The App Genius Who Sold His Business For 8-Figure (With Dave Chue)

Hey hey, what’s up my friend!

In today’s episode, we have Dave Chue.

He used to run a company that develops mobile phone apps. Recently, he sold his company for 8 figures. Absolutely life-changing money!

So in today’s episode, we talk about…

• How he got started in the app business
• Strategies and techniques to decide which apps to create
• The things one needs to do to develop an app successfully
• How did he sell the business for an 8-figure valuation
  
  

So all this and more in today’s episode.

Let’s begin…

Rayner (00:00)

Hey, hey, what's up my friend?

So in today's episode, we have Dave Chu.

Dave used to run a company that develops mobile phone applications.

Recently, he sold his company for eight figures.

Life-changing money.

But for those of you who want to buy a mansion, a yacht, etc.

Maybe that amount of money is not life-changing for you.

But for most of us listening to today's Episode 8 figure is life-changing money.

So in today's episode, we talk about…

• How he got started in the app business
• Strategies and techniques to decide which apps to create
• The things one needs to do to develop an app successfully
• How did he sell the business for an 8-figure valuation

If that's exciting for you, then…

Let's get to it.

Rayner (01:13)

Dave, so welcome to the show.

Dave (01:18)

Thank you, thank you for having me here.

Rayner (01:19)

So first and foremost, I must say that you are one of the rare people that I come across who have made their mark in this world and it's still so frugal.

I respect that because it reminds me that life’s not just about chasing all those material stuff

But rather focus a lot on the experience.

So tell us, what's the most expensive thing you've bought?

I mean, besides your car, your house and car.

Dave (01:47)

Wow, okay. I think for some context, for those people who do not know me, I exited my company two years ago.

No, last year, 2022.

So it was an eight-figure exit and people around me always ask me when I told them I exited the company, what's the most expensive thing that I bought?

Uh, nothing, nothing fancy.

I think the most expensive things I bought were two secret lectures.

One was for my wife and one was for me.

The reason is that after exiting the company, I still have to work with the company, the buyer, for about a year.

So I've been using my old office chair for about three to four years and it's getting very dirty and getting very squeaky.

I think you know it makes sense that you know to mark a new chapter of working for somebody else I should get a new and better chair and Secret Lab is the one that fits me the best.

Rayner (02:52)

How much does a secret lab chair cost for those of you who are wondering?

Dave (02:54)

Uh, it cost me about 750.

So two chairs cost me about about $1,500.

Rayner (03:01)

There you have it. Imagine having an eight-figure payday and you buy two secret chairs as the most expensive item.

Remarkable.

There is a lot to learn from you.

Awesome. Okay.

So just curious, if I were to ask you one word to describe your childhood, what would that be?

Dave (03:22)

I would say bless.

I come from a complete family.

The most important thing I have a very good brother.

I have an older brother who has been with me ups and downs for the past 10-20 years.

So whenever I'm feeling down, he's the ones that motivate me.

Whenever I enjoy some success, he's also there with me to congratulate me.

He's the one who inspired me to go into being an entrepreneur, going into doing apps, and even though doing the initial part of the entrepreneurship journey, it was tough.

He always stuck by me, giving me some basic allowance just to ensure that I still have a proper standard of living and all sorts.

I'm very blessed to have my brother.

I'm very grateful for him.

Of course, my mom and dad, have raised me well and they imparted all the frugality values to me since young.

They don't they didn't spoil me with a lot of material things.

So I'm very grateful that I have a very complete and loving family and they have supported me throughout this whole journey.

Rayner (04:52)

Fantastic.

What if I were to ask you one word to describe your teenage years?

What would that be?

Dave (04:55)

Wow, teenage years.

Awkward.

In my teenage years, I was quite obsessed with studying hard.

Because I want to live a very good lifestyle.

Back then the only way to earn lots of money, the most straightforward way was to study hard, have good grades, and get a very good job.

A high-paying job and live a very good life.

That caused me to be very focused on my studies.

From secondary to university, I would say most of my time is spent studying.

That caused me to be quite awkward because I'm not that...

Because I don't attend a lot of social events, I don't go out too often with some of my friends.

That made me kind of socially awkward.

So when it comes to girls, it took me a very long while to figure out how to talk to them.

How to ask them out for a date…

I asked a few girls out for a date and most of the time it turns out to be very awkward.

It took me quite a while to come out of my shell, to be a little bit more sociable, and be daring to go out for more social events.

I would say in my teenage years, I was pretty awkward.

I'm just obsessed with studying and getting good grades, getting a high-paying job to make lots of money.

Rayner (06:35)

You said you want to study well and get a high-paying job to make lots of money.

Is there a reason for it?

Dave (06:41)

I guess it's because of my parents' frugality.

They don't spoil me with a lot of material goods.

Oftentimes if I want something, it's either I have to save from my pocket money or I have to go out to look for a job.

Being young, I've always been quite envious of people who had a lot of toys with them and got the latest phone.

I only got my first Nokia phone, which is a second hand.

My dad handed me a second-hand Nokia phone.

In secondary four when I was 16 years old.

Every time my friends can play Snake on their phones, I can only look from afar.

So it spurred me to if I want to buy things I have to study hard and push ahead and get ready for what I want.

I need to study hard and get a good job.

Rayner (07:47)

I'm thinking what's ironic now is that now you have made your money and you still have nothing much to buy.

Dave (07:51)

Yeah, I think things change after I have my mini pot of gold.

I don't know whether it's age or something like that.

I'm no longer very interested in material things.

I think experiences are the one that motivates me more now.

Instead of buying a Ferrari or those luxury cars or luxury items like the watches, I'm not interested in all those luxury watches but I don't mind spending on good experiences like staying in a more luxury hotel with more facilities, with good food, and with good service.

Sitting on a better airline, Singapore Airlines, I used to sit a lot on Air Asia.

I like these experiences, rather than spending on watches that I don't appreciate.

Maybe I will just be happy for a few days, then I will go back to the same plateau again

Rayner (08:55)

I agree…

Because I think I read somewhere some scientific podcast they say that…

“We human, we have a baseline level of happiness”

All these material ones usually boost short-term highs after we always go into a natural baseline.

I think experience is a better “Investment”

So what about a business-class ticket or a first-class ticket?

Are those something you're willing to invest in for experiences?

Dave (09:16)

After exiting, I have to make a trip down to Boston to meet my buyers.

That was the only time I took a business class overseas.

It was an 18-hour flight to New York.

That was the first time I took a business class and that was one of the best experiences I had.

I love and enjoy these experiences.

I went for a holiday with my family members but seeing the ticket price for a business class I hesitated a lot.

Eventually, I still didn't spend a lot on the business class ticket.

I just spent on a premium economy and just a normal economy ticket with my family.

But maybe, in the future, if I accumulate more miles, I will splurge on a business class.

Rayner (10:15)

I see.

So what do you remember as some of the most formative moments in your earlier years?

Dave (10:27)

I know the pivotal moment in my entire life, I think without this pivotal moment in my life I wouldn't be where I am today.

I think the most pivotal moment is after getting my PSI results.

I didn't score well for PSI.

For the audience, I have the same PSI score as Rayner here.

Rayner (10:54)

Tell them what’s our score (laughs)

Dave (10:55)

Our score was 200

Rayner (10:57)

By the way, Dave thought that wasn't good, but I thought that was good for my context.

Yeah, please carry on.

Dave (11:02)

My expectations weren't very high for my PSLE score.

I just wanted to go to the same secondary school as my brother, and the cutoff point was 225.

Back then BT Secondary School was in Brother Road.

I had a lot of expectations that I probably can scrape through and get into BT Secondary 225.

It shouldn't be too hard, right?

But unfortunately, when the results were released, I only managed to get a 205.

I'm not so sure, it's just I felt a sense of embarrassment and also I felt I had disappointed my parents.

My parents spent quite a lot on tuition for me.

I think they spent over $1000 every month just to get my marks up.

But it didn't turn out well.

I let my parents down and let my brother down and even at a score of 225, I cannot even get a score of 225.

I think it caused me a lot of embarrassment.

After getting the PSI results I have about two months to reflect, so during those two months of reflection, and a lot of scoldings from my parents and everything else.

I think there was a fire started burning in me.

I have this mindset change of…

“I have one this one goal to achieve when I work when I get to secondary one was to get first in the whole of secondary one and then to be transferred out of the school and get into my brother's school, MBT secondary school”

That was my first real goal in life, to get good grades and be transferred out.

The fastest way to get transferred out is to get good grades and convince the principal that you can handle the new workload and all sorts.

That spurred me and for that whole secondary one, I worked very hard.

I studied about three to four hours a day or even more back then.

For secondary one the syllabus wasn't a lot.

Three to four hours for secondary one is quite a lot and I remember even before lessons started the night before I was already memorizing all the different topics.

I was very interested in history.

Even before every history lesson, I memorized all the facts, when did Singapore get independence, what happened in World War I, what happened in World War II, everything I knew.

I practiced a lot of math, algebra, and everything else, multiplication, all these things.

I remember I got my first taste of academic success in my first test.

My first test was a history test.

Being very interested in history, even before the quiz started, I memorized the text, and the topic way before.

On the day of the exam, I just vomited out everything and eventually, I scored full marks.

For the test. I still remember it's 25 marks, so I scored 25 out of 25.

That excited me because I know that…

“Wow, my hard work translated to good results”

Then my second quiz was a math quiz.

I was very bad at Math in primary 6.

For that Math quiz, I also score full marks for the Math.

That motivates me also.

It changed my mindset; I have this belief.

A new belief was instilled in me.

“That hard work can translate to results”

From then on, the momentum picked up, in the mid-year exams, I was number one for the whole level, and then for all the midterm tests and everything else.

Everything just keeps rolling.

Eventually, in secondary one, I think I was number two or number three in the whole of secondary one.

That momentum carried on to junior college.

I would say…

“It was the pivotal moment”

It changed my life.

Rayner (15:22)

Did you manage to go to BT Secondary that you wanted?

Dave (15:23)

Oh no, Unfortunately.

We went for an application to apply for transfer of school, but the principal says…

“That my current school and BD Second school are just too near”

Even if my grades are good, it's very hard for MOE to justify the transfer to the school.

MOE was looking for a more valid reason for you want to transfer school is more on the distance instead of you want to transfer because of your reasons.

In the end, I didn't get to transfer to the PT secondary school and I stay on to my current school.

Rayner (10:07)

I see.

So, parents who want to transfer their kids out of school next time you know what to do.

Location is number one.

But it doesn't matter if you are today. That was like what 15 years ago?

Dave (16:17)

Yeah, yeah.

Rayner (16:18)

So you mentioned that momentum carried to JT, but I'm curious what if you imagined a secondary one where you work hard for your studies?

Then your history test instead of getting 25, maybe you just get 11 or 12, you just passed.

How do you think you'll react to that?

