If you have an iPhone app with 1 million daily active users, VCs will be knocking down your doors to write that Series A check. A spammy Facebook app with 1 million "users" is a totally different beast on the other hand. It really depends on your definition of a user, which the author conveniently leaves out of his analysis.
Note, the post I commented on assumed that with 1 million DAU's that VC's would be "knocking down your doors" to fund a Series A.
With the example developer above, they could probably get some kind of funding (ie., seed funding from somewhere) but I highly doubt reputable VC's would be knocking down their doors to fund a Series A.
Likely. But we don't know which iOS/Android apps have 1MM DAUs, and so this makes this debate kind of pointless... unless developers share their stats.
There are lots of apps with 20+ million downloads (total), and if they're good apps they might be pushing 1MM DAUs (of course, tough to tell unless developer reveals that). All I'm saying is that some of them are hits and VC's are clamoring over, but some might be good lifestyle (or less scalable) businesses and VC's aren't "knocking over doors" to fund a Series A with them.
I'm just calling out the assumption that 1MM DAU = guaranteed Series A funding.
Come to think of it, I should retract what I said about most of them not being VC-fundable. I just don't know cause the stats aren't out there.
Astro went from the only decent file manager to the defacto worst. It's awful. So incredibly awful I wanted to write this comment in case any Astro dev sees it. For shame.
That would be my instinct as well. What's the ARPU for a mobile app? Some are strong, I'm sure, but it wouldn't shock me if the number is in the $0-$10 range for a lot of them.
If your mobile app revenue is a steady $1-5m a year, then that's a fine business for you, but I doubt a traditional VC would want in unless you have a plausible reason you can grow 100x.
And even if a VC were interested, I'd hope most people don't take the money. Because now instead of just pocketing steady income and building up a war chest or a retirement fund, you've strapped yourself onto a rocket with "100x or bust" painted on the side. With the odds in favor of "bust".
