree generally as far as I think

23:08folks are way too precious to some brand and think it matters and like you know you're you're just making 10K a month on your little side project and you're like oh yeah like I would never do an ugly ad and and like you said yeah and then like oh my branding is too important and I want to make sure the colors in the ad align with the colors of the app and like and and I love how you pointed out like don't don't take Quad's advice because Claude is just going to tell you like brand matters and everything needs to be pretty and the colors need to

23:35align and like all this kind of stuff. Uh but I do think there is a transition point and and with latter even though he did say you know it's it's tough to you know determine the exact payoff but but you know they took a huge bet signing Duff uh as a influencer for the app and it has already paid off and he shared in the panel that like you know almost immediately they saw a pretty big influx and so at some point like maybe maybe it's okay to to let yourself, you know, if if it's performing and if it's working to to let yourself kind of make

24:12that transition, but but generally I do think we are all too precious about that. So like it it's good to have that kind of push back and then then you just have to justify too. Then you have to like why does brand matter and what like how is this going to pay off and are we sure it's going to pay off and and you have to ask yourself those kind of questions where if you just default to like oh no you know we need to be careful with the brand then you're having to justify the performance marketing and it should really be the opposite. I can give you couple of

24:42examples here but like one of the big mistakes that I did like regarding the brand branding in solid starts for example I came there and I was like nobody cares like nobody thinkies but for some people when the brand is big enough and solid starts is a very big brand they care a lot about what it represents and this is where it is like when you're talking about babies when you're talking about like real doctors and I was like AI baby not AI babies as in real babies but babies made out fruit. We are about feeding babies. We are like fruit babies are super popular on Instagram. I should definitely do an

25:16ad like that. And then we saw some feedback of like should we trust a company that invented this like to to feed our babies. And then like okay yes we will do brand now because that's just you know I I I understand that it's like it's it's no big deal for you know in in the grand scheme of things. the universe wouldn't collapse if you do one ad that isn't like in your brand voice of course but in the same time yeah if if you are something that is selling uh trucks maybe it's not good to sell it with uh I don't know uh AI strawberries I don't know whatever so

25:56basically like see what you're selling and if uh if making ugly um applies to it but also don't assume that it doesn't apply just because you love your brand so much the brand that only exists in the heads of you, your family, and some of your employers employees, not even all of them. Yeah. Well, that that was a really fun digression. I I think people will enjoy

26:18that that push back on on both sides. Um, so what was the next philosophy you learned at EBAT? This one is actually very uh very applicable now when you see that a lot of people they don't use their strengths like couple of people came to me at some point and they were from different countries they were from Lithuania they were from India they were from like different markets and they're like oh help us grow and what they want to do first is to go America of course let's let's start with the US market because it it has like a lot of uh cash value. It is right but in the same time

26:58you should look first at what you you know best. So Babel uh a great example uh what's their name? Uh Blinkist also like they started with Germany and they are super big in Germany and they're getting the same results as Germany in Germany as some people are getting in the US which is like what 10 times bigger. So if you have a uh benefit of knowing some local market better, definitely use it because this is what Eva did. Like it was very good in speaking their native language and they started this like super funny, super whimsical app that everybody in their local country liked. Then they grew it

27:41to all their other languages. But the actual lesson here is not that. The actual lesson here is the world is really really big and with current AI when you can translate any service like in 3 hours into any languages why don't you try different languages why don't you try localization because this is something that can like double your income just by trying let's be honest and there are markets that like if you go to conferences you know that everybody is talking about like oh go to Japan they're so uh so rich and uh they will bring you a lot of money. It's kind of hard. It's kind of hard to go to

28:20Japan because they have very like local things but at the same time there are a lot of countries that are that are just as Americanized Europeanized can even say that but it's okay. Yeah. So that where you can find a lot of uh benefits and uh for yourself. So localization is something I would definitely bet on if I had to join any company. And I see it like also happening in a lot of companies when when one door closes, you know, the other ones open. Uh what we found, for example, in my last company, it was that like testing your ads, testing your ads is super important. You need to test

28:58like 500 ads per per week. And if you do that uh on US CPMs, you will definitely go broke. But if you do that with countries that have the similar uh similar conversion rates like I don't know Indonesia and you will see the same results for the same tests for $10 a day instead of $1,000 per day. This is where you can actually help yourself scale in the US as well by testing in different

29:27locals. That's for sure. Any any top um fails or lessons from localization? I know and you kind of hinted at it with Japan. Uh, and we've talked about this on the podcast a few times now that certain markets you really do have to kind of understand the local customs. Like they need to feel like you understand them. You almost in Japan almost have to have a local like partner or even a partner agency to to not just localize the text in the app, but localize the kind of images you use, the kind of payroll you do. Uh, so any

