Hotspots

Social bought Hotspots and hired its seller, Pablo, as first head of product. Hotspots was acquired by Social, a bootstrapped app studio with 22 apps, from its owner Pablo, who then became the studio's first head of product.

Hotspots is not among the four apps leading the portfolio (Celebs, Lipstick, Font Maker, Autopaste), and no revenue, price or category is given for it. Pablo later drove Social's testing culture, saying he knows what to do in a new app because he lived through about 80 tests.

Superwall

Social buys apps that can scale profitably, judged from market data and test ads. Social assesses a purchase top down (market structure, willingness to pay, growth speed) and bottom up (standardized test ads compared to a benchmark), plus the app's own retention and marketing data.

Patrick says an app is worth buying if it can scale profitably, whatever its retention, and that apps past their viral peak are often underpriced because owners can't see how big the market is. Social avoids games and mostly avoids social networks.

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