Dave (16:35)

I don't think it will affect me a lot because I've been failing quite a lot in primary school.

So...Even if I didn't get a good result in my first test, I don't think it will affect me too much.

I think back then I was just too focused and too motivated.

Along the way, after the first history test and the first math test, I have other quizzes and after test.

I think one subject I did very badly was always D&T, Design, and Technology.

I was pretty bad at that because it was very hard to memorize and it was not a topic that I was interested in.

For that subject, even though I was getting Bs, sometimes A's, occasional A's, but more B's than A's.

I was still feeling very motivated.

My mindset is just that it's okay.

I have eight subjects in the secondary one.

It's just one subject that is not doing well.

I have other subjects to pull me up.

History is always the one that allows me to score well because I'm interested in that.

Geography is another one because it's just pure memory work.

I don't think it will affect me too much because I have experienced quite a lot of failures in primary school.

So failure is not something new to me.

I think it's the motivation, it's a burning fire that overcomes quite a lot of things.

Rayner (18:02)

Got it.

When you say failure, I don't know, it reminds me of when I was young.

I also encountered a lot of failures and it seems that people who fail a lot, this could be just anecdotal.

They feel like they tend to be more optimistic, like I fail so I won't die or just survive.

So whenever they encounter setbacks or failure in life, they tend to pick themselves up relatively easily compared to people who are always from being young, they're always like aces.

Then when failure sets in, they have difficulty picking it up because they have not encountered failure.

It’s just something that came to the top of my mind.

Maybe now let's move on.

Your previous business, I mean, you have already sold it, your previous business was developing apps in the Apple store.

So how did that come about?

Was that your first job that you did, or did you have a job before developing apps?

Dave (18:50)

So I didn't get a nine-to-five job.

I have never really worked for anyone, except for being in an internship at a petrochemical company.

Being an entrepreneur was my first full-time job.

So how did that come about?

In university, my grades weren't that good. I was in NTU Chemical Engineering.

So back then, it was quite a competitive course.

In the university, it's a bell-shaped curve.

Your grades are based on a bell-shaped curve.

So even if you score 80 marks, but if the rest of your peers are scoring more than 80 marks, you probably only get a B plus instead of a usual A.

When you score 80 marks in secondary school or junior college.

It was a pretty competitive course.

I didn't score well.

I was thinking…

“Chemical engineering is not for me”

I wasn't very interested in all the pipe flow, doing all the formula work, or doing all the engineering work.

Understanding the distillation columns is not for me.

In year four, and my last year of studies I was thinking…

“What should I do next?”

This thought pops up saying…

“I'm always very interested in doing business”

I read a lot of biographies on businessmen on how they create the business empire outsourced

Back then in 2014, I started in 2014, and there were a lot of successful startups.

There was I think, Facebook, there was Snapchat, there was Instagram.

So all these startups are popping up and they have massive, massive revolutions or valuations of $1 billion at the unicorns.

That got me interested in…

“Can I create the next unicorn in Singapore?”

Just nice, Garmin was rolling out a lot of grants to encourage entrepreneurship and one such grant is the iGEM grant.

So iGEM grant, the first tier is a 50k grant.

You just have to pitch a technology, a technology idea to a panel.

If they like it, they will recommend you to get a 50k grant from Garmin.

You can use the 3DK grant to develop a product.

I have an idea related to a mobile app.

So back then in 2014, in our mobile phones, the front camera was very low resolution.

It's only about maybe one by two megapixels, but a back camera usually has a stronger camera, has a higher resolution.

So it's maybe four to five megapixels.

In 2014, selfie is the rage.

Everybody is taking selfies.

It's the rise of Instagram and the rise of the influencers.

Everybody is just taking nice selfies.

They want to take good selfies, everything else.

But then, to take a good selfie, If you use the front cam, your selfie will be quite pixelated.

But if you want to use the back camera to take the selfie, It's quite difficult because you can't see your face in a viewfinder.

I came up with the idea of using an app.

I developed an app.

The app name is called “Say Selfie”

What I did is that I got a programmer to program my algorithm.

When you raise your phone and your back camera is facing you and when your face is in the middle of the viewfinder in the middle of the camera, you will take a photo for you automatically.

So your face is always in the center of the viewfinder.

If your face is not in the center of the view, either you will give out a voice direction.

You will say, up to left to right to down.

Once you just follow the instructions.

Once your face is in the middle, you will take the photo for you automatically.

That was my very first app idea.

I used the app idea to pitch to a lot of investors.

The main concern for the idea is that it's very hard to monetize.

Eventually, I didn't get the first investment using that idea.

But that started me on the rabbit hole of into the App Store world.

Now App Store back then 2014 was still quite new.

There was a lot of it like a Wild Wild West.

There were a lot of ideas that you can explore.

There are a lot of market gaps that you can explore.

That got me interested in exploring more deeply into the app store world.

Rayner (23:47)

I'm hearing a lot…

Say it's very easy to get ideas.

How do you get ideas for your apps?

And now also bear in mind that you said that…

There has to be a monetization factor behind it, right?

Dave (24:00)

Well, I guess, to decide on any business before you start, you need to do a lot of market research.

How do I usually approach this market research?

A lot of the market research I did is based on the principles of the Lean Startup.

So if you guys are familiar with the Lean Startup book, it talks about always approaching a business in a very scientific way.

So first you need to have a hypothesis.

Once you have a hypothesis and assumption, then you need to test the assumption.

To test the assumption, you need to come up with a product first.

Your product shouldn't take too long to create.

So create a hypothesis, if you identify a problem that needs to be solved, and you need to create a product to solve the issue.

You need to create a product, not using too much capital and also not using too much of your time.

Maybe in about 1 to 2 months, you should create an MVP.

You quickly release the MVP to test the assumption.

If your assumption is right, then you should probably see some traction.

People downloading your product, people leaving feedback on your product, or people are recommending your product to other people.

Once you have that initial traction, you can have the confidence to further develop the product and pour more capital and pouring more resources into the product.

So how do I use this approach to succeed in the App Store to test the idea?

What I do every day is just go to the App Store and scan the top apps in the App Store.

So in the App Store, you can just go to the top 200 most popular apps, the top 200 apps in the whole App Store, and you can probably see the first few are always Facebook, Instagram, and everything else.

But if you scroll further down into the 100 to 150, they are usually the smaller apps that have a smaller niche.

You just have to go into the smaller niche and see if there are any other features that they are lacking.

Read the reviews of the apps, and see whether there is something you can develop to beat the competition.

To beat all the other apps in the App Store.

Yeah, so that's one way.

The second way, there are a lot of ways to do market research.

The second way is reading Reddit.

So I spend quite a lot of time on Reddit.

So I go to Reddit, I go to those sub-Reddit forums.

A good example would be…

“I created an app called Glitch Art”

Okay, so it's people who are interested in glitching their photos.

They love to create those glitches in their photos.

Rayner (26:51)

What are glitches?

Dave (26:52)

Glitches are those...

Whenever your computer is…

Are you familiar with blue screen or depth?

Yeah. So people love this.

It's kind of like an artistic thing.

So people like to overlay this blue screen or depth effect onto their photos.

It's kind of creates a very artistic kind of style in your photo.

So it's very niche.

It's a very unique group of people who like to put this kind of effect into their photos and videos.

I went to this Reddit subforum and it's called Glitch Art, literally called just Glitch Art.

There was a group of, I think a thousand people in there that kept uploading photos on.

Making their photo glitches.

There were a lot of very nice effects.

So an idea pops up in my mindset if there are a thousand people interested in putting this effect onto their photos.

I probably can create an app for that.

I went back to my developer saying that…

“I just want an app that puts an overlay of glitch effect onto the photo”

Within about three weeks to four weeks, I had an app that I released to the app store, and surprisingly, that's a lot of people looking for glitch effects.

Wanting to put glitch effects on the photo.

So just by doing that, I think my app during that time was doing about a thousand dollars a day.

Organically without any paid advertisements from that niche and because of that need that category was so niche that there weren’t any competitors.

For all the keywords that I have for Glitch, I was easily number one and I was getting like two thousand dollars a day for free.

Rayner (28:40)

That's considered a lot because in like a month.

You're looking like 50-60 thousand dollars.

Dave (28:49)

Yes, correct

For free it's zero marketing spend.

So that was one way you can do that.

Another way you can go to Amazon is the top seller list.

So I missed that trend, but it was a very good case study.

So back then, I think it was like four or five years ago, there was a big hype on the coloring books.

People were purchasing a lot of coloring books on Amazon.

So they bought a lot of coloring books and they just-

It's a way of, you know, to relieve stress, they buy a book, color pencils, and then you just color.

A few people in the app store got very smart about it.

So they created a digital version of it.

Back then, you know, the iPad was also popular and the iPad also introduced the Apple pen. 

So it was the perfect opportunity for just simply bring an idea from Amazon to the app store.

A lot of people create apps just for coloring books so we can just download the app and you open the app and there are a lot of coloring pages for you to color.

You can just use an Apple pen and just carry on.

The coloring books are still very popular in the app store.

If you're the top coloring book in the app store right now, you're probably earning about $500,000-600,000 every month just from this simple app.

A lot of things to play with on the App Store, and a lot of things that you can know port over from the physical world to the app world.

Back then that was the play.

There was a lot of market research on that.

Rayner (30:27)

Okay and going back to the glitch, so let's say you say you talk about MVP.

MVP stands for a minimum viable product in case some of you are wondering.

So let's say glitch is something that.

Hey got 1000 downloads a day.

Do you then just rely on the organic traffic or you're going to like you know buy ads to even try to push it even further?

Dave (30:48)

Back then…

So, our business model is very different from most business models.

We call ourselves the app publishing company so we don't just focus on one app.

Our goal is to create a portfolio of apps targeting different niches that the big competitors like Photoshop and Adobe, don’t focus on.

So our strategy was very simple.

We focused 100% on the photo and video category and graphic design category.

We try to stay in this category, the reason being because of the economics of skill.

If you create an app for glitch art, you can recycle the code and use the code for another app.

After the glitch art is done, you can use the same code and just change the effects and maybe apply fire effects to a photo.

You can just keep recycling.

So your cost of producing the app gets lower and lower each time.

So that app, maybe you can probably recycle four to five times and the cost will be maybe like what?

Less than four figures or maybe even lower.

Rayner (31:59)

Am I right to say that maybe you talked earlier about the glitch app, I'm guessing how it works is someone uploads that image, and then your app will give it a so-called glitch feature.

Dave (32:08)

Yeah. Okay.

Rayner (32:09)

Earlier you also talked about the fire.

You wouldn't have it within the same app you can do glitch effects, fire effects, and water effects.

It will all be different apps.

Dave (32:16)

Yes, correct.

Rayner (32:18)

So one app for one effect.

Dave (32:19)

Yes.

Rayner (32:20)

So if someone says one another photo to make it look very fire some, they need to pay money for another app to make that fire effect.

Dave (32:24)

Yes, correct.

