How Appradar CEO Thomas Kriebernegg grew to $627.9K revenue and 125 customers in 2023.

hello everybody my guest today is thomas cribbenak he can look back over his 15 years of experience in online marketing in five years in app marketing and really this is where he found his big idea app raider he's an app enthusiast a keynote speaker and the ceo of the company today an online app store optimization tool that helps app developers analyze and optimize their visibility within app stores thomas you ready to take us to the top yes i'm ready to take you to the top all right so is this essentially basically like seo for app stores exactly that's what it is okay so and then what's your revenue model is it pure play sas yes it's a sas model and additionally we have some fees and services like onboarding and added services so to say yes okay so just right off the bat so my audience can figure out if they're going to be a good customer for you or not on average what are customers paying per month for this so on average uh customers are paying 200 euros per month so we are based in austria this means our main currency is euros uh so it's a little bit more in dollars yeah that's okay yeah so that's about 230 bucks a month um so let me ask you a question once somebody launches their app uses you to optimize themselves from the rankings and it's a one-time thing i mean why would they have to keep using you every month if they're already optimized yes because there's a simple reason in the background right at the moment there are around 30 to 50 000 apps published to the app stores on a month and this means you're like there's really a lot of movement within the app stores and there are also some trends happening you know just think of christmas for example during christmas period people are out there searching on their smartphones for different kind of apps different kind of games so it's you know like always important to adapt to those trend changes and also to keep optimizing because there's a lot of movement in the market yep and then walk me through the kind of the timeline on this thing when do you launch the company so uh we started working on the company something like four years ago and we released the first version of appraisal something like three years ago okay so 2015 started development 2016 launch yes and uh how many customers have you scaled to today so right at the moment we're having 125 customers 125. okay that's great so 125 times 230 a month you're doing about 30 grand a month in revenue yes exactly that's great okay i want to i want to come back to that in a second in terms of how you got your first customers but fill out the team for me how many team people how many folks on the team today so in the team there are right at the moment 15 people and where's everyone based uh so we are based in graz in austria in central europe so to say austria okay great and then um and then have you have you funded this yourself or have you raised so uh um it's actually my second company and um in the beginning i brought in some of my money so to say and also my co-founder co-founder but uh soon we also brought in angel investors that really helped us killing up the company okay so how much i want to know how much you have on the line thomas how much did you and your co-founder put out of your own money um around 80 to 90. okay so you're in but not a massive amount by most standards but you're still you still have exposure and then how much uh in terms of angel capital did you raise and so in total we've been raising around 1.5 okay and that's all been what is that equity or convertible note uh equity yeah that's interesting is that just because you in austria you can't get people to understand what a convertible note is i i've had a lot of people on the past few days from like kind of the netherlands or austria and they all say the same thing they go man you guys in the u.s have it great with these convertible notes no one will no one will do those over here yes that's really true but i think we're also adapting to it uh but you know uh three years ago nobody you know like when you were mentioning convertible notes everybody was like oh what is that i have no idea and yeah yeah that's funny okay and then with 15 people um and considering your revenue are you guys profitable today are you rate or are you burning yeah right at the moment we're still burning uh but uh that's also part of our growth strategy yep yep can you give me a general sense of how aggressive you're being are we talking 10 grand a month you're burning or more uh a little bit more so it's around 20 at the moment okay so you're burning 20 grand a month which is fine because you've raised 1.5 million bucks and your revenue is a little north of that um talking about growth so if you're at 30 000 a month today in revenue what were you back in january of 2018 so uh general so if we compare this year to the last year we've been growing uh our uh revenue by 500 percent so uh this means um um yeah that would mean you were doing about five thousand dollars a month a year ago and now you're doing 30 000. exactly yeah that's great okay i mean now obviously multiplying small numbers your growth rates can get really big but um give us some insight real quick tell me what you were doing before this you said you had a you had another company yes uh so i was jumping into you know like after finishing my studies i was jumping into the field of online marketing and then somehow got into the field of affiliate marketing and this was also where i had my first company it was a fashion site uh focusing on the topic yeah as a fashion and it was an affiliate website where you could create your own kind of outfits um and then share it with your friends get feedback and then purchase the stuff from different vendors out there interesting what happened to that company i sold it to a friend of mine actually who had more uh passion for fashion uh that's funny okay and i mean did you sell that at a price that like made you kind of you know you know go buy a mansion rich or what was the general price it was you know like i would say some kind of a little bit north to break even for my side so it was a really crazy exit okay um and um and did you essentially took that money and that's what you plowed into this this one yes uh so it got transformed so to say because after selling this company i was jumping a little bit more into the field of developing actually mobile games and while doing so i realized that there is you know like on the one hand you have to create a game but on the other hand as soon as your game is live and you want to push it to the app stores then i figured out okay uh wait a moment there is some some issues out there how do you actually like push your game to be more visible within the app stores to attract more users attract more players earn more money and so this was more or less the birth of apparatus interesting okay and then um help me understand i mean your first customers are always the most difficult to get how did you get your first 10 20 customers um so i would say it was really uh the first ones were also over here in austria um i the the cool thing about graz is that in kratz we have a lot of hidden app champions worldwide uh to name one example i translate for example they are translation app uh the biggest the second biggest of after google translate with more than 350 million downloads so they are really really massive and their ceo alex is now a really good friend of mine so this was especially helpful in the beginning you know like to have some sparing partner who knows