30:02other top lessons on localization? I I I can say that in replica we did make a big bet on Japan. We even have like person that knew Japanese in the in the team and we we like did the actual localization like the culturalization of the app didn't work in any way because uh it is harder than we think but in the same time there are like so many good examples like you wouldn't think like

30:31Turkey is the biggest market right now. Who would have thought like who thinks about Turkey when they are not going on a vacation? But still it it is converging in a lot of ways. So don't go hard. Don't go go countries you cannot understand obviously but don't go hard on countries you cannot understand if it's not like something like I would never probably be able to understand Taiwanese people for example but uh in the same time um I sell I sell stuff there but I do understand that it's a fraction of what it could be if I actually understand the culture and it's okay and you know uh I don't know if you

31:09have something to say here but I want to also like add from my personal experience and like why I came to the states in the first place was to learn different cultures of the people and uh here you can actually see how different people are but in the same time how sane people are for example you wouldn't think but like my friend is Korean and she has the same like childhood traumas as me because like the parents are you know the same level of harshness and like it it is easier for example for us to talk to people from from Central America for example because they also have you know

31:45they they didn't have this happy childhood that everybody thinks about. So especially when you're working like to solve people's problems like all the problems come from childhood. So like understanding those small things like this is this is kind of important. Yes. That that's why that's my main lesson on localization. Don't even try it but also try it very very much. I love the way you frame things and that that's a great lesson too as far as like don't just look for the differences, look for the similarities. That's that's a really great framing is to go in and understand how those countries are similar, not just how they're different. Um, so after

32:24EBA, you ended up at PA, the parent company of Flow, which I think everybody listening to the podcast should know. It's one of the biggest apps in the world right now. Uh, what are some of the lessons you you learned there at Pula? What I learned there was more about the culture and like how you build big companies. And um the thing I want to say here um is actually why on this podcast as well is that they have a very good culture of sharing things. So you would have a lot of companies coming together and just sharing like today we did this test this test performed this

33:01way. you can like steal this test and uh localize it and like uh put it in your app and see how it works and sharing doesn't mean that you are losing something. It always means that you are gaining something. So I would actually tell to more marketers like share your wins. It doesn't mean that everybody will get the same results because no matter what we are sharing, no matter how we are doing it, it's so much different from industry to industry. It just keeps your ju creative juices flowing. And this is what we actually need because uh I I think that like at some point someone somewhere uh added a

33:45blink on the continue button, you know, the the like the Yeah. And and turned out it increases your conversion. And uh these ideas that don't come to just one hat and this is why my my dream goal for like this is why I this is what I talk about uh with every revenue catch representative out there that we should have like a camp for marketers where we work on one problem and like actually try to solve it because this will be beneficial for

34:15every company actually in the world. This is this is why we are like not failing but we are as as a uh industry we are not growing fast enough because everybody is so silent. If we were doing it all together if like every company in America as well like if we were trying to erase it all to like to to grow it all together it will be much bigger results. But of course, of course, there are so many people that come to presentations and don't show the be their best creatives because no, don't show like like don't show your best uh presentations like your best experiments. That is Like you

34:54shouldn't do that. You should share and u the faster we we iterate the faster we grow. That that is the but also just have a peer group. just have a peer group where you can like set up this weekly calls and say, "Oh, I tested this. How did it go?" Because we met at the mansion party and one of the things about it was that there were no nobody selling anything and you could actually talk about like with app founders and it is such a great conversation where when you actually get deep into into like what works, what doesn't work. Like you see like people on the on the bleachers

35:30just you know just roasting each other's apps and it is it is amazing experience as well because how often do you see someone who who like knows what they're talking about actually take a look at what you're doing because no company has enough budget to to hire two CMOs. Let's call it that. Yeah. So that that's my

35:50like uh main thing. Just just share. It's okay. Uh, I I love that idea of of doing some kind of like summits or or camp or I even the camp framing is fun. Like rent a rent a huge Airbnb and bring 15 people from different apps in and solve some major problems over over a weekend and then share share some of the results with with the rest of the industry. That's fantastic. I'll I'll uh run that up the chain and see if Revy Cat can be the one to to do something like that. Sub club sponsored

36:24marketer camp and and do exactly that. But but that was kind of the point of the mansion party and a lot of the events that we do try and do is to get people together and have those conversations. But to your point, you know, finding those kind of communities across the industry and it is tough when you know you obviously wouldn't want to share your best stuff with your competitor, but they probably see it anyway because they can just look at the meta ad. But, you know, find three or four apps that that are adjacent to yours that where you can share and and that can be a really powerful thing. And