Rayner (32:25)

Got it. So they have to keep paying.

Dave (32:26)

Yes, correct.

So I think the main reason is also to be very focused.

App Store works exactly like how Google search works, the SEO.

Whatever keywords you put in your app are very important.

if you mix too many things in one app, then the app becomes too diverse, and your keyword selection also becomes too diverse.

Then it's very hard for the Apple algorithm to state what this app is about.

If your app is very focused on just creating one thing, then all your keywords will be very focused on that particular topic.

For example, a glitch.

So glitch has a lot of very interesting keywords.

There's glitch art, glitch effects and something related to a glitch can also be VHS.

VHS is in the 90s where you have all the videotapes and when we play the old video tapes has all those lines or this very old effect.

Rayner (33:23)

Was it a colorful lines thing?

Dave (33:24)

Yeah, come something like that.

People like to associate that with glitches also.

We can branch out something related to a glitch.

So everything is very centered around that glitch.

When Apple algorithm crawls to your app, they can very easily tell that this app is very focused on Glitch.

While we're related to Glitch, they will push your app up to the top of the search results.

Rayner (33:48)

Maybe just to push back a little bit, because earlier you mentioned that how you search for ideas is looking from the top 100 to 150.

You see what competitors are doing.

They're going to add more features and more stuff.

But by again, adding more features so that won't need to be like one app, which is against what you say earlier by focusing?

Dave (34:04)

Well, it depends on what kind of features it can be.

It could be an app that is lacking in some features like a text feature.

So it doesn't have to be some additional features that divert away from your main topic.

For example, maybe there's this example photo editor app that lacks lacking certain kind of font that people like.

Maybe you read the reviews, people are looking for this font, and they are requesting this font.

You can just create an app and then include this font.

Then it doesn't still diverge away but it still differentiates you from the main competitor.

Rayner (34:40)

How does Apple like decide which app to push at the top of the ranking?

Because I know at SEO, they have backlinks and stuff like that so how does Apple kind of decide which to go?

Dave (34:48)

This is quite a few years ago so a lot of things have changed so back then the algorithm was quite simpler it's very simple to understand.

Let's go back to the example of Glitch and Photoshop.

There is this Adobe Photoshop app. It's occupying the keyword glitch as the number one.

Then I released an app called Glitch Art.

But because my app Glitch Art is more targeted, and my app icon is very glitch-related, my screenshots are all very glitch-related.

My description is all very glitch-related.

When someone comes to the App Store and they compare Adobe Photoshop and my Glitch Art app, someone who is looking for glitch effects comes to the App Store and looks for glitch effects.

They will probably, they will highly likely select my app rather than Adobe Photoshop.

Because of Adobe Photoshop, the screenshots don't relate to glitches, right?

Because it's very generic.

They just want to edit a photo.

But my app is very focused.

It's always about glitch

The only thing you can do is to add glitch effects and pop and the user will click on my app.

That also sends a signal to the app store saying that...

“Oh, my conversion rate is higher than Adobe Photoshop, and for this particular keyword”

Then Apple will think that…

“Oh yeah, this app is more relevant”

It's the relevancy that's very important.

It's more relevant to the keyword glitch art and you will push me above Adobe Photoshop and be number one.

Rayner (36:29)

Okay, so when you mention conversion, does it mean that they have to download the unused app that's considered one conversion?

Daver (36:33)

Yes, correct.

So it's when people land on your App Store page and then they download it and the conversion rate is higher than uh Adobe Photoshop for that particular keyword.

Rayner (36:45)

Oh, I see. I see Okay, so basically they want the user to get the best experience.

That's how one metric they do for it.

Dave (36:50)

So every time you create an app.

I had 38 apps in the App Store before I sold the company.

Each app is very focused on a particular topic right particular niche.

For example, I have an app called the logo maker.

So you go into the app store If you search logo maker, I'll be number one and what this app does is just one thing.

You go into my app you create a logo I have about a few hundred templates for you to choose from all logo templates.

You can create a logo within five minutes and I'll probably beat up Photoshop again if Photoshop has that keyword reason being I'm more relevant than Photoshop.

Because Photoshop is just too generic.

I have apps like Poster Maker.

You go into the app and create posters.

Invitation Maker, you go into the app and create an invitation.

I have also the last app that I created before I sold companies, NFT Creator.

You go into the app and you just simply create NFT.

That's the gist.

Rayner (37:54)

You mentioned you have 38 apps.

You have to like regularly update your apps, will it be very cumbersome?

Is that like regular updates they usually do?

Dave (38:09)

So that's the beauty of choosing the right category.

I was a little lucky.

I was in the graphic design photo and video category.

Photo and video apps are just basically editing.

The most common editing feature is just to apply filters write text on a photo, maybe add some effects, and so on.

There's only so much that you can do for editing of photos.

Once you create an app that has all these features, you can just kind of like recycle them and then apply them to the rest of the 38 apps.

Yeah, so once in a while, if Apple releases new features that you think you can input into your app, you just update it.

It's quite easy to update because the code is technically quite similar.

So you can update for one, you can update for the rest of the day quite quickly.

Rayner (39:07)

Got it.

Dave (39:08)

Yeah.

So yeah, that's the reason why we are so focused on this category because it's more for economies of scale.

You can do it for one, you can do it for the rest of the apps also.

Rayner (39:17)

But at the start, you didn't know that this has this benefit, this economies of scale.

You mentioned, was it like by chance you just happened to be in this category, or was it planned from the start?

Dave (39:29)

I would say it's by chance because my first app is a Say Selfie app, it's a selfie app.

So for this selfie app, after taking a good selfie, you also want to edit your photos.

We kind of like by chance got into this category because of my first app.

Our thinking is that Say Selfie, we didn't get investment.

We kind of need to pivot into being self-sustaining.

So…What do we do?

We asked a developer to create the features for this Say Selfie in the editing app to make it more appealing to more users and we just figured out why we spend quite a lot of money developing these features.

The only way to make back or at least reduce the cost is to recycle the code and use this code to create another app.

It's kind of wasteful if you spend a few thousand dollars creating an app and then you don't recycle it.

It is kind of like by chance, after then we think about it, to reduce the cost, we need to do that. Yeah.

Rayner (40:34)

When you use the word we, I'm guessing you have another, someone else doing this with you.

Dave (40:37)

Yeah. my brother, he's the one that, encouraged me to give this a shot.

Go and get the grant from the government, go to get the IHM grant.

Eventually, we managed to get a grant, but by the time we got the grant, we figured out how the App Store works.

We are kind of like bootstrapped already.

We were already profitable and we didn't need further investment.

So after that, we stopped raising money from the VC and then my brother and I eventually decided to go all in into figuring out how the App Store works and create a portfolio of apps.

Create a small mini-app empire.

Rayner (41:26)

I like App Empire.

Now I'm thinking, because from what I know, you don't create apps yourself, you hire a developer to help you with it.

So let's say someone who wants to maybe create an app and they need to find a developer.

What would you tell them to do?

Where should they find one?

Dave (41:44)

I guess, you know, even before you start developing an app, it always goes back to the basic principle first to the lean startup idea, which is to what's the problem they are trying to solve and what's the hypothesis?

What's the assumption that you are trying to create?

Then you know create an MVP as fast as possible at a low cost as possible and then test the assumption test the idea.

I will always say…

Don't hire a full-time team yet. Just go to Upwork.

If you have a friend that was willing to do this for you, with you for equity or anything quickly, you come together and sketch out a quick MVP, minimum viable product.

That doesn't take more than one month.

Create a very simple one and then quickly go to Upwork and release.

Once it's done, release them to the App Store.

Of course, you also need a designer to create a UI/UX, quickly.

You can also go to Upwork or maybe you can go to Fiverr, and quickly sketch out a simple design.

Pass it to the developer for onboarding and then it just quickly released to the app store.

Yeah.

The fastest way is always to go to Upwork.

There are tons of freelancers who are willing to do it at a quick and reasonable cost.

Rayner (43:15)

Are there any things you look for in the freelancer before you hire them?

Dave (43:23)

I would guess it’s always their resume.

I haven't used Upwork for quite a while now because when I exited a company, I have already a full-time team.

I’ve not been using Upwork for quite a while.

But back then when I was using Upwork, there were a lot of developers that had resumes that seemed very fishy.

When I talk to one developer and look at their resume, some of the apps that they develop are the same as another developer that I have been talking to.

Because it's very hard to verify whether they created an app.

So, in the resume, they can just put it.

They can just say that no I've created this app.

But there's no way to verify whether they can or they did the app.

The principle that I go with is always to hire slow fire fast.

Always go through the interview, go through the resume, and then always go into an interview with them and ask basic technical questions.

My question is always very related to a photo and video.

So I'll ask them, what kind of framework they use for photo editing, video editing, and all sorts.

If they can answer the basic questions then, after a few rounds of interviews, after comparing with your other candidates.

I know after cross-referencing, whether they develop the app and you feel that they are not fishy and they are speaking the truth, then you hire them and I hire them on a project basis.

So, If they can't complete the project, then I can quickly fire them.

It's always slow, going to go through all the interviews with them, give them technical questions to answer and ensure that they are speaking the truth.

But once you feel that when the project started and they are giving a lot of excuses, I can't do this, I can't do that, and they're delaying and they are not responsive, then you have to quickly fire them.

Restart the whole process again and look for a new developer.

It's very hard to tell whether that guy is legit until you work with them.

Once you feel that, after one to two weeks, they are not producing results, quickly fire them and find a new developer.

Rayner (45:36)

Let's say someone wants to create an app from the top of my mind, I'm thinking that there are so many things I need to do because I'm new, right?

So many things I have to consider, like you said, the UI/UX.

Except for that the buttons click to this page, then maybe the...

menu bar, what should I have, I know about us, contact and stuff like that.

Are these all different things that someone needs to consider before the app is built?

Are they even important?

I'm not referring to the 80-20 over here.

Dave (46:02)

Um, I would say before you start an app, like back to the lean startup way is always to ensure that the idea is feasible.

That's a market for it.

You can do this even before even without an app.

You can always very quickly, one way to test your idea is to just create a very simple landing page.

Landing page, for example, you want to test the idea of glitch art.

You can just create a landing page that says…

“I have this app is on, it's still in development.”

Just state what this app does.

Add glitch effects to your photo, blah, blah, blah, everything else.

Create a landing page.

Then just release it to the internet world.

What you do is that you run Facebook ads on this and you see what's the conversion rate.

Are they people willing to go into this landing page?

Then put that email into it to notify them that, once the app is released, you will get a notification and they can download the app store.

We can, all these things are small little steps…

You can do to test the idea before you create an app.

That's just one way.

Rayner (47:12)

Do you do that yourself?

Dave (47:14)

Initially? Yes.

But after I got more experience and my cost was so low from the recycling of the code I don't do that.

I can just quickly release an app within 3 weeks.

I don't need to...

