The meditation app Waking Up generates over $1 million in monthly revenue with only 25K downloads per month, a ratio approximately 10 times higher than most consumer apps. This is possible due to its ultra-premium pricing of $20/month and $150/year.
Link to this point #1Superwall
$172M of App Building Advice in 50 Minutes
Watch the original on YouTube ↗AI-generated summary. Check the original video for context and accuracy. Translated into English with AI.
Overview
Josh, M&A lead at BlueThrone, explains 6 rules for selling consumer apps for 7-9 figures. He discusses how ChatGPT reset consumer pricing psychology, enabling premium $20/month subscriptions, the strategy of narrowing down a category to claim the #1 spot, the importance of user retention, acquiring organic traffic, and the right timing to sell to the appropriate buyer. He reveals specific strategies based on actual acquisition cases and data.
Key points
With the advent of ChatGPT, the psychological ceiling for what consumers are willing to pay for mobile apps reset from around $60/year to $20/month. The cheapest path to reach $30 million ARR is now by acquiring fewer paying users at higher prices.
Link to this point #2To achieve a nine-figure (over $100M) valuation, you need approximately $17 million ARR with a 6x revenue run rate if you're selling a growth story, or around $30 million ARR with a 3x multiple on past 12-month revenue if you're selling based on historical performance.
Link to this point #3It's crucial to narrowly define your category and claim the #1 position. Flo, for example, focused on 'women's health' instead of 'health,' becoming the first women's health unicorn with over 70 million monthly active users and raising over $200 million from General Atlantic at a valuation exceeding $1 billion.
Link to this point #4App valuation is a present value calculation of LTV (Customer Lifetime Value) for the highest retention cohorts. It's crucial for the retention curve of the top 20% most engaged users to flatten. A 50% re-subscription rate after one year is amazing, 40% is good, 30% is okay, and 20% is bad.
Link to this point #5An organic install rate of 50% is great, 35-50% is good, and under 20% is not great. Organic traffic is essential to avoid the UA (User Acquisition) treadmill; it must be earned, not bought.
Link to this point #6There are four types of buyers: aggregators/platforms (e.g., BlueThrone), strategic acquirers (e.g., Strava acquiring Runna), private equity (focused on stable cash flow), and acquihire/IP acquirers (e.g., Google investing in Character AI). You should build a growth story suitable for each.
Link to this point #7MyFitnessPal was sold to Under Armour for $475 million in 2015. However, in 2020, after its growth had peaked, its second sale to Francisco Partners was for over $100 million less. It is crucial to sell before reaching your peak.
Link to this point #8Raid Shadow Legends is a mobile game generating over $1 billion in annual revenue. Josh spent three years at Plarium, the company behind it, handling 8-9 figure mobile game studio acquisitions.
Link to this point #9BlueThrone is a platform that acquires apps that have achieved 0→1 and scales them from 1→10. It targets apps with an annual ARR of $400K to $15 million, and its current team of 70 people covers all functions including infrastructure, R&D, distribution, growth, and monetization.
Link to this point #10Put this knowledge to work.
Use saved videos in Claude Code or Codex to think through your plans and code. Sign up and connect your AI to get started.