36:56and what was cool with PTA is because it was portfolio company that had a lot of different apps, you were all kind of aligned to make money for PTA and so you could share those things more easily amongst each other. Um, and so that's a really cool thing. What what was something else you learned with your time at Alta? So there are like and as as a big company obviously they they have the budgets to hire like really good consultants and you know we did have people come to to the company talking about like uh marketing at a different level and like people that are thinking ahead and this is what I

37:34noticed also about some other companies that I worked in like Hicksfield like Replica like like Paul as well they have ideas that will be working in 5 years from now. So it was 2021 when I was there and at that point there there was no no chip or like some chip it was chip 2.0 only in America as well and then there was like very very basic AI and at that point they started Zing which is like a AI training app. Uh when like and when you think about it there was nothing there. It was obviously like a scam, not scam like but they were like

38:16okay in 5 years AI will be there. We will be ready. We will be already positioned on the market as an AI company and it will be okay. The same thing with like Hixold when I talked to the founder of it like and he told me like in like next year AI agents will be a thing. I'm like I don't know what AI agents are but if you say so okay. And what do you know like next year AI agents agents are a thing and so this I

38:46don't know how to become a visionary. I'm not a visionary but at the same time think about what doesn't exist now and what might exist in the future and and go that way. This is something that somehow you need to do. Uh maybe like do tarot tarot cards or something like see the future and then go that way. That's that's my main idea here. Yeah. No, I really like that. It's like looking to the future and and right now is a really great moment where you know it does feel like for some tasks AI is too expensive but it's those tasks that in two years you know as AI continues to get smarter

39:27and then the current models get cheaper maybe it is. And so like right now is a great time to take that exact advice and figure out like what's going to work in two years that doesn't work today and build toward that. And you know for some companies it's it's also like accepting lower margins and you know accepting higher cash burn if you've got venture capital to burn today because in two years it will work. So that's really good advice. Um and speaking of all this AI stuff, you did spend some time at Higsfield. What were what was your top

40:00lesson at Higsfield? Yeah, Hicksfield it was an amazing experience. this was like like looking in the future and that's that's also the thing that you just talked about like when we started it was too early for the market. It was a video model and at that point it looked like you know like uh what's his name? Uh who who was eating pasta eating

40:25spaghetti? Yeah. Eating spaghetti. Yeah. On on the earlier versions. And then like we did understand that in a year like in a couple of years and it did turn out in a year like it will be much much better. But we came to all these VCs or we came to all these presentations talking about like how it will be the future and they looked at what was there now and they were like oh no I don't think so. And now I think they're biting their lips so hard for not investing earlier in Hicksfield. So

40:56that's uh that was an interesting one. But overall what I can say about that like they are a very special team. So um um they were founded by people that obviously won um physics olympiads and like very very very smart people. But besides being smart, what made them super different from everybody else is that they they could sleep in the office. They worked 17 hours per day. They made all the people like work 17 hours per day. But the people that were there, the core team, they were keen to do it. This is their opportunity and they took this opportunity. They are now like super rich people as well. So it was the first

41:45time where I saw someone grind that hard. Like at all the other companies like you would see a founder grind or you would see like someone being or or not even a founder. Sometimes founders are like, "Oh, I will go surf with Bali or something." And when you see someone who is engaged in a way that like everybody in the team is working 12 hours a day or whatever time a day and also they officially have like six uh days per week work days, whatever you call it. Yeah. So that's too much for everyone. Like would I want to work that at my age? Probably not. But in the same

42:24time with the uh product being so interesting, so good, so uh so ahead of everyone else maybe you need to. And you know after that company I actually started to work more like in in my next companies because I'm like while you are sleeping the other ones are shipping releases and I'm starting to push everyone and obviously I see a lot of push back because like oh you know we are Gen Z we we want our comfort. We are not used to suffering and uh you know as a millennial I'm used to suffering and as like as we all know what it takes to like build a career and we all know what

43:04it takes to like become successful and to to remember that even when you decided to not remember that that's that's kind of important. So uh when you work really hard where when you are resilient you will get where you want to be. That's that's the main lesson I think because they are now above

43:22everybody else. I I love them so much. Also great service. I I cannot promote them enough. Sorry. Like if you if you need a a UGC like I you know it's not even about like loving them as a company. It's about uh trying the product and being like oh AI can do that now. Because before like I was using clink for example and I would give them the picture and it would put it into

43:46thing. I had to think about everything. And here just just as an example, I was I gave them the app logo and I created an avatar for a UGC person. I didn't put any prompting. I didn't put like even the texting and it just gave me a perfect UGC and that didn't even look like UGC. And I'm like, is this the