I will find it faster to just release an app because it just takes me 3-weeks to test an idea.

Rayner (47:34)

Maybe just walk me through, a high-level overview.

Let's say…

“Someone wants to create an app; he already knows the demand for it”

What are the certain things that he needs to consider when creating the app?

Dave (47:48)

I would say…

Before you create an app, you have to know.

I mentioned…

Whether there’s a market for it and what's your unique selling point.

You need to test.

I think the main important thing is to gather your MVP, and how long it takes for you to create your MVP.

So if MVP takes too long, then, you have to simplify it even further.

So that it doesn't take six months just to create MVP and then test the idea and then If you want to dive deep into a specific or creating app.

Then I think the first step is always to look at your competitors.

Easier way to find out what are the core features that you need for the MVP.

Just go to the main competitor, see whether you can duplicate some of the features, and put it in, everything else.

Even with the UI/UX, you don't need to start from scratch.

With the App Store being quite mature now, there's an app for almost everything.

So you can just look for your closest competitor and then kind of like create a UI that's similar to a competitor.

The reason being there's no need to reinvent the wheel is that most of the apps now are quite mature and they have probably done a lot of research on the UI/UX.

Whether this UI/UX being optimized?

You can usually save quite a lot of time and money from creating everything from scratch.

Just use your computer as an example and then use the UI/UX from them and you can just quickly tell the designer to create a similar UI/UX.

Maybe make some changes to what you think can be better.

Then quickly design brief designer first on the UI/UX.

What I usually do is that the first page, I will say is the home screen home screen.

What are some of the buttons that I need?

What are the wordings that I need?

After the home screen, I will go down to the second screen.

Second screen could be, the editing screen for my photo editing app.

How do I want the editing screen to be at the top is the user's photo and at the bottom are all the different editing features, the text, the filters, the stickers, and everything else.

Then into each of the editing features, you need to create a separate screen for it also.

Then usually it's quite fast because your competitors have already done it, so you just kind of like take a screenshot and then put it in a design brief.

Then quickly move on and once the design brief is done, send it to the designer, and get into a call with him.

See if there's anything that he doesn't understand.

Everything is in order. He needs everything.

All the info that he needs.

Then once he creates, send in the design, and the brief, and then once he gets the designs out and then you can send it to a developer.

For the developer side, you need to write a tech brief.

On the tab brief, you need to be very specific on what each feature does.

When I click on this button, I'm a more traditional way.

Now people use Figma.

Rayner (51:10)

What is Figma

Dave (51:11)

Figma is like you create a template and when you click on the template, you can go to the next screen and the next screen.

It's a Photoshop thing for creating UI/UX.

Back then, Figma wasn't that popular, so I wasn't using Figma.

For me, I was just using Google Docs.

For tech brief, you just state, for each screen, what the buttons there, and what each button does, and for the editing features, what each editing feature does, how many fonts to put in, and so on.

Then, all the way to the end of the app.

Once the tech brief is done, and he has the designs, and then the developer can start work.

Then if you're hiring for hard work, you need to track, his working hours, and should I say on time?

I believe Upwork there's still the time tracker.

To track his time, you need to regularly, go and see him.

It's a lot of micro-managing.

When you first start up.

Yeah.

Then once then, for every few weeks or every two to three weeks, I'll ask for a beta version to ensure that he's on track.

Make sure that he's following the brief well and following all the design briefs well.

Rayner (52:36)

Am I right to say that you require multiple freelancers to execute each stage of the app?

Dave (52:43)

No, you just need a team of three people.

You are the one that is overseeing everything.

You are the visionary, how you want the app to be and you're the one that's testing the assumptions.

You need a developer to code.

Then you just need a UI/UX designer.

You just need 3%.

Rayner (53:05)

The developer means the ones that run on the backend.

Making sure things are working.

Then the UI is just the design guy.

They have to work pretty closely.

Dave (53:16)

Yeah

Rayner (53:17)

Okay, got it.

Dave (53:18)

It's a pretty small and lean team.

If you want it in the App Store, it doesn't require a lot of capital to create the first version of the app unless your app is so complicated that the developer needs tons of hours to create an app.

To make your cost even lower, because the app store is so mature now there are quite a lot of templates out there.

For you to create your MVP fast.

For example, if you want to create an e-commerce app, maybe for trading cuts, you don't need to start from scratch.

You can just go to Google and Google the e-commerce app template.

I believe that's about a few thousand results.

You can just go into them maybe they charge you about 300- 400 USD just for the app template.

You can just buy the app template, and pass it to the developer.

Then the developer just makes some of the changes that you want so you don't need to code from scratch anymore.

Rayner (54:18)

The ones selling the app template there are an app themselves, aren't they?

They're an app company selling app templates.

Dave (54:28)

Yeah, correct.

So they have a bunch of developers at the back end, just creating a lot of templates for people to use.

Rayner (54:31)

If that's the case, then I guess your unique so-called edge is not so much about the design, because the template is so easily readily there.

So where does the edge now lie since?

Dave (54:45)

It's in your market research.

That's why I always say before you even dive deep into the app, you need to test your hypothesis.

What's the unique selling point?

Whether your selling point is unique enough from your competitors so that people will download the app rather than other people's apps.

That's the main thing behind any app.

Rayner (55:10)

That's like the most important thing of the first app almost there's the top of the mind.

Dave (55:13)

Correct, correct.

That's why I say…

Even before you start an app, you can just quickly test an idea, you can create a landing page, and then...

Run a very simple Facebook ad to test whether people are willing to download an app to give up their email to receive notifications.

Back in my day, because we are kind of like Bootstrap what I did for the selfie app.

I went to the Scape Team app.

There were a lot of youngsters there.

My target audience was those youngsters who were very interested in going to take selfies

So I went there, I think I went there for two to three weeks, interviewing the people there.

So I just tell them…

I have this app idea, they take selfies better.

You use your back camera and blah, blah, blah.

Then I asked them for their opinion.

What's your feedback?

Would you download this app?

If you have this app, what kind of features do they want? Yeah,

It's all very simple, cost-effective way.

It doesn't cost you a lot of money.

Just your time to test your idea even before you spend a lot of time and resources developing an app.

Rayner (56:23)

Nice, hustler mindset.

Dave (56:24)

That's the way when you are, when you start up, you have no money. Yeah, that's the way to do it.

Rayner (56:29)

Fantastic.

So let's say you say that you want to make sure that there is demand first before you launch an app.

Let's say you have an idea of a place of market-side research.

I think this one got a chance.

But then you go to the app store, no one is doing the app.

What are you going to do?

Are you going to go with the idea still or are you...

Dave (56:46)

So there's a lot of bunch of tools out there now to see whether there's a demand for that particular app.

For that, you need also a set of keywords that are related to the app.

Let's go back to the example of glitch art.

So when I released glitch art there was only one app that was doing it but it was a paid app.

So the paid app was doing about $5-10K/month if I remember correctly.

I wasn't that sure whether 5 -10K is demand for it.

I use a tool called a sensor tower.

So sensor tower, you can just key in all the different keywords related to glitch.

Then they will give you kind of like an estimated popularity score.

Then from there, you can make a judgment of whether that's demand when there are no other competitors.

Right now there's an even easier way.

So when I first did it, there were no Apple search ads.

Right now, there are Apple search ads.

You can use Apple search ads to run ads on the app store.

Your app will always appear at the top because you're running ads.

So if you go to the Apple search ads platform, you can just basically type a keyword and Apple will tell you how popular that keyword is in a scale.

I think on a scale of four dots.

So on a scale of four dots.

If your keyword is popular, then it's three out of four dots.

If your keyword is very popular, like photo editor, that is out of four dots.

So you can type in the keyword and you see if your keyword is at least two dots out of four, then it means there's demand for it.

Rayner (58:27)

Do you usually look for at least two dots?

Dave (58:29)

Yeah, two dots. Or if there's one dot, but for that particular niche, the main keyword has one dot, but that particular niche has a lot of sub-keywords related to the topic.

For example, I thought...

I'm talking about glitch art.

So there's a lot of other keywords like glitch effects, VHS effect that's related to glitch, but all these, you know, also maybe have one thought, but they all add up and then it becomes a huge demand.

Rayner (59:55)

Earlier you mentioned that the competitor who did glitch, did he only pay?

So what about your model?

Do you do only paid or do you do both free and paid?

Dave (59:06)

No, I only do free. The trend is always.

The Apple algorithm has changed quite a lot.

Back in the day once you release a free app, because it's a free app, the downloads are higher.

Apple just instantly feels that your app is more relevant, it's better than your competitor.

You can always out-compete a paid app quite easily.

You always go for free in your model.

You download the app for free.

You can use some of the app features for free, but for the more premium features, it's locked.

You have to pay for it.

Rayner (59:46)

Is it a one-time fee or recurring?

Dave (59:47)

So back then, there wasn't a subscription.

So for the in-app purchase, you just have to pay once and you can use the app forever.

Rayner (59:58)

You get all the latest updates and stuff like that?

Dave (1:00:00)

Yep, correct.

Rayner (1:00:01)

Then eventually you switch to recurring later?

Dave (1:00:06)

Yes.

So yeah. So I think it was a few years already a few years back, that Apple switched from a one-time payment model to a recurring subscription.

That brought about a lot of changes in the App Store and it's also one of the pivotal moments in the business.

Rayner (1:00:27)

Right now, if someone wants to pay a one-time fee it's not possible, is it?

Dave (1:00:28)

It's still possible depending on the app developer so some app developers feel that you know a subscription is too expensive and they don't think that their audience is willing to pay a subscription for it.

Then they will just stick to the one-time payment model.

Rayner (1:00:42)

Got it, got it.

So after being in the app business for several years, what was the biggest challenge that you faced and what did you learn from it?

Dave (1:00:54)

Wow.

Biggest challenge. I guess the biggest challenge is always...

Okay, so how my business model works is that to keep growing the company, one has to keep thinking of new app ideas.

After doing this for nine years, there's there's only so much you can think after a while.

So it kind of drains you because you need to keep doing a lot of market research.

So my market research was quite thorough.

So there's a lot of steps to go through before even, you know, I, I think of, you know, before releasing an ad to that app store.

I need to read a lot of articles.

I read trend articles and go to the Reddit forum.

A lot of reading that needs to be done.

I spent about, four to five hours a day just researching my app idea.

The biggest challenge is always to come up with new app ideas.

I tried several ways to create a team to try to outsource this part of the job.

I tried to create a team that focused on just how many brainstorming new app ideas.

But it didn't turn out very well.

So it's not easy to keep thinking of new app ideas every day.

I think that's the biggest challenge.

When I first started, this model was unique.

Now everybody was first, everybody wanted to be Instagram, to be Facebook, and they just focused on one app.

They want to make this app as big as possible.

We took a very different approach which is to create a portfolio.

We don't just focus on one app.

So we created 38 apps, and each app is a very particular niche.

