Idan Waller
Co-founder of BlueThrone, an app acquisition and partnership company
Where to hear and read about Idan Waller1 episode or test
Idan Waller is co-founder of BlueThrone, a company that acquires apps and partners with their developers. The most useful thing to learn from him is to value an app on new money and funnel health, and to test constantly, because small gains of 10 to 20% at each step multiply into a much higher valuation.
When I say it's easy to improve these tests by 10 to 20% I'm not kidding. You just have to be a testing maniac.
3X Your App Valuation With These Tiny Optimizations
Idan Waller: the story and the lessons
1How Idan Waller judges an app for BlueThrone
Waller values an app by its new money, not total revenue. One app made over $500K last year, but only 5% was new subscription money, and its owner asked about $3M. Waller calls it a dying app. Another app had over 50% new money from last year's subscribers, and that is the one he would buy.
BlueThrone learned about two years ago that yearly revenue alone gives too little to value an app. A weekly plan can still drive most revenue while being old money from users who forgot to unsubscribe.
BlueThrone buys only apps that show proven market fit. It does not buy brand new apps. It applies a $5,000 revenue rule and looks for some sign of product market fit.
A small, powerful niche or a wide audience paying less both count, as long as people love the app.
Waller compares valuing an app to a crime scene investigation. Revenue and downloads are public, but the real story of each app only appears when you dig deep.
A big promo can leave a flat sales chart that hides falling subscription events.
Waller warns that revenue concentrated in one country worries acquirers. Getting 80% of revenue from the US is great, but it is a weak signal for an exit. Spreading income across markets and traffic sources makes the app more secure and more valuable.
Waller treats app store keywords as real estate. The more keywords and countries an app ranks in, the safer it is. A sudden loss of keyword rankings can explain falling revenue.
Waller tells developers to build an app that can be sold. A successful app has to become a company, and one person rarely has the know-how for marketing, UA, product, support and code. Building with a sale or partnership in mind keeps options open.
He says it makes you build smarter even if you never sell.
2How Waller turns small funnel gains into valuation
Waller says a 10% gain at three funnel steps lifts revenue 33%. The steps are downloads, free trial starts and activations. Daily revenue goes from $466 to $621.
He calls each 10% gain realistic. Adding TikTok work makes the download gain easier, and a single button can deliver the free trial and activation gains.
He values a good app at monthly revenue times 36. $466 a day is about $14K a month, which makes a $500K app. 10% gains lift it to almost $700K and 20% gains to almost $900K.
Because every revenue gain is multiplied, he says even owners who never plan to sell should value the asset they built.
Waller says most developers charge less than users would pay. Moving a subscription from $5.99 to $7.99 on top of 20% gains takes the app to nearly $1M. He says this usually does not hurt conversions.
In one case a $4 rise increased activations because users saw more value. He says about 20% of any audience will pay much more, since paying more fits their identity as leaders or early adopters.
Waller finds the weakest funnel step by reading rates in order. In an app sold months earlier, 14% of downloads started a free trial, which is really good. 30% of trial starters became paying customers, so that was the number to improve first.
BlueThrone grew apps it bought by fixing the free trial funnel. Apps it bought went from $1,000 a month to $10,000, then $12,000 in September. There were no extra downloads and no new features.
Waller says he is now confident he can raise revenue for any app that already has downloads. Steve Young also picks free trial activation as the step where he makes the biggest difference for clients.
Waller thinks the gains can go well past doubling. He has seen 200% lifts and says more experiments might reach $2 million. Such gains also raise any exit package or partnership.
He says a single small experiment can be worth about $100K at exit.
3Why Waller says to be a testing maniac
One button text test lifted conversion by 20.9%. The baseline 'Get Calm Plus' lost to three alternatives: 'Get all features' by 14.1%, 'Let's explore Calm' by 15.9% and 'Unlock everything' by 20.9%. The app earns hundreds of thousands of dollars a month and the data is statistically verified.
Each gain is relative to the baseline, not a conversion rate.
Waller guessed wrong on the winner despite ten years in marketing. After more than ten years in digital marketing he expected only a 3 to 5% lift. Steve Young ranked the winning label near the bottom.
Young got most of the rankings wrong, which is why Waller says guesses cannot replace tests.
Waller tested a single button, not the page or onboarding. The test ran the day before the recording and changed only the call to action. It raised total conversion by 20%.
Waller keeps challenging the winner of every test. Young wants to test 'Start free trial' against the winning 'Unlock everything'. Waller plans to push past 20.9% to see if it can go higher.
The app's audience is about 25 and younger, spread across many customer types and countries, so one winner may not hold.
Waller applies repetition to both messaging and testing. He has heard 'repetition is the mother of all skills' from his father since he was about three. Young repeats one message on TikTok in many templates and media forms.
With so many ads and apps, a message that is not repeated does not convert.
4Waller on why apps decline and what to fix
Waller lists the causes of decline before prescribing fixes. They include a shrinking niche, lost keywords, rivals with a better offer, unhappy users and outdated onboarding. Apple's iOS 16 features are killing whole app categories.
One fix for a dying niche is to rebrand the app for another niche.
Waller says Apple punishes low ratings and low LTV harder over time. This is BlueThrone's own research, not official data. Better onboarding lifts conversion and LTV, which raises rank because the store earns more.
Waller and Young put onboarding before the paywall. Young saw a 420% increase in one case and 30% for a bigger app. His order is to remind users what the app is about, get them to engage, ask questions, then show social proof before the paywall.
One client's onboarding was only a paywall, and a Turkish learning app with 100,000 Google downloads opens on a bare screen. Waller calls these the basics in a nutshell.