44:08future? Are we in the future now? because because that's you know I I still react to it as a person who should be used to it but I'm not used to it and uh yeah that's that's why if you work 16 hours a day people will talk about like that about your product. This is why I don't believe in like you know working working two jobs or like working uh part-time on your own

44:33project. It's tough. I mean, as a as a father of four and you I'm almost 50 years old, I I can't anymore and and that's almost like depressing. But if I think back, you know, when I was in my 20s, I actually worked at a recording studio and that's what I studied in college and and that's what my passion was, recording. And that's exactly what I did was like I went to work at noon uh because musicians stay up late and sleep in by necessity oftent times because

45:05they're playing at clubs till 2:00 a.m. or whatever. And so that that's just their their like natural cycle. And so we would work from noon till like 2 3 4 a.m. go home, go to bed, wake up, and come back at noon and do it all over again for weeks on end to make an album. I had so much fun doing that. when when it's something you're passionate about, when you really care about what's going on, when you're doing something meaningful, uh it's very different than just, you know, being an employee where the boss is cracking the whip and it's just always so stressful. like they I I I

45:41don't think enough people in those kind of conversations about like founder mode and grinding and all that kind of stuff have maybe just not had that kind of experience of of being so passionate about something and young enough to like make it happen and not having kids and you know there are different life situations. But but it's a really good point and if you're if you're in that position where you can grind and you're super passionate and excited like you do often see outsized results from those kind of people in those kind of situations versus the like employees where you're cracking the whip to work 10 hours a day. Um and that that just

46:19doesn't work. And I think you can have great outcomes with with both but it's just a different mentality. It's a different situation. So if you can it's pretty amazing. So after Paula, you ended up at Replica. Uh what were some of your lessons from from your time there? Uh I want to talk about both Replica experience and solid stars experience in the same one uh in the same way because they are completely different apps obviously but they are in a way same because they both had huge organic and this is what everybody dreams about obviously like I want to be growing organic. wanted to bring me money

46:59without spending any dollar on paid ads and this is the goal and now I can see that like that goal is pretty achievable let's be not pretty achievable if you put a lot of like effort on it obviously there is no magic pill to go viral obviously but if you find something that doesn't exist yet this is where your potential for organic is huge and this is why I uh I will talk about it later but like This is why finding something unique is like 50% of your success. And uh with both these apps uh it was very fun experience to have just money flowing in without and you didn't have

47:40to like rely only on being profitable dayto-day uh to uh to actually grow the company. But the things that like but it is a double age sword and if you think that like it will make you super happy to have huge organics at some point it will play super against you because you will see that uh for example you start with with the US because you know English and you you you start you are in American uh person and there is no niche that would uh cover all the people that live. So you need to find your niche and at some point your niche will be all

48:21your Instagram following, Tik Tok following like everybody who could have joined like in 5 years they will all join and uh you will see that your organic stagnates and for example you will be like oh I want to sell my company I want to show them great results but your organic is already like very stable and you cannot sell you cannot show like growth. of you are like, "Oh, I will go into paid marketing. I will uh like because because my product is so good, everybody likes it and uh like I I can get even

48:52more money by promoting it. 50% of the time it will be cannibalizing cannibalization and uh you will not know what to do with it. And if at any point you will you will have like investors and people pushing you to grow, it will be very very hard to grow without uh without just bringing in the same money but spending more. And I I've noticed it a couple of times now. This is like a sad uh sad story, sad lesson. But it is a very nice feeling at first, but then

49:29you have to think about the future. Always think like what will be happening five years ahead. So with replica it was fun because it was al also like super ahead of its time and uh in five years we didn't know that it would become super commodity wise because super commodity because JGBT will be there and everybody will be doing this rappers and stuff. So you cannot predict that all this organic will for example drop and you can like when you're building performance marketing performance is more or less stable. You see every day

49:59what you're getting you are adjusting. You are obviously like stressed out every day but at the same time you kind of can influence it with organic you cannot influence it per se. So what you need to do you're like okay Julie you just told a situation what's what's the solution for it? Yes. So what you need to do is when you start a brand start with perform performance marketing as well because it will definitely help you grow your organic as well. So every ad that you're showing on Tik Tok or on Facebook, it is bringing you new subscribers. And for example, with Eva where we have like a 10 million

50:35Instagram, probably probably less probably like 7 million Instagram. It was just a small idea and we started it and we started getting a lot of um people from the ads that were just coming for free. And then when you became like a big Instagram account, you became uh like you're also organically. it it grew up your organic. So is like a lot of people are thinking like is PR important? Is putting out like things on tech crunch and uh I don't know how I don't know PR so I don't know like is going on TV important it is not for your performance but in the end like it will bring you a lot of

