Founder Playbook · Sub Club by RevenueCat
12 tactics from Michael Ritter
Lessons from Buying and Operating 40 Apps — Michael Ritter, Maple Media
Watch the full episode“I bought an app for two thousand dollars, fixed it up, and ended up selling it for a pretty good amount of money — like 10x my money — and realized I could do this.”
Buying a $2K app and 10x-ing it proved the roll-up model before pitching investors
Before pitching a single VC, Michael Ritter validated the Maple Media concept with his own money. A $2K roadside-game app he acquired and monetised became the proof-of-concept that eventually raised $1M from angel investors and attracted a private equity backer. Cheap first experiments compress the hypothesis-test cycle for any acquisition-driven strategy.
“A free trial in our calendar app is important because they've got to get through a full week to see the value. But in our weather app, there's a big storm coming and they just want to use the app for that storm period — a free trial might not convert well.”
Free trial strategy must match the app's usage rhythm, not just the calendar
WeCal needs a seven-day trial because users need to experience a full week to see the agenda view's value. The weather app faces the opposite problem: storm-chasers want a single-session peak and leave. The same seven-day trial that converts calendar users repels weather users. Trial design must be derived from the core usage moment, not copied from another app.
“The color of the button, the language — a lot of that really translates across the portfolio. But the offering — whether we offer annual or monthly, free trial or not — that's more nuanced and we tailor it to the product.”
Paywall design insights port across apps; pricing and offer structure must be tailored per product
Running 37 apps gives Maple Media a natural A/B testing laboratory. UI and copy learnings (button colour, CTA language) generalise well and get applied portfolio-wide. But offer mechanics — trial length, annual vs monthly default, premium model vs ads — must be matched to how and why users pay in each specific category. Separating the transferable from the bespoke saves time without sacrificing conversion.
“My personal take: get a user into the app as quickly as possible, get them using it, and then start teaching them how to do it as they get through the app.”
Get users into the app immediately — teach features progressively, not upfront
Jam City taught Michael that users skip tutorials even when they need them. The solution isn't a longer tutorial — it's contextual tips and 'what's new' prompts delivered after