"I think the opportunity maybe has never been greater to build and monetize a mobile app quickly make a few million dollars and retire if that's what you want to do welcome back to the a16z podcast and..."

"state of the App Store so look a few weeks ago Apple released a stunning statistic they said they feed developers over 320 billion dollars yes billion since the launch of the App Store in 2008 and aro..."

"that day oh my gosh it took a while but the end result ended up being pretty interesting because I was able to run a bunch of numbers and analysis on the apps that did crack that number one spot first..."

"spot for the year overall I have to say that I'm not really very active on any of those three apps so I feel super old hearing that they are the three topping the charts but um just to reiterate so th..."

"not always the case I pulled the data for 2021 as well and the top five for that year was a mix of some social media but also fintech more utility or business apps like zoom and then traditional media..."

"they're providing to the user I absolutely agree I think we've seen this broader shift towards authenticity and towards more interactive experiences on social and a way for maybe the traditional scrol..."

"like a smaller group of close friends versus maybe these large feed products where you're seeing tons of posts from influencer and Brands and and larger companies and it's a very kind of curated exper..."

"it's just me no I I absolutely agree with you um my data shows that there's kind of a lot more new number ones every year and kind of the pace of that is speeding up every year apple is a little bit s..."

"to like a hundred thousand downloads a day and you're competing against like some of the other number ones this year were like NBC's peacock streaming service Planet Fitness doordash HBO Max these big..."

"and more than half of the apps at number one were up there for less than five days throughout the whole year not even five consecutive days what I've seen is you know it's if you have a tick tock vira..."

"retention when it does feel like there is this interest of again novelty like give me something new all the time I think it's largely a couple things I think it's a product question of like have you b..."

"moment where if you don't have the be real and you see everyone get the ding and pull out their phones you're gonna check it out gas app is also has a very kind of clever hook they went in through hig..."

"is huge like any marketing budget probably can't hit that purely through paid growth and so there does need to be this viral element what would you say about being able to do that effectively because ..."

"interesting to them that's kind of the ultimate to me like the peak of a great consumer product I do think we still see like Tick Tock as an organic channel is still very powerful it's probably harder..."

"acquisition moments that aren't at all orchestrated by the company but orchestrated by the user base and they're almost their own kind of special form of Word of Mouth but at like massive scale one of..."

"app store which maybe people are like oh number seven is not that high but again you said hit number one all of these are social apps General Mass marketed apps and they require a hundred thousand dow..."

"challenge it can be there have been some other apps which as you said did not hit number one but still really hit some traction and I want to talk about the different categories outside of social that..."

"that allowed for this another big Tech shift that became a trend in top apps was AI of course of course and that came as mostly in the fall when models like stable diffusion became available to fully ..."

"which is anonymous social apps we see these pop up pretty consistently every year when I was a teenager it was like honesty box on Facebook and then ask FM and form spring gas app was of course probab..."

"this is a silly question but is that worth doing as in if you're if there's a Founder out there or potential founder should they just be combing through previous successful apps like a Yik Yak for exa..."

"there's I mean Nikita himself has said this there's always going to be a question of um these apps that are based around kind of anonymous uh networks can you really build like a lasting social networ..."

"oh absolutely I think it all comes down to what you as a Founder are wanting to build and I think the opportunity maybe has never been greater to build and monetize a mobile app quickly make a few mil..."

"another really good example of this which was a number another number one from late 2022 they are an AI Avatar company and some of the external app data estimates say that they made you know upwards o..."

"long ago people were really resistant to even spending 99 cents on an app and I know there's a difference some of these apps are charging up front versus having in-app purchases versus monetizing in o..."

"probably going to be free users or generate very minimal Revenue but then you'll have some people who spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars in in you know every month on your app and and it reall..."

"are maybe the more classic for Consumer apps of how they monetize I wrote about this the other day but we had this first wave of consumer subscription apps that were all charging sixty dollars a year ..."

"because there's also you know the argument with dating apps which is that they don't have the the aligned incentives to actually want to match you because they want you on that forever so yeah that'll..."

"idea I think we'll see more and more gamification of kind of good behavior as apps become more addictive sitting on Tick Tock and scrolling for hours we're starting to see the this rise of new Focus a..."

"lensa is the perfect example of this right so there were at least I'm aware of two or three different web-based applications profile picture.ai and then Avatar AI as well which had come out first with..."

"of the web-based Avatar products that did come out first and and have similar quality images but were just harder to use that's such a great Point even just the push notifications in the other cases t..."

"we've seen these AI first products all the Avatar and art apps but Tick Tock was actually one of the first and still best examples of invisible AI where the reason the product is so addictive is becau..."

"Tick Tock has been so sticky because you know I've heard people who start on Tick Tock and they listen to dancing videos but then all of a sudden Tick Tock picks up that they like power washing videos..."

"in this coming year yeah it also reminds me of something you've mentioned before which is that Tick Tock is so good that even users as well are kind of limiting themselves from the app I do this I don..."

"than ending up on a scrolling feed for hours at a time I'm trying to think of examples where they're does seem to be this healthy level of interaction between people one example that comes to mind is ..."

"saying it was like such a fun and rewarding way to both like Express their interests track their collection and then also browse the collections of other users like oh this person you know found this ..."

"question that's related to what we're discussing here which is just the interplay between digital and physical so something that's fascinating about something like a Strava is it's not just me on my p..."

"relationships another Trend that we're seeing quite a lot of is apps and products and especially platforms like Tick Tock to be honest driving traffic and driving engagement towards real world busines..."

"capitalize on that platform something I want to ask you about before we close out is something you mentioned in your thread was the difference in geography and this is pretty front and center when you..."

"think there's a couple trends that are driving this one a lot of the number ones as we talked about this year played on themes like widgets and avatars and there's a lot of great International app Stu..."

"exciting that's a great point because in the past it was really hard for an individual developer to have the budget or the connections to get the kind of traction we're seeing today but now that we ha..."

"App Store absolutely there's one that comes to mind that I've been fascinated with recently it's actually in the gaming category so it's an app called Subway Surfers that was first launched in 2012 ou..."

"really smart moves to kind of stay top of mind for that decade they have this world tour strategy where the graphics and the location of the game changes every two weeks which is really fun they also ..."

"think it's so interesting these examples where an app is used in ways that the developers didn't even intend yeah no and it's the downstream implications of it are also interesting in terms of what it..."

"because to your point pets have been taking off uh for years it's you know as some people say the recession-proof industry if you look at the pet industry growth relative to many other things like typ..."