Waller says onboarding also teaches, so ad-based apps need it. He sees its goal as teaching users the app, not only converting them. He expects retention to rise vastly once a simple guide replaces a screen of options.
The reviewed app is monetized with ads and lets users earn coins for lessons.
3X Your App Valuation With These Tiny Optimizations
App buyers value an app on new money, funnel health and testing habits, not on headline revenue. Tiny 10 to 20% gains at each funnel step can lift an app's valuation from half a million dollars to almost $1 million, and a single button text test produced a 20.9% lift.
Waller values an app by its new money, not total revenue. One app made over $500K last year, but only 5% was new subscription money, and its owner asked about $3M. Waller calls it a dying app. Another app had over 50% new money from last year's subscribers, and that is the one he would buy.
BlueThrone learned about two years ago that yearly revenue alone gives too little to value an app. A weekly plan can still drive most revenue while being old money from users who forgot to unsubscribe.
BlueThrone buys only apps that show proven market fit. It does not buy brand new apps. It applies a $5,000 revenue rule and looks for some sign of product market fit.
A small, powerful niche or a wide audience paying less both count, as long as people love the app.
Waller compares valuing an app to a crime scene investigation. Revenue and downloads are public, but the real story of each app only appears when you dig deep.
A big promo can leave a flat sales chart that hides falling subscription events.
Waller warns that revenue concentrated in one country worries acquirers. Getting 80% of revenue from the US is great, but it is a weak signal for an exit. Spreading income across markets and traffic sources makes the app more secure and more valuable.
Waller treats app store keywords as real estate. The more keywords and countries an app ranks in, the safer it is. A sudden loss of keyword rankings can explain falling revenue.
Waller tells developers to build an app that can be sold. A successful app has to become a company, and one person rarely has the know-how for marketing, UA, product, support and code. Building with a sale or partnership in mind keeps options open.
He says it makes you build smarter even if you never sell.
Waller says a 10% gain at three funnel steps lifts revenue 33%. The steps are downloads, free trial starts and activations. Daily revenue goes from $466 to $621.
He calls each 10% gain realistic. Adding TikTok work makes the download gain easier, and a single button can deliver the free trial and activation gains.
He values a good app at monthly revenue times 36. $466 a day is about $14K a month, which makes a $500K app. 10% gains lift it to almost $700K and 20% gains to almost $900K.
Because every revenue gain is multiplied, he says even owners who never plan to sell should value the asset they built.
Waller says most developers charge less than users would pay. Moving a subscription from $5.99 to $7.99 on top of 20% gains takes the app to nearly $1M. He says this usually does not hurt conversions.
In one case a $4 rise increased activations because users saw more value. He says about 20% of any audience will pay much more, since paying more fits their identity as leaders or early adopters.
Waller finds the weakest funnel step by reading rates in order. In an app sold months earlier, 14% of downloads started a free trial, which is really good. 30% of trial starters became paying customers, so that was the number to improve first.
BlueThrone grew apps it bought by fixing the free trial funnel. Apps it bought went from $1,000 a month to $10,000, then $12,000 in September. There were no extra downloads and no new features.
Waller says he is now confident he can raise revenue for any app that already has downloads. Steve Young also picks free trial activation as the step where he makes the biggest difference for clients.
Waller thinks the gains can go well past doubling. He has seen 200% lifts and says more experiments might reach $2 million. Such gains also raise any exit package or partnership.
He says a single small experiment can be worth about $100K at exit.
One button text test lifted conversion by 20.9%. The baseline 'Get Calm Plus' lost to three alternatives: 'Get all features' by 14.1%, 'Let's explore Calm' by 15.9% and 'Unlock everything' by 20.9%. The app earns hundreds of thousands of dollars a month and the data is statistically verified.
Each gain is relative to the baseline, not a conversion rate.
Waller guessed wrong on the winner despite ten years in marketing. After more than ten years in digital marketing he expected only a 3 to 5% lift. Steve Young ranked the winning label near the bottom.
Young got most of the rankings wrong, which is why Waller says guesses cannot replace tests.
Waller tested a single button, not the page or onboarding. The test ran the day before the recording and changed only the call to action. It raised total conversion by 20%.
Waller keeps challenging the winner of every test. Young wants to test 'Start free trial' against the winning 'Unlock everything'. Waller plans to push past 20.9% to see if it can go higher.
The app's audience is about 25 and younger, spread across many customer types and countries, so one winner may not hold.
Waller applies repetition to both messaging and testing. He has heard 'repetition is the mother of all skills' from his father since he was about three. Young repeats one message on TikTok in many templates and media forms.
With so many ads and apps, a message that is not repeated does not convert.
Waller lists the causes of decline before prescribing fixes. They include a shrinking niche, lost keywords, rivals with a better offer, unhappy users and outdated onboarding. Apple's iOS 16 features are killing whole app categories.
One fix for a dying niche is to rebrand the app for another niche.
Waller says Apple punishes low ratings and low LTV harder over time. This is BlueThrone's own research, not official data. Better onboarding lifts conversion and LTV, which raises rank because the store earns more.
Waller and Young put onboarding before the paywall. Young saw a 420% increase in one case and 30% for a bigger app. His order is to remind users what the app is about, get them to engage, ask questions, then show social proof before the paywall.
One client's onboarding was only a paywall, and a Turkish learning app with 100,000 Google downloads opens on a bare screen. Waller calls these the basics in a nutshell.
Waller says onboarding also teaches, so ad-based apps need it. He sees its goal as teaching users the app, not only converting them. He expects retention to rise vastly once a simple guide replaces a screen of options.
The reviewed app is monetized with ads and lets users earn coins for lessons.