So back then was quite easy because nobody was doing this approach.

Everybody was just focusing on one app.

There were a lot of market gaps and a lot of opportunities for you to play with.

Rayner (1:03:01)

But why did you decide to go with that approach when most people are going the other way?

Dave (1:03:06)

Because we decided to go into a lifestyle business instead of a VC-run business.

So when we pitched the idea of creating an app portfolio, I think most investors didn't understand the model.

When we talk about this idea, a lot of people don't understand it.

A lot of the VCs also don't understand it.

We were already quite profitable.

So there wasn't a need to raise money anymore.

We don't see a need to raise money.

The margins are okay and we were quite comfortable.

We decided to make this a lifestyle business, instead of a VC-run business.

Rayner (1:03:49)

Maybe you could explain the difference between a VC-run business and a lifestyle business.

Dave (1:03:54)

So VC you raise money from VC.

For the VCs to make back their money is for you to keep raising money so that valuations go up.

If you stop raising money your valuation most probably remains stagnant and then the VCs will probably won't get their money back that soon.

For VC run business, you need to keep raising money. You need to keep innovating, you gotn to keep pitching a lot to other investors.

For lifestyle business means you have no investors or maybe you have only a few investors and money for the business is comfortable for you to pay out as dividends and you can leave out from the dividends and there's no pressure from other people to keep raising money to do this.

You can just keep the business stagnant and nobody cares because it's your own thing.

So lifestyle business is more like...

You're more in control of your business. If you want to make it stagnant, you can make it stagnant.

If you want to make it grow, you can make it grow.

You don’t care. Yeah.

Rayner (1:05:06)

Earlier you said one of the challenges just was I think market research.

Running off ideas.

Was there ever the possibility of you thinking maybe I'll stop, I would jump into a different category instead of just video and image editing.

We are doing games or whatever.

Ever heard that thought?

Dave (1:05:20)

I think we have this thought of... I think games... Games were very hot back then. Casual games.

So I think...

I'm not sure whether people still remember Flappy Bird.

Rayner (1:05:39)

Flappy Bird?

Dave (1:05:40)

Yeah, it was created by a Vietnamese.

It's a very simple game.

I think it made him almost an overnight millionaire.

Very simple game, you just tap on the phone screen to prevent your bird from being squashed by the pillars, something like that.

So that brought about the rise of casual games.

Apple was also quite okay with casual games back then.

So if you can create very addictive casual games, you can rise to the top of the rankings fast and then you can make quite a lot of money from the ads.

It was quite a lot of good casual games.

The one I remember is color switch was very popular.

Flappy Birds, was quiet and the casual games looked simple.

It's very simple to code.

Rayner (1:06:36)

Sorry to interrupt but what is a casual game?

Dave (1:06:38)

A casual game is your toilet bowl game.

It's a five-to-ten-minute game that you can go and you can sit on a toilet bowl doing your business and you take out your phone and you play the casual game.

It's not like a fortnight where once you play you have to play like what one hour, two hours just to finish the game.

You know complete a quest or something like that so casual game like your Angry Birds also you just need 5 to 10 minutes to complete a level.

That's the rise of the casual games so we try to we thought of you know going to this category but you know although the game mechanics look simple, it's very easy to code.

It's just that maybe in one month you can code very simple casual games, but we realized that you know we are not the games person, we don't play a lot of games.

I hardly play games you know since primary school.

The last time I played the game was a Pokemon Go version so we try to think of very unique games that people like.

It's very addictive but you know we realized that wow, It's not easy.

It's easy to code, but it's the idea behind the game.

How easy and addictive the game is, and whether the game can hook people up.

That's the that's the really difficult part.

I realize that a lot of people try to do that.

But maybe out of 10 people who created a casual game, only one managed to succeed and make it really to make it very big.

Rayner (1:08:07)

What's stopping from? Say…

Identifying a very popular casual game like Flappy, but then you add in more features, and then you launch your own.

Would it work?

Dave (1:08:15)

It doesn't work that way for the casual games.

So for casual games, you can't rely a lot on what we call the app store optimization, where you can just key in keywords and then hope that it will rise to the ranks.

For casual games, to make it big, make it viral, it needs to be addictive and you need it to be very shareable.

People want to share the game.

It's very fun.

People recommend word of mouth.

People are willing to share their scores on Facebook, then it creates a viral effect.

We have this thing called a viral factor.

For casual games, you need to have the viral factor to come in.

If your games do not have the viral factor, it's very hard for you to rise to the top of the rank.

It's really about the game mechanics rather than how addictive it is, and how good the retention of the app is.

Which is not easy to do and it needs a lot of trial and error.

You need to create tons of games even before you create one that works.

I know this guy who created the Color Switch.

It's a very popular game I think six or seven years ago.

It took him about 30 to 40 games, creating 30 to 40 casual games before he came out with the idea of Color Switch and made it big.

Rayner (1:09:40)

What is a Color switch?

Dave (1:09:42)

If you search on the app store now,

It's a timing color switch. It's a very simple game.

It's like a tolerable game, 5-10 minutes.

The ball will just keep jumping. Then there's a view at the top.

The view at the top, you have to match the color of the ball with the view, so you can pass to the next level.

Yeah, it's very addictive.

It's a very simple game also.

Rayner (1:10:07)

These types of casual games, are not like, Fortnite where you play with other players.

It's just you.

is it?

Dave (1:10:08)

Yes, it was a very individual game.

Rayner (1:10:10)

Okay, got it.

Earlier you mentioned that since you don't play many games, that's why you are you don't have this age in this creating game.

So back to your image and video editor.

Do you use all of such apps?

That's why you are very familiar with it.

Dave (1:10:20)

Uh, no, no, I don't edit a lot of photos, but the mechanics are pretty simple.

Most editing apps are quite similar.

You don't need to reinvent the view to create very innovative features for editing.

But you just have to think of what is the niche people are not developing.

For photo and video is a very different ballgame.

It's more on finding the market gap.

But for casual games, it's more really about the game mechanics, making it very addictive, making it have a very high viral factor.

For photos and videos, you don't need a high viral factor you just need to rise to the top of the particular keyword, and then you're more or less, you get all the organic downloads.

Rayner (1:11:17)

Yeah. Got it. So from what I'm hearing is like, for photo and video, you need to find like, existing market demand and you're filling the gap.

Dave (1:11:23)

Yes.

Rayner (1:11:24)

Sometimes there's no demand, but you create people like it, and there's demand that's coming through.

Dave (1:11:25)

Yes, right, right. Yeah.

Rayner (1:11:26)

So back to your, app, You said that…

You do research, then you see that competitor does a certain app, and then maybe you're going beat that app and have more features.

What if your competitor now does this to your existing app?

What's the next course of action?

Dave (1:11:41)

It boils down to your market research in your market research.

For this particular niche, a lot of sub-niches link to the main niche.

For example, in glitch art, there are a lot of sub-niches, like VHS effects, effects that are related to glitches.

So in your market research, if you did your market research thoroughly enough, you will find out all these keywords.

Then the way to beat your competitor is to find out all these keywords.

If you're thorough enough, you will find all these keywords.

Then if you put it into your metadata, your app title, and your app subtitle, you have already an edge over your competitors who may not do the research.

Apple will know it, the algorithm and keyword is very relevant to your main app.

Then you're more or less able to stick to the number one ranking for quite a while.

Of course, you need to have a working app that gives people what they want and then they will leave a good review.

Your reviews must be good.

Your keyword selection must be good.

Your app relevancy must be good.

Your screenshots must be relevant.

So your conversion rate also must be good when they see the app page and then they download the app and then use the app.

Now of course the next thing is that Apple needs to make money also.

So monetization must be reasonable also.

When people come into your app, were people spending in your app?

You need to optimize your paywall.

Well, if your paywall is not optimized well, and people are not paying for the app, then you probably lose out on the competitor.

So all these things you need to think about in terms of Apple, what is Apple looking for?

Apple is looking for revenue, it needs to make money, and looking for app relevancy, and all these things, you must have an edge over your competitors.

You must be able to monetize well, test all the different price points, test your paywall, and see whether a subscription works.

If the subscription doesn't work, then you will revert to a one-time purchase, or maybe, what I did is also remove all the ads.

I used to place an advertisement in my app to earn revenue for AdMob.

But then I removed it because I feel that it affects the experience of the app.

Because it's quite irritating,

You are using the app halfway and then the app pops up.

So I removed them.

The experience was better.

People spend longer time in the app and all these small little things give good feedback to Apple's algorithm, saying that this app is good, it's better than its competitors.

All these small things add up.

You need to go and figure out what are the small things to give an edge over the competitor.

Rayner (1:14:41)

So, you have 38 apps, do you manually test each app or do you just test it as a whole, and all 38 apply the same thing?

Dave (1:14:42)

That's the beauty of the economies of skill, focusing on just one category.

Once you have one app, you figure out how one app works.

This usually applies to the rest of the apps.

Because the audience is quite similar, they're just looking for different things.

So a lady who is interested in making a logo maker, you optimize the app for logo maker.

Then her profile is probably similar to someone who is looking for a poster maker.

How you build your paywall, how you build your screenshots, how you, you know, leave a review, how you optimize everything in the app usually is about the same.

It doesn't differ too much.

Because the audience is pretty much the same.

Rayner (1:15:30)

Nice. Yeah. So you mentioned, optimizing the paywall.

So I understand the premium model is where the person maybe gets like 50% of the things they can do for free, then the other 50% they want, they have to pay for it.

How do you determine what other stuff that they are likely to pay for?

Dave (1:15:43)

Very easy.

I always say there's no need to reinvent the wheel. Your competitor most likely has done it for you already.

One thing I can always look for is how LLB or Canva did it.

So maybe at this point of the app, once they, an example, maybe they are editing halfway, the first five filters are free and the rest are locked.

So I can just kind of like copy and put the same principle into my app.

So the first five filters are free from the app and then the rest are locked.

That's the first starting point.

You can always just imitate your first competitor, your main competitor.

They probably have done the homework for you.

They probably done a lot of A-B testing for you.

You just have to use their hard work and then put it into your app similar to your paywall.

How you design a paywall affects the conversion rate.

There's no need to start from scratch also.

You can just go to the app store and look for the top-grossing app in your category.

Top-grossing means the biggest earners for the category.

Rayner (1:16:50)

They show which app?

Dave (1:16:52)

Yeah. Okay.

They don't show in the App Store phone right now.

You have to go download it.

You have to go and sign up for Sensor Tower.

They will show you.

You can just go to the top-grossing app.

How are they monetizing their users?

When did they show their paywall?

Is it at the start of the app?

How do they work it? Is there any copywriting done or anything?

You just have to follow their principles, figure out what are they doing, and just apply it to the app, and probably most of the time they have done the homework for you.

It will work well for the app also.

Rayner (1:17:25)

From what I'm hearing it seems that you don't do a lot of A-B testing you let people do the A-B testing and then you just model what works for them.

