WhatsApp (sold $16B to Facebook)<\/p>\n
King (128M Daily Average Users, $1.9B a year of revenue)<\/p>\n
Both businesses at their core are not about niche, at the opposite of what \u201cis supposed to work\u201d (GTA 5 or app only on iPhone).<\/p>\n
I think that people don\u2019t like the idea of trying to please everybody but they\u2019re missing the point: it\u2019s not about pleasing, it\u2019s about reaching and showing some respect<\/strong>. WhatsApp became a paid app because the founder thinks ads don\u2019t add anything, it didn\u2019t stop growth because it shows again some respect. <\/p>\n And that, is huge. That\u2019s organic traction, that\u2019s trust.<\/p>\n Candy Crush\u2019s polish and simplicity aim everyone, like an Ikea coffee table. There\u2019s no smugness or snobbery game, like so many developers like to play with exclusivity to platforms. Less and less, because it doesn\u2019t make sense: users feel frustrated not being able to access an app\/game on their platform of choice, and the developer who\u2019s supposed to keep platforms competitive against each other is basically becoming one\u2019s bitch.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a rough game so staying out of it by widening your reach, staying independent is smart. It\u2019s also harder, it\u2019s harder to see what\u2019s going to work compared to a niche market of hardcore users\/gamers, hence the \u201csmall ideas\u201d (puzzle game and sms app). When you\u2019re in the middle of development, you are hardcore, you think hardcore so aiming hardcore people makes sense.<\/p>\n Numbers fell though and sure money and DAU are not everything but damn, it\u2019s pretty impressive. Knowing that so many people use your little software must feel quite amazing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" WhatsApp (sold $16B to Facebook) King (128M Daily Average Users, $1.9B a year of revenue) Both businesses at their core are not about niche, at the opposite of what \u201cis supposed to work\u201d (GTA 5 or app only on iPhone). I think that people don\u2019t like the idea of trying to please everybody but they\u2019re […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1768"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1768"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1769,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1768\/revisions\/1769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}