what he's doing within the app store and who also had some i would say a really good list of requirements that he was looking in the tool like april okay so that works kind of one time to get going you have to have that hustle early on how are you driving growth today how are you getting customers yes so what we are running is on the one hand we are doing a lot of in in terms of marketing so we're also having a youtube channel uh shout out to the people out there look for app radar on youtube for internet marketing or if you want to market your game uh so this is what we're doing on the one hand to you know like just put ourselves out there in the market and we're uh we also started to attend events and uh yeah so uh hustling around the events okay so i'm on your youtube channel right now you have 62 subscribers um so it looks like fairly new but you have really nice design i can tell you guys are investing in this is this driving customers yet uh yes so at least i would say trial signups customers not yet because we really started in the beginning of 2019 to put more uh effort into this strategy and so this is now really ramping up but uh i also have to say it's it's it's feeling good and it's already showing some kind of positive uh return so yeah you're gonna be a celebrity you're great on camera here uh so i'm looking at the one you published yesterday game to the top of the app store four tips for app store optimization for games it has 14 likes eight comments so good engagement relative to your number of subscribers walk me through what you're doing with this video to drive people back to your website yes so so the idea is really mainly when it comes to app store optimization with especially within mobile gaming this is some kind of new topic to the people out there so what we're doing is we're trying to educate them on why it is important and how to do it and this is you know like really educating and then driving them to our tool within the video we are also saying you need to do that and by the way use a tool that is helping you a lot and operator for example can help you also with this task yeah you pinned a comment right the day ago when he publishes it says the video this video sound complicated do you feel aso is hard to what's aso app store optimization exactly yes do you feel app store optimization is hard to work on then make your life easier by using app radar and then he puts a link in there and that is how people are going to sign up for trials exactly exactly interesting what do you know you have to get someone to do in the first day of their trial that's increased likelihood they convert yeah so the the way how app radar works it's also like not that easy comparable with seo because uh the thing is that apparatus is really not only helping you analyzing your keyword ranking it is also helping you optimizing your stuff so the first step that you have to do when using apparatus or let's say the the recommended step is to connect your developer account where your apps are so to say stored with app radar because then operator can go through it and can give you like some kind of tips on how to optimize it and find potential for getting more uses actually and are they sticking once they sign up what's your turn today uh so right at the moment our churn is uh the revenue churn is around uh one to two percent and local churn is around four to five percent so two percent revenue turn per month yeah okay so that's not bad um and and when people are churning why are they churning um so this is really i would say right at the moment we're still trying to figure out like how to perfectly fit our target audience out there and also how to get the right people because especially when it comes to uh developing games or developing apps there are a lot of you know like students out there that are doing this as some kind of product for one month is their stuff but after this one month they also you know i get the feeling it's better for them to invest their money also on other tools or another you know like kind of paid user acquisition activities so this is one of the reasons why we are losing people but as you also see from the numbers it's just a small percentage yeah it's not it's not it's not huge um walk me through cac so when you you're an online marketing guy so i'm sure you know your acquisition numbers you're getting they're paying 230 bucks a month on average what do you pay to get them yeah so right at the moment we're at 2k for our cac meaning we're also heavily optimizing this number at the moment yes yes even that though i mean it's not that's not horrible right because your payback period there would be you know nine months right yes exactly exactly and um is it too early i mean do you have a good sense of what lifetime value is yet or is it too early uh i mean it's it's really jumping up and down at the moment so uh it also depends on you know like right at the moment because we're so early so to say when we're at the event where we're onboard you know like really big customer big publishers having you like multiple games then we can get them into our bonus plans so to say uh that is like really pushing the lifetime value but right at the moment i would say we're somewhere in between three to four k okay three to four k okay sorry you're burning you're you think they're worth about three or four k right now yeah exactly um very good all right let's wrap up here thomas with the famous five number one what's your favorite business book uh it's sapiens uh history of humankind by uh yuval noah harari it's a good one number two is there a ceo you're following or studying right now yeah uh it's ika palanin it's the ceo of supercell the guys behind uh clash of clans and clash royale uh they are really crushing it when it comes to mobile gaming number three what's your favorite online tool for building your company uh i have to say uh my favorite tool is reflection they're a partner of us uh it is some tools that helps you analyzing the app market figuring out how many downloads does an app get in different uh countries and really awesome number cool number four how many hours of sleep to get every night um because uh sleeping is quite important to me uh around seven to eight that's good and what's your situation married single kids singing okay no relationship okay so not married no kids and how old are you exactly 33 33 last question thomas what do you wish your 20 year old self knew um i once heard the story i think it was some years ago where some guy was telling that when you start off building up your career the first thing that you're going to do is focus on some kind of problem some kind of field after that you're going to understand the industry and after that you're going to understand the people working around this uh if i had knew this when i was 20 it would have been really great so so sum that up for me you basically focus on people yeah exactly so this is right to the moment really where i put my most focus into finding you know like cool guys to work together with and uh really push this guys app radar again basically seo for app stores uh they have founded in 2015 125 customers paying 230 bucks a month now doing 30 grand a month in revenue that's up from five grand a month just a year ago they raised 1.5 million dollars team of 15 in austria which is great they're burning net burn is about 20 grand per month right now two percent revenue churn per month spending two thousand bucks to get a new 230 a month customer so nine month payback period thomas thanks for taking us to the top yeah thank you very much nathan