Dave (1:17:32)

Yeah, unless until you know, you feel that your competitors are not doing a good job then you probably have to start from scratch and then you do your A-B testing.

Rayner (1:71:43)

How will you know when they are not doing a good job?

Dave (01:17:45)

Maybe you compare, Logo Maker, this app, the conversion rate from being a free user to a paying user is 20%.

They convert into a paying user, but an app may be for poster makers and similar audiences, you follow the competitor and you follow the same paywall style and everything else.

It doesn't work well.

Maybe the conversion rate is only 10%.

Then you compare it to your app and say…

“Hey, Logo Maker is 20%, but PosterMaker is only 10%”

Probably I need to redesign the paywall for PosterMaker.

I will do A-B testing for it.

You can compare within your app; you'll see the conversion rate.

That again, goes back to the beauty of focusing on one category.

You can compare your data to see which app you can further optimize and so on.

Rayner (1:18:36)

So am I right to say that within this category of 38 apps, the conversion all be very similar throughout all 38?

Dave (1:18:42)

Quite similar.

But of course, some apps, just have this group of audience that is not willing to pay.

So a good example will be, we have this app called the Wallpaper Maker.

It's just an app for user to come in and download the wallpaper for their phones.

No matter how we optimize the app, changing here and there, the conversion rate is just very low.

We conclude that this particular group of people are not willing to spend to buy wallpaper for their phone and they just say so you probably have to switch to the advertising model so you just paste ads on the phone and earn revenue from your adbob.

Rayner (1:19:26)

But as much as possible I believe you rather earn that recurring subscription than through advertising.

Dave (1:19:28)

Yeah correct

Rayner (1:19:33)

Also, not just that group of people who don't want to pay money I think if I'm not wrong you also did mention to me previously that...,

What's the other store?

Android Store [laughs]

Maybe you can explain why I don't think you are over there in the store.

Dave (1:19:48)

Apple always markets itself as a premium phone.

The people who bought iPhones are usually the more affluent people.

Most of them are the Americans and the Europeans. And this is what I call the tier-one countries.

They are willing to spend on the App Store.

They are willing to spend.

They are being trained to spend money on the App Store by Apple very well.

Apple is a very trusted brand.

Anything that comes from Apple shouldn't be too shady.

It should be quite legit.

But for Android, when Android first started, I think they focused more on developing countries.

Most of the users are from developing countries, like what I call tier two or tier three countries.

Countries that don't spend too much on the App Store.

Android user base is still primarily, quite a lot of them are still in the tier two and tier three countries.

They are more looking for free items instead of being paid.

They are not trained to spend money on the App, or the Play Store.

Play Store is more liberal also.

The whole Android operating system is more liberal.

There are more scammy apps up there as compared to the Apple App Store.

Because the Apple App Store is a walled garden.

You go into the ecosystem you need.

Once you go into the ecosystem, you are locked inside the ecosystem and it's very guarded.

But the Android Store is more open.

There are a lot of apps and different app stores in the Android operating system.

There's a lot of fishier stuff out there.

People are less trustworthy.

I will say…

Yeah. In the app store for the Play Store.

So people are not willing to spend on the Play Store as compared to the Apple app store.

Another reason is that…

In the Android operating system, there are just too many devices.

There's Samsung, there's Huawei and each phone comes with its specifications.

To create an app that is compatible with all the different Android devices, you need to have a decent-sized Android developer team to handle that.

As for Apple, you can create an app for the Apple iPhone 13 and it works well all the way to maybe iPhone X or maybe even the iPhone 6.

It works well for almost all different devices like iPads, iPhones everything else.

So it's very easy.

Create an app, that works for all devices.

For the Android App Store, you create an app, it doesn't work for all devices, but maybe it works well for the more premium devices where there's more processing power.

But you know once you go down to the lower tier devices, then it doesn't work as well then it creates a lot of bugs.

Once you create a lot of bugs, it will leave a bad review on the Play Store and then affect your ranking.

It's quite a lot of work.

Rayner (1:23:06)

It's not like you just take an existing code, copy, paste, and send it to Android.

You have to do a lot of work still to tweak it

Got it.

And speaking of bad reviews, what if someone leaves a bad review on your app?

Do you have any cause of action to take?

Dave (1:23:19)

For Apple, most of the bad reviews are mostly asking for a refund, and for the Apple side, we can't process the refund.

The users have to go to the Apple support page and ask for a refund.

Usually, when people say that, you know this app is not suitable for them.

Then we just direct them to the correct page to ask for a refund.

We have just a very small team of backend people that support all the customer service.

Not a very big team, I think one or two people are in charge of customer service to reply to all the questions that they have.

Because, like I said, Apple devices, once you create an app for the Apple ecosystem, it works pretty well for most old devices.

Once you eliminate a bug for one of the apps, it usually works well for the rest of the app.

So bugs, usually should get it lesser and lesser, and then at one point you will reach a point where there weren't there won't any bad reviews from the bugs.

Rayner (1:24:38)

I see.

Is there any minimum score that you aim for?

Dave (1:24:45)

If your app is working well you should at least have a 4 by 4 out of 5.

Right now, the standard now is at least a 4 by 4.

Anything below that your app is probably not doing what the user wants or there are a lot of bugs or you are charging too expensive for the app.

Rayner (1:25:03)

So if below 4.4 the ranking will get downgraded because it's not high enough.

Dave (1:25:05)

Yeah, correct. So yeah.

If your score is very low, then you'll probably lose out to the competitor and then you will drop in the ranking also.

So you need to be very watchful of your ranking and every time you release a new app version make sure that you track the reviews also.

Sometimes you miss out on a bug that's affecting a lot of users and then they will leave a bad review they will affect your score so you need to be a constant lookout.

Rayner (1:25:35)

Whenever you publish an app mention you have 38, are there times when you take the app down from the app store maybe because I don't know if the review is too bad, 1 star, 2 stars.

I think it's better to take it down or you just always just leave it there once you publish it.

Dave (1:25:45)

Yeah, we removed quite a few apps reason is that Apple doesn't like app publishers to publish too many apps because they want to keep the app store clean.

They don't want one company to be creating over 100 apps that's like kind of spamming the app store.

They want to keep the app store clean and cluttered free very different from Android.

Whereas Android is more spamming.

 Android is very liberal.

Apple is quiet, they want to keep it keep the image clean and everything else clutter-free.

You won't want to keep spamming the app store with Apps that are too similar or none of your code is just too similar.

Of course ready to recycle the code you can you like what I will say is that you don't copy and paste exactly 100%.

You need to make some changes to it and maybe add one new feature here on there to make it slightly different.

If the app is not performing well, getting like 20-30 dollars a day, it's not worth the money, not worth putting the app store out.

Putting the app out and we just remove it.

Just to keep your app account as clean as possible.

Rayner (1:27:09)

I believe you don't just have one account for 38, you have multiple accounts to upload the different 38 apps.

Dave (1:27:16)

Yes, if you are using my model.

Rayner (01:27:18)

Okay, because it's safer that way as well.

Dave (1:27:21)

Yeah, correct.

Always diversify and all in and everything in life, you try to diversify as much as possible.

Rayner (1:27:27)

Are there any funny or strangest things that have happened to you in this app journey of yours?

Dave (01:27:37)

I would not say... Hmm... Not much of a funny thing. I would say there's a lot of...

It made me realize that we are always at the mercy of Apple.

It's like you're a YouTuber. You're also at the mercy of YouTube.

Once the algorithm change, you can get screwed overnight.

All your rankings can be dropped.

It made me realize that no matter how small we are in the Apple ecosystem.

That's why we are always very risk-averse.

We try to keep our account very clean.

We don't push out too many apps at the same time.

Makes me think…

“Okay, this idea of being so small in the ecosystem also taught me about investing”

You always try to diversify your risk and everything else so because you know in the app store a lot of things happen.

Some of the apps got taken down before because you know never changed the rules and we are not fast enough to keep up with the rules and we are in violation of their guidelines.

Then some of the apps got taken down so when these apps get taken down overnight.

You know it caused a lot of panic and a lot of anxiety because you never know while you're sleeping.

Apple can just remove the app from the App Store without you knowing, without giving you a chance to explain yourself and everything else.

I mean, nothing wrong with that. I mean, that's the App Store.

They just trying to keep the place safe and clean,

I think we'll say that the big realization is that, we are just a very small fish in a very big pond.

This forces us to think about how can we exit from this kind of rat race and not be at the mercy of Apple.

Exit wasn't always the first choice.

We always try to think of ways, how we create, and how can we bring the users out of the App Store.

Is there any way we can monetize outside of the App Store?

It's really difficult because we tried to collect the emails.

But you know, we have this email database, but we will try to sell things to this email database because it's so disconnected, it's very hard to sell.

Most of the money being made is still within the App Store.

So eventually at some point, we probably need to exit from this because we are always at the mercy of Apple.

Rayner (1:30:46)

Since you're talking about exit, so maybe we can move on and talk about how the exit thing of this business came about.

So earlier you were talking about what the app store is like, how you build your apps and stuff, but now maybe we can focus more on the exit.

How did the exit come about?

Dave (1:31:00)

I guess it's... So we went to a wedding dinner, and at the wedding dinner, we sat at the same table with our uncle.

Our Uncle is one of the pioneer generations at TMSC, GIC.

So he has been through many cycles of financial crisis.

The Asian financial crisis, the housing crisis.

He has seen all the ups and downs of a lot of companies, all the startups they invested in, and everything else.

of course, then we told him about our venture, saying that…

“Oh, we have this ad thing that's going on, it's profitable”

What are his thoughts and everything else?

He's taught his advice is to, probably think about an exit because doing business is just very risky.

One thing can happen and then you can wipe up all your effort overnight.

That got us thinking and he's giving us advice, thinking about exit, saying that…

“Overnight everything can be wiped out”

Then Apple, on the other side, we are always at the mercy of Apple.

We should think of exiting.

Then we also read quite a lot of books on exiting.

So I think one good book is, I can't remember what's the name.

Probably I'll share it later about teaching you about the principle of editing and computing.

How do you build a company that is suitable for exit?

We started reading on this and then we tried to do a minor miss restructure of the apps to ensure that it is compatible for exit.

The main principle behind making a company compatible for exit is that…

You cannot be the face of the company when a new buyer buys your company.

It needs to be able to continue running, generating revenue without you.

I think that's the main selling point, the main thing that you need to make your company be.

So, fortunately, we are kind of like in the app space, so everything is like software as a service.

So even without me, all these apps can continue generating revenue for me.

We kind of made a lot of changes.

Small changes to it.

I think we started trying to sell the company in late 2018.

It was like before COVID.

Back then the appetite was very good for apps.

People still don't understand apps that well.

So 2018, I think the offers that we received were quite lowball.

We didn't go with them.

We went to several brokers and then we tried to sell. Most of them were lowball offers.