51:16organic but it is all only possible if you have something unique to offer to people and that's it. So if you're doing a time tracker, please don't worry about organic at any point or about canibilization or like a clear for your app. No, this is this will not be happening. Uh the same as like branding won't be happening. But if you are something unique like an aquarium app that doesn't exist anymore yet doesn't exist yet. uh then uh then obviously you can think about organic and uh it is quite easy to do like uh and also what who you need to uh who I met on the

51:54mansion party is the founder of minutes app a great guy who is very good in bringing organic traffic maybe you should have him on your podcast he like gave me a master class on that and I'm like oh so doing organic is pretty easy actually so that's that's something you should definitely look into for uh yeah,

52:15look forward for uh David's new podcast. Yeah, that's such great framing around organic that you you really do need to have something I the reason people share, the reason word of mouth happens, the reason you press, the reason UGC can go viral and Cali is a great example of this is that it was so visual that you could take a picture. It was new. It was unique. And you know, I imagine now, you know, three or four years on, those ads didn't perform as well because now every calorie app has that same standard functionality. And so even with the uniqueness and it's kind of to your

52:54point like organic at some point does start to slow down. You saturate your market. You know, competitors come in, the uniqueness is no longer unique. And and so all those factors in play, you need to be looking around a corner at what's next and not just relying on the same playbook for years. And appsource search is the one area that if you're a utility and you've locked in that number one spot, those kind of things really hard to accomplish and and the algorithms seem to favor older apps. So it's almost more hard than it ever been to capture ASO. But that's one of the examples of organic that just seems to

53:31keep trucking along that people I mean maybe you know over time trends shift and and people like right now there are a bunch of GLP1 apps and people are searching GLP1s well at some point um you know it'll just be more commonplace and and the trend will slow down and people won't be searching that as much or whatever but yeah that's one area where man it's the one organic channel that just seems to just deliver deliver

53:56for years on end for some apps. I I have a funny story actually about uh when Chip came out um and they didn't have their own because they were doing it with you actually not because they were doing it with you but like before they started doing it with you uh they uh like JDP was already word of mouth but they uh there were a lot of rappers that were uh released that most of them were Turkish for some reason as well and now they are still like number one not number one but like super super high on that and we talked to them at some point

54:32and a lot of people wanted to uh to play on that and like okay I will do my own chip rapper I will be like your your personal assistant whatever whatever because they saw that it was number one in the store for for for these apps but the fun fun moment was that they actually got that initial install influx and they solidified their first place on the store and all of their traffic was organic. And when you try to like actually replicate their monetization strategy, their like pay walls and stuff, it didn't matter at all because

55:08they weren't getting money from there. Like they they didn't know what to do with that as well. They couldn't even sell it because they that's all just dumb luck. But we as a people who who don't know that we are like, "Oh, they must they must be making a lot of money. So we if we replicate it, maybe we will get the same." No. No. But yes. So is uh

55:28something you want to get into for sure. But also I I I I look at uh Steve Young the like all the time and he has his like ASO agency and I'm like the work is so mysterious mysterious and not not like I cannot understand what they're doing that it is working for them. But if you know someone who is ready to like spend all their days looking for uh keywords and stuff, yeah, definitely be friends with that person because it's a very interesting topic to I'm I'm I'm at

56:02that topic. All right. Any other top lessons from your time at replica and folk charts? I was hired in a lot of companies, you know, like a recruiter reached out and they're looking for like a CMO and I'm like, okay, available, not available, blah blah. And um and now also like in my company I'm also looking for some people and I'm also just like I'm just looking for someone and just looking for someone is not as cool as having to work with people that are actually super I would say almost religious about what they do like in replica when you have people that were like ML and ML wasn't

56:42like a a super popular thing like we will we will think of LLMs we will we will test that, we will know what to do. And you're like, "Okay, you have a super great app on the market." Because because of that, because at that point, like we literally got millions of messages saying that like you have a person in in Ohio that is responding to me, this is not real. But no, it wasn't a land that was that good. Uh and uh with sols that's like 10 times higher because everybody on that team is keen on uh baby lew weing and on feeding babies and I I know their old stories

57:21and it's it's crazy to think that each one of them like messaged the founder being like I'm so passionate about that that I want to be on your team no matter what. And this is where you see the results being so amazing because like if I'm just doing my job, I'm just doing my job. I clock in, clock out. If you have a person that is passionate about it, that is already a super beneficial thing for your team. But if you have 20 people that are just about that, this is this can change. This is why solid start starts is actually changing the whole baby leaning like cate not even category

58:02like the the the baby leaning in the USA in the world like they're changing the way that like people start allergens and therefore there are less allergic people in the world. That is super super important. And when when I grow up, I really want to have a team of people that will be super interested in what they're doing. I think what the market is actually lacking because I'm a little bit in a mental health space right now, the market is lacking an app, for example, that we made will be made by actual doctors. the team of doctors, the team of doctors that understand what what this whole thing is about because

58:42every app that is in the market is just created by someone who went to therapy once or twice and it is already like helping. But what would happen if people would actually start thinking about how to make it more affordable, not more affordable, more uh access accessible to people. And uh this is my like personal pain obviously that there are so many people that start their apps uh so many companies that now are like oh we will start another app because we know that somebody is getting money from it. And I see that for example with solid stars there were people that would just like put u GPT rapper again in the app and be

59:21like yes like baby le with chbt and you're reading what it uh offers and you understand that it's bad it's bad for your baby it's bad for for what you are doing and you're like why would you not consider the effect of your action you know and this is why I would like like for more people to not launch shitty apps and just think about what they're doing for Yeah. And I I understand we all want an extra 5k. Yes. Okay. Like that that would be nice. You would go to a uh taco trip, but like if you will harm people by doing that, is it worth

1:00:03it? Probably. Yes. Of course. 5K. I mean, yeah, sure. Sure it was. But uh yeah, I mean uh I I hope that with time like and this is what we are seeing now with uh V coding making it all very accessible and like everybody can launch any app now like there will be a lot of apps that will flood the market and you know the numbers like of how many apps are being released every day and I I am pretty sure that none of them are the to the standards of what we want them to be. So I do hope that still the investors will not only invest in like

1:00:41you know AI stuff but they will also invest into something that will be of good quality and like we'll have medical teams, professional teams whatever behind it and it will change the future of the humanity. You know we are here to be to make a greater world as well. Speaking of of making the world a better place, you recently did an interview that I I stumbled upon preparing for the podcast uh where you you called the end of Black Hat Growth. Uh so I'd love to hear your thoughts on what Black Hat growth is and like why it should end or

1:01:14is ending. So you obviously know about what's happening in the industry and how like even the government is now against everything that is happening with uh subscriptionbased quizzes. Let's call them that. And the problem is that it got too far. So when it started it became a great way to to not worry about it and this was only that like you try that you get the results you don't pay the commission to Apple amazing great but then like a little bit of greed came in and we are all greedy it's okay to be greedy obviously what is not okay is to um to make it on purpose that's that's

1:02:03the whole thing because what started was like Oh, what what if we actually like do this? It started with how can it ended up with how can uh we actually lie to the users so they don't don't understand that uh they were lied to and that it hurt the whole industry. I think I I don't like the results of it because with some companies they they did it or like they did it to some sorts and it was okay and now they're being hurt as well as companies that were just doing super like it almost became as bad as sweep stakes even though like it's completely different like you know it's

1:02:44a completely different thing like you you don't understand what you're signing you don't understand what you're subscribing to and that's not okay and I know that for for a lot of time like a lot of big companies that were like that started this then like understood what they've done. They've been trying to go back. They've been trying to like okay now we send uh like emails saying this is the uh so that like some people just want to not know the what they're subscribing to. Let's be honest, there were so many people that were like start free trial. they uh uh uh like you know on the apps like start free trial then

1:03:20they confirm that it will take money from them and then they say well I didn't know it will take my money obviously some people just want to not notice things but like this is when like the uh with those quizzes they started sending emails they starting like showing uh full prices as well but in the same time everybody else who got on the market who who tried to like uh make it work for them they're like oh what if we don't say the full price, what if it we only say like price per day or something like that and it it hurt the whole market. It it's not okay. But in

1:03:55the same time, some people are being punished while some people are still doing that and they're not getting anything and they also don't don't read the room, I think, because obviously they are now benefiting from it and there is almost no reason for for for government to come for them because they're too small. They they don't care too much. But they should just be ashamed of themselves. As a marketer, I I do understand this thrill of like how else can I sell? And like if you think about if you think about bad things that anyone can do and if you brainstorm about it, there are so many things that

1:04:32you can do obviously, but it's important not to play these games. But in the same time, I was in a lot of apps and a lot of the times Apple just deleted the app from the store for some uh blackhead tactics for example and then they obviously came back. It wasn't like a blackhead tactic per se. And then I go to all these conferences where people are knowledge sharing and I'm like we got deleted from the store from this like last month. What is happening? And I'm talking about they're like no no everything is okay there. So the the standards don't exist. They try to like