Rayner (1:34:25)

When you say lowball is like, like how many times earnings did they offer you?

Dave (1:34:21)

That's considered over 2X

Rayner (1:34:22)

That's considered over for the space that you're in.

Dave (1:34:33)

Correct.

Rayner (1:34:34)

You're judging this based on what?

Like the other companies are getting offered?

Dave (1:34:35)

Yes, correct. So we are judging these.

There was some market rate for apps.

How much we are with, how much they can be sold for.

By the offers that we receive for quite global.

We didn't go with it.

Then we scratched into late 2019.

So there was on and off, and in late 2019 then COVID happened.

So COVID happened late 2019 early 2020.

What happened is that everybody stayed at home and then there was the App Store experience a pandemic boom.

So almost without you doing much, your revenue, I think most people's revenue, especially if you're in the digital space, your revenue just shot up quite a lot overnight.

So we experienced the boom and especially with 38 apps, the revenue increase was quite significant.

We experienced a boom.

Also the start of what I call the company aggregators.

It started on Amazon.

This company called Threshold, they are buying up small Amazon companies, and e-commerce companies, aggregating them, and hoping the combined revenue will give them a very high valuation.

Eventually, the hand goes I suppose it will be an IPO or maybe bought over by another person.

What's happening in the Amazon store is happening in the app store.

So I think in 2020, and 2021, there was a whole bunch of aggregators coming up.

So they were looking for companies to buy.

We were lucky. We were in the right place at the right time.

From global offers to competing offers, people are starting to kind of like competing and giving app companies a higher valuation or at least market rate valuation.

We went with it, of course, some offers came close to closing but then in the end, they backed out but never mind because we are still very profitable.

We are quite profitable and then we are not desperate to sell.

I mean selling is an option but if it doesn't sell, it's okay.

We can just continue doing what we are doing.

So, one offer came, and we were very close to closing, but in the end, something happened, and they backed out.

Then in the end, I think thanks to the effort of the brokers, the two brokers that we engaged, they were patient and encouraging.

They went through all the different scenarios and taught us how to present ourselves well to the buyers.

We met with the last buyer, the buyer that bought over us I think towards the end of 2021, I think and they gave us a very good offer and the terms were pretty good we were happy with it.

Then the rest is history we sold the company to them.

Rayner (1:37:49)

Nice.

How do you find like, you mentioned brokers and buyers?

What was the process of finding someone interested in your business?

Dave (1:37:55)

There's a lot of buyers there's a lot of platforms out there a lot of marketplaces, I would say in the internet space.

If you have a if you have a blog that's making a very steady income you can just lease your blog to their platform.

I think one platform is an FE international or you can go to empireflippers.com

There are a lot of platforms and a lot of marketplaces for you to lease your online business then they'll connect you to the buyers.

So our experience with them was okay, the offers that came in were not the ideal ones.

My brother knew two of his friends who were doing an M&A deal.

My brother brought them in and they helped us to look through our financial records, clean up our financial records, and show that everything was in good shape.

Know how to speak to the buyers, how to present ourselves all these things and what are some of the potential questions that they will ask.

It was a very tough process and then they went to search for the potential buyers for us so the first buyer was closer to closing but it didn't happen.

Then after another three to four months search eventually found the second one who was offering a much better deal.

They are very eager to come into the app space and that's how we sold the company with these two brokers.

Rayner (1:39:42)

The brokers were introduced by your brothers and they went to manually look for companies interested.

Dave (1:39:48)

Correct.

It's no longer a marketplace anymore so they went to find prospective buyers manually sending out emails going through their buyer list and everything else.

Rayner (1:39:57)

Is that better for you in terms of paying less compared to commission compared to a marketplace?

Dave (1:40:01)

Okay, marketplace…

My experience with them is that because they are marketplace, the analyst that got attached to us in the marketplace wasn't very focused on us.

So his attention wasn't all on us because he has other prospective clients to deal with also.

They give us a valuation and then say…

“Yeah, that's it:”

That's the valuation you should go with.

Then it doesn't communicate a lot.

But for the two brokers that we work with, that my brother brought them in, their attention is more on us.

They talk to us about, what kind of buyers are we looking for.

Is it strategic buyers or is it financial buyers?

What's the ideal buyer?

What's the profile of the buyer?

What are the companies that you think will be interested in us, all these things?

Then what's the valuation like, what are the potential questions that the buyer will ask, what are some of the flaws of the company that you can rectify before we go deep into the selling process, and everything else?

What are the financial statements that need to be worked on, all needs to be cleaned up, and everything else?

It's very…

Rayner (1:41:25)

When you say clean up the financial statements, what does that mean exactly?

Dave (1:41:28)

Okay, fortunately for apps is quite straightforward.

Everything is recorded by Apple, so you can't bluff your way through.

You cannot do any accounting stuff to mark up your revenue or whatever your gross income or anything else.

The app store is very straightforward.

But maybe for other businesses, your e-commerce, there could be maybe you merge too many accounts into one.

Then it clouds your financial statement.

Maybe you mix your expenses into a company expense also.

That will also confuse the buyer and once your buyer sees that your accounts are very messy, it's very hard to figure out what's the real revenue that you're getting.

Then it's a very, you will drag out the process and then you will lose the momentum.

Before even you prepare to sell a company, ensure that all your accounts are clean.

Your expenses are all really company expenses.

You don't merge all different companies.

Each company should have its bank account and everything else, you know.

Rayner (1:42:37)

What are some of the things that a business can do to maybe mark up its valuation?

Dave (1:42:44)

The first thing is always about recurring if you can convert your business into one that is from offering a one-time purchase into a recurring subscription.

Now your valuation will go up at least.

I don't know, three to four times. Yeah.

It's like what happened to Adobe.

If you look at Adobe's initial years, you pay a one-time price to buy Photoshop.

Now after that, they switched to recurring subscriptions.

Then you can see the stock price went up because now they are a software at a service company, it's a recurring and It's a very steady income.

People will know how much revenue they will come in every year.

So it makes things very attractive, similar to what Microsoft did to Microsoft Office and the Windows platform.

The first thing you can do if you can make your business a recurring one is make sure you do it.

It will make your company more attractive and your valuation will go up.

Of course, if you're in the tech space, then it also makes things sweeter.

Also, tech valuation is usually higher than your brick-and-mortar valuation because Tech the overhead UG is quite low.

If you can kind of like convince the buyer that you are in the tech space then of course it will be good.

Of course, it's not that straightforward if you are brick-mortar sometimes you want to pitch to prospective buyers that you are a tech company It could be an uphill task, but I've seen other people do it.

If you look through the articles in Tech in Asia, you'll see how people pivot from a brick-and-mortar company into a tech company.

Rayner (1:44:36)

Do you have any example that comes to mind?

Dave (1:44:38)

I think one example may be wrong.

Salad Stop.

I think the Salad Stop from the name itself, sells salad across Singapore.

But I believe in the latest fundraising, they kind of like pitch themselves as a tech company.

So they probably, I don't know how they pitch it. I didn't read the pitch deck.

Probably they managed to collect some data and make the pivot into a tech company.

It's more attractive, If you can do this kind of thing, it makes your valuation more attractive.

Of course, it's an appeal task, but if you can do it, then why not?

Rayner (1:45:29)

How do you feel about selling with your baby, first many years building this app store and you just sell it one day?

Dave (01:45:40)

When I was reading the book that taught you how to exit.

One of the things that they say also is to don't be too attached to your company.

I kind of like to approach this as just a company, not my baby.

I would treat it as a tool to help me that brings me financial freedom.

Is there any sadness or is there any push certain when, when I sold the company?

Not a lot…

I felt I was ready to move on to other things I've been doing for close to nine years.

One of the main reasons I decided to sell is also because I feel that I cannot grow the company anymore.

If you don't grow a company, it's either stagnant.

If it's not stagnant, then it's going down.

If it's going down, it means your valuation will also go down.

Nobody wants to buy a sinking ship, right?

Even if they buy, they will buy at a very cheap valuation.

For me to grow the company, I have to hire more people.

My skill sets have reached the maximum.

There's only so much I can grow the company.

If I want to grow a company...

I'll probably have to go into inorganic traffic.

Which is buying ads, and Facebook ads, which can be costly.

I have to manage a new team to do all this.

I like to keep my team small.

My whole company size is only about 9-10 people, mostly developers.

But you still have to manage the people in some aspect.

If I want to bring in a marketing team to do all the advertisements, then I will have to manage them to ensure that they are performing well and all sorts.

Then it's not the path that I want to go towards.

I can learn Facebook ads on my own.

But then, there will be more things to whatever I've been doing, which is to come up with more app ideas.

I don't think I have the appetite to do that.

I'm very comfortable with the absolute value of the valuation.

I'm getting and do some calculations and feel that…

I can kind of like live off this sum of money and be happy with that.

I don't need a lot more and yeah.

I was quite sure if there was a buyer that came in with a good valuation and the deal was pretty good I was happy with it my brother and I were happy with it.

The very important thing is that we are always at the mercy of Apple.

It's a very risky business venture.

Once Apple changes the algorithm you are screwed.

Now with a buyer coming we just shifted the risk from me from and my brother to the the new buyer.

It's not no longer our business.

I can sleep better at night I don't have to wake up early in the morning checking my email and seeing my app has been removed and all sorts.

It was a very quiet and easy choice. Yeah.

Rayner (1:49:09)

Right now do you still think about apps, since you serve the company?

Do you still think, maybe I can try this idea or that idea?

Does it still ring in your head?

Dave (1:49:16)

Once in a while, I do. With AI coming in.

Chat GBT there's a lot of potential and all sorts.

But I'm still enjoying my kind of semi-retired life.

Maybe when the age comes back, I will never say no.

If there's a good opportunity, of course, I will go back in.

But right now, Nope  

Rayner (1:49:44)

Then since you talk about, you know, semi-retirement.

Was this something, you envisioned from the start and what is it like compared to the vision that you had in mind?

Dave (01:49:57)

The first thing I would never expect is that I can be financially free at this age.

Rayner (1:50:08)

You can share with the audience what’s your age.

Dave (1:50:10)

I was born in 1989.

I'm 34 this year.

Rayner (1:50:14)

Well done. [Laughs]

Dave (1:50:14)

So thank you. Thank you. Um, so yeah.

I will never expect that I will be financially free at this age.

I always think that I'll probably work until 50 to 60 years old.

Then from then, I will retire.

So yeah, at 34, I'm still figuring out a lot of things.

Right now I'm just relaxing, enjoying, this new file freedom, the change of lifestyle, and everything else.

It's not something that I have thought of.

Rayner (1:50:51)

Maybe you can compare or share with us previously when you were working in the ad business, what was your day-to-day life.

Then compared to now that you've sold the business, how is your day-to-day life?

Dave (01:51:02)

I perform well when there's a routine.

So my day-to-day when I was doing business was very routine-based.

Everything is very robotic.

If you want to kidnap me, it's very easy to kidnap because of everything, you can kind of guess where I am at this particular hour.

Before I got married, I had a kid when I was starting up.

The hours were quite okay

I think I woke up at 6 am and prepared for work.

I'll probably reach the office around 7:00 am, or 7.30 am.

Then I'll probably work until 5.30 am.

With very strict one hour lunchtime.

I eat an early lunch so to avoid the lunch hour.

It's very focused, it's just 7.30 am I start working in the office.

I work until 5.00 pm.

Then that goes on for about two to three years.

I moved to another new office, the same thing in your office.

I also work from About 7:00 -7:30 AM to around 5 5-5:30 PM then.

As we got more profitable I kind of took a step back, a relaxed a bit so my working hours are still the same 7:00 AM-7:30 AM to maybe 4:30-5 PM.

It's just shorter.

But at the beginning, I also work during the weekends.

So on the weekends, probably I'll just spend about 2-3 hours looking at the app store, figuring out what kind of apps to build.

That's kind of my routine.

After I got married, I started work a little bit later, so maybe 8-8:30 PM.

I work until around 5 PM.

The same thing is always a very strict one-hour lunchtime so I always ensure that all the working hours that I have is spent working and not doing other things.

When I work right, I don't talk to other people so you know people in the corporate you when you go for lunch you usually eat with your colleagues and usually sometimes the lunch hour can stretch from one hour to one and a half two hours.

But for me, it's very focused.

11 o'clock, just stop work, then go pack lunch, eat one hour, drink a cup of Yakun or toast box, and then that's it.

Faster go back, and then just work all the way.

It wasn't a lot of talking, there's no chit-chatting.

Hardly any chit-chatting.

When I work, it's work.

Then that's my routine. Right now,

When I was working, business was pretty much focused doing nothing much, but I looked at ideas.

Rayner (1:54:06)

Expand a little bit.

Like you see when you're working, like maybe from 7:30 AM-5 PM, right?

How much percent of them are you spending on market research?

How many percent is spending on doing other stuff?

Like we can just rough breakdown.

Dave (1:54:14)

Every Monday, I have a team meeting with my team.

 We'll just go to go on a Zoom or Skype call.

Back then I was using Skype, but Zoom wasn't there.

Using Skype calls, everybody was just huddled online.

Then we will go through and all for this week, what are the apps that need to be done, what design needs to be done so that I want the designers and the developers to communicate.

Inside a factory, there shouldn't be any bottlenecks and everything should move as smoothly as possible.

So that's the main purpose of the meeting.

Then usually the bottleneck happens with me when I need to give the green light to something else.

But that's okay.

Usually, I reply to messages quite fast.

So the green light was there.

The main thing is always to ensure at the start of the week, the factory keeps churning out the apps, the designs, or whatever that needs to be done.

So everything is smooth.

Then after all this is done most of the time is spent coming out with app ideas.

So I probably spend about half the day, half the working hours doing market research.

The other half is doing app testing.

So anytime there's a new beta build or alpha build, I'll just test it and then give some feedback to the developers so they can continue rectifying whatever bugs they have.

It's very simple.

It's always to ensure the factory keeps working and running.

Everybody has what they want, what they need to start working.

Then, my job is to come out with the app ideas, do market research, test the apps, and yeah, basically how my workday goes about.

Rayner (1:56:07)

Got it. Then now that you're semi-retired, how's your workday like?

Dave (1:56:10)

Not much of a workday.

So now I spend more time exercising.

I still wake up at 6 AM.

But instead of preparing for work, I go for a run.

I just want to ensure I have the health and fitness.

I still have my IBBT to clear so I just want to ensure that I still get my silver IBBT, my $300.

Rayner (1:56:30)

Every cent counts right? [laughs]

Dave (1:56:34)

Yeah, my $300.

Yep and after that I will send my daughter to school.

Right now, because of the rise of AI, I spend a little bit more time reading up on AI, checking ChatGBT, opening AI, spend a little bit more time reading newsletters on what the latest ideas and people are doing.

What the latest product people are coming out with, just to ensure that I don't lose track of what's happening in the outside world.

Rayner (1:57:10)

What are some newsletters you read?

Dave (1:57:11)

The most popular one is the two of them is the major one is the Hustle.

They got bought over by HubSpot recently, I think two years or one year ago.

They also have this Trends newsletter, which is very useful.

If you want to come up with app ideas, so they did their research to find out what is trending right now.

Maybe some kind of dog food, some kind of biohacking that is trending in the States or Europe.

They will do a breakdown for you and they will suggest ideas on how to monetize this kind of trend.

What kind of product you can build for this kind of trend?

Hustle is more for the daily news, daily tech news, what's happening, what is maybe what's Microsoft doing, and whether you need to know all this.

If you can leverage on whatever they are coming out with then why not just go in and just grab the opportunity?

Just to keep myself updated on what's happening around the world.

Rayner (1:58:09)

So I think one of the common thinking that most people have is that, well, if I made my first million, if I made my first five million, 10 million.

I'll be, you know, this will be life-changing, I'll be forever happy.

But then now since you've made it, I think it's good to hear from someone from experience.

How do you feel that your happiness level has changed ever since your exit?

Dave (01:58:32)

I would say by now the first few weeks will be happy.

The anxiety I have when doing the business reduced quite a lot.

When I was doing the app business at the mercy of Apple, every morning when I woke up, I had to check my emails to ensure that nothing happened to my apps.

Because if something happens to my apps, I have to wake my app developer team up and get things started working.

So there's always a lot of anxiety about that.

So after shifting all the risk to the new buyer, definitely can sleep better. I'm more relaxed.

I think the most important thing is the headspace I have.

When I was doing business, about 90% of the headspace was spent on how to grow the business, and how to ensure my business didn't go on a downtrend.

So if I want to sell, you won't sell at an attractive price.

What are new app ideas that I can think of?

What is Apple doing?

Very importantly, what is Apple doing in the app store?

Are they coming out with new rules?

What are the new rules?

Do I need to make any changes to my apps?

All sorts.

Yeah. So I think it's that head space.

So after this, after starting a company, I have a lot more head space to think about other things, working on myself, definitely doing more exercising, thinking about how can I, and what to do with the rest of my life.

How should I allocate my money, what should I do with the small part of the goal that I have?

So spend a little bit more time on reading up on investments, deploying my money to ensure that you know there's passive income coming in, I don't touch the principal.

I just can live off the interest rate and all sorts to ensure that you know I have enough for the next generation also.

Reading up on a lot of investments, what's the psychology behind the investments, how to value a company, what are the fundamentals of a company, what makes a good investment, and all sorts and everything else.

A lot more headspace to think about things other than just 100% on business.

Rayner (2:00:54)

I can resonate with that.

Yeah, the headspace, my headspace.

This is just business, business, and yeah.

So how do you plan to allocate your money because you don't want it to get eaten up by inflation right so what are some strategies that you have on your mind?

Dave (2:01:10)

So I think the first thing is to ensure that you know there's a passive income coming in so the first thing I did was to invest in REITs, Real Estate Investment Trust.

Ensure that there's a decent U, the U beats the inflation and there are some small capital gains so the overall gains are still much better than holding in cash and not losing out to inflation.

And of course, the next thing will be to deploy money into investments.

So buying companies that I understood well.

So of course, the first thing, one of the stocks that I bought is Apple because I understood Apple's ecosystem well and know whether they are doing well in the App Store.

Other companies that I'm familiar with, are Meta, Google, and Amazon, so I know how their business model work.

They are on a recurring revenue and all and of course, there are other things, like ROI, whatever, all these things, you have to learn then put money, buy all these stocks.

It's more like to ensure that it doesn't get it out by inflation and it's still up-performed,

The S&P 500 and I show that it's still a lot more than enough for my next generation.

Rayner (2:02:27)

Do you plan to, I know, I know you have a kid, right? Do you plan to pass your wealth to them was more of like, no, you go and figure life on your own and you get just a small percentage.

Dave (2:02:39)

I'll probably pass some of it to them.

Hopefully, I think the main aim is that they do not have to worry about money and they can focus on doing what they are passionate about in life.

So I think our parents' generation and maybe my generation, our generation, are still bound by the money side.

So whatever we do is always about whether it makes financial sense and everything else.

We don't have a lot of freedom to pursue what we like.

Maybe for my daughter, hopefully, she doesn't have to worry about that.

She found something that she's passionate about and no need to do that.

Rayner (2:03:38)

But at the same time because of not having enough it made you want to have lots of money and go down this path so by maybe having your kid worry about money will we deprive them of that option?

What are your thoughts?

As I was saying, because like when we were young, we come from middle-income families and then we want money because money can give us so many options.

So we work hard going to entrepreneurship, going to business, but by maybe not having our kids worry about money, will we deprive them of that so-called fire that we had when we were young?

Dave (02:04:23)

I will say it depends on how we the parenting style.

It's not easy there's no easy solution to that what we can do is try our best to teach them the values of hard work study hard, you still need to study hard money doesn't come easy a lot of things you still need to earn on your own you still need to depend on your own.

It's not easy but hopefully, you know my wife and I, we will just do our best to try to teach them these very important values and not to spoil them.

Rayner (2:05:03)

Speaking of money, let's end off with a money question, shall we?

So I'm curious, what is something that you have purchased that is under $100 and it has made a big difference to your life?

Dave (02:05:16)

Does it have to be something?

Rayner (2:05:19)

What is something?

Anything below $100 that makes a difference to your life?

Big difference ideally.

Dave (2:05:30)

Big difference.

Maybe a massage, massage, only recently.

Okay.

It's not something that is more like experience.

So it costs slightly more than a hundred dollars, but I think going to a massage really can relieve the stress and really because I've been doing a bit more exercise.

So sometimes I feel the ache and everything else.

It's nice to go for a very good massage.

I mean, after a massage to have a good meal.

It does have to be expensive, a good hawker meal would be good.

So these two things always recharge me and make me very happy.

Rayner (2:06:10)

The message only happened after the company exited.

Dave (2:06:12)

Yeah, it's only recently that...

Rayner (2:06:16)

That's how we talk about, elite-level frugality, you know guys?

Awesome right?

Thank you so much Dave and I appreciate your time and sharing all the secrets of the App Store.

I didn't know you go so technical and I appreciate it because not many people want to share it.

Such deep stuff for the app store fearing that they might lose their age but since you sold it I guess not too concerned down there.

So where might the audience find you you know if they want to connect with you or would you rather not be found?

It's up to you.

Dave (2:06:43)

No, I'd rather keep a low profile.

Rayner (2:06:46)

Okay, we just keep it as it is ah?

Dave (2:06:47)

Yes.

Rayner (2:06:48)

So they will not find you they can just access this podcast and that's it.

Dave (2:06:49)

Yep, correct.

Rayner (2:06:52)

No problem with that. Thank you so much Dave I appreciate you.

Dave (2:06:53)

Yeah, no problem thank you thank you very much.