1:05:08even even talking about like the uh payroll standards for uh app store. They have the whole like article about that. Can you understand from article from the article what can be done and what cannot be done? No, you cannot. And like playing these games is uh is another like form of sport. Like that's why I don't go to the gym because you have to play this game. It is really hard to know when you've crossed that line and then there's probably a little bit of the kind of boiling the frog where you know I mean I've even thought about this some of the things we've talked about on

1:05:43the podcast before even from like Dolingo Dolingo is the one who kind of popularized the or at least they're the first ones I've heard it from tribe for $0 and zero cents like the big dollar sign 0.0000 00 like is that black hat? Like you're the the biggest like CTA says $0 and 0, but it is actually going to charge you a subscription. Like was it clear enough on the rest of the page that they were going to be charged a subscription? And this something like Duolingo, a $5 billion like publicly traded company was doing. There are things like that could be so subtle, but

1:06:19then there are other things that aren't. And this is kind of what what your point was and a perfect example. Well, I think I've shared it on the podcast before, but my wife did one of those funnel that you were talking about on the web where, you know, Apple's not scrutinizing it at all and there is kind of the wild wild west. And the technique they used, which I I think, you know, everybody's clamped down on from like Apple Pay to Stripe and others, is that she went through this whole flow and I think it was like a um a dieting app or something like that. And so she, you know, you get 60

1:06:52questions in, you've got your sunk cost fallacy, and then it's like, um, hey, you can get your plan for a dollar. And she's like, okay, cool. And then she authorized, uh, Apple Pay for a dollar. And then it takes her through a whole another flow where it was like, do you want to add on this PDF? Do you want to add? Well, she wasn't reading. She was just trying to like get to like, where's

1:07:16my plan? I paid a dollar for this plan. Let me get to the plan. And so she was just continue continue critique. And again, the boiling the frog, it's like it was super effective. I'm sure you the companies doing things like that were were printing money handover fist because and the reason we I ended up figuring out about it is I looked at my credit card and it was like $350 or $400

1:07:38that he ended up charging. And I was like, "Hey, you know, sweetie, just checking in like you know, was this like authorized? like if it's something like you know if this is like a really great plan and like you know you're getting personal they should send you one for that much money I had people expectations it's just like what like what do you mean like I only authorized a dollar and then that's when I went back through and I did the whole quid funnel myself and I found that pattern and you know I can see the little logical steps of like oh well like that the $1 thing works really well and then

1:08:15like oh but we we say on there that like you know but it's in fine print and people don't read and so like you can justify it like well it's their fault because they didn't read the fine print but then really is it their fault for not doing fine reading the fine print or so bad yeah but you know at some point in apps I was like if you can scam me into paying like you are good enough you deserve that money but with that one no because like you need to be good enough for Apple but but think and here you don't need to be good enough. You can

1:08:47just take 300. But that's crazy money. Yeah. It was one of those situations where she contacted support and said, you know, I want a refund. And they said, well, our terms and conditions are you have to give it 30 days before you get a refund. And she was like, "No, wait. Like, you scam me." And I think we ended up getting like half of it back. And then I meant to do a charge back, which like that is the best way to handle those is just do a charge back because it punishes them more than than especially if if the support is not responsive in those ways. Yeah, it it was uh it was a

1:09:20pretty frustrating experience. That's why I wanted to bring up that post is like I I do think it's it's hard as a marketer to know when you're crossing that line and and sometimes you just slowly kind of move more and more in a direction and really take a step back. You're like, "Wait a minute. What am I doing here?

1:09:39You're making a lot of money apparently. Yeah, making a lot of money but maybe not sleeping as well at night when you realize it." And and I hope that that's the way uh people end up feeling about it. But I I think it's great to like talk about these things more. And so as you know, since you brought that up in in a interview, I thought it'd be great to to chat. And so I think it it'd be a really interesting thing for folks to to think about and kind of take your perspective and some examples we gave and stuff of what does feel like it it

1:10:08pretty far across the line. But as we wrap up, this has gone uh so long. Um but I did want to still do our lightning round. So what's the most impactful experiment or change or something that you implemented this year? Your biggest win? I would say localization. I would bet on it like on o over everything else. That's the way to open markets that you have never uh took money from. And what is the worst experiment the the the uh biggest fail of the past year that you learned from? I would say that starting too many products, uh starting too many pots, boiling water pots, whatever, like doing too many projects

1:10:51is too hard. So I I recently joined a team where like they had three apps in the same time and they were trying to do it all in the same time. And that's something that like no matter how many people you have, no matter how many like uh ideas you have, good ideas, bad ideas, how similar even the projects are, you cannot put enough attention to them. And I've seen a lot of teams that are like, "Oh, we had another great idea. We had another great idea. We will start it right now because it cost nothing to like develop it because we already have the developer on uh

1:11:24salary." No, no, don't do that. In order to not make mistakes, you need to prioritize one thing. And you need to literally treat it like a war room where every day you come in, you're like, "What are we doing today?" If you want to to scale, if you want to not fail, that is like the biggest lesson that I learned that don't let anything go like like, "Oh, it's the same like you scaled one app, you can do another app." No,

1:11:48no, it's it's not like that. I I feel seen by cutting two different apps right now. I'm not doing any marketing for the app I already released. I've got I've got too many. It's It's an exciting time bud coding, you know, where I can spin out apps without having to rely on a developer. But I'm I'm falling exactly into that trap. And a year from now, I will probably say my biggest fail of the year

1:12:13was taking out too many projects. But also, if if vibe coding is what drives you, why do you need to do marketing? You know, that that's the whole thing. It's about doing what you like. And my main uh task for the summer is to try to do more things that make me feel alive. And if that's VIP coding for you, don't don't even care about marketing. It will you will hire a good agency, you will hire a good SMO, and it

1:12:36will all happen. Yeah. All right. Last question. Growth would be easier if it would be much easier if if growth that I have to do would happen in blue markets instead of red markets. Because if you're entering a red market, it's crazy. You cannot do it. I like I haven't entered a red market in a long time. So now that I'm back into it, I'm like, how are people even surviving? How like I I do understand why like the same people are in the industry because it's so hard to make it right now if you don't have a unique product that you're working on. So don't go chasing

1:13:15waterfalls. No, go chasing waterfalls. Don't stick to the lakes. And and what you mean by red market is or red ocean is uh a cry crowded I was looking it up um to to to to say it more succinctly is it represents a crowded highly competitive existing market. So, if you're you're building the, you know, 2000th uh food scanning app that Kelli approved the market for, if you're building yet another AI noteaker, that is very much a a red ocean um market

1:13:46where you just face so much competition. It's so hard right now. Yeah. Yeah. I like, as I said, I'm trying mental health and it's mental out there. Yeah. You can you just cannot do that. Yeah. Oh, wow. But I mean this is where I think there there are still some opportunities and Cali proved this. It's like you would have thought five years ago that calorie counting was a red ocean market. It was so competitive, so hard. I thought the same with ladder when I first met the ladder team. I was like, "Oh no, you're building a fitness

1:14:16app. Like it's such a brutal market. It's so hard." Um, but if you have that unique spin and you have that unique value prop and it's defensible, that's the hardest thing today is like if people are just going to rip it off like and and for Calai really it wasn't the product itself that was defensible. It was the hustle and the marketing that was defensible is that they were just able to like out execute um and do it so quickly that they were able to grow so so quick and be that de facto player even as the competition rushed in. Uh so yeah it's tough it is tough out there

1:14:50definitely but in the same time you enter those markets because you know that there is money there because like in 2017 we thought there was no no place on like for another fitness app on the market and like by by this time there are companies bigger than better me that uh originated from the same source and still there is enough space for everyone. So, I think with mental health or with any other niche, like it's the same when it's big enough, you can play

1:15:17there for as long as you want. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Well, this has been such a fun conversation. As we wrap up though, um I do want to share with people on July 30th, we are going to do a live stream on YouTube with Ulia. So, I haven't talked about this on the podcast very much, but we're now doing live streams every Thursday. And the reason I've been doing them is because I've had so many people over the years say they love the podcast, but they're sitting in their car just shouting through the void like what about this or what about that? And so this is the

1:15:48perfect opportunity if you've been listening to this podcast and you're like oh that was a really great point but what about this or like I want to challenge you in that way or whatever. this is your opportunity and and if you're listening to this after July 30th, it's your opportunity to go get even more insights from Ulia and and see what kind of questions people asked on the live stream. Um but yeah, at 9:00 a.m. Pacific time, 1800 Central European time, we will be live on YouTube July 30th. Uh so really excited that you agreed to do that and this is going to be our first time to actually have a

1:16:21podcast guest so quickly after the podcast is released on the live stream. So should be a ton of fun. Please bring all your questions. I love answering questions, especially tough ones. Awesome. Thank you so much for joining me. Was there anything you wanted to share as we're wrapping up? Any um jobs you're hiring for you want to shout out or anything our audience can do from

1:16:38you? I think I'm okay. Thank you so much for having me and uh this was a very fun conversation. You you are amazing as an interviewer. Thanks. It was so fun having you. I thought there's a lot of great insights in there. So, thank you. Thanks so much for listening. If you have a minute, please leave a review in your favorite podcast player. You can also stop by chat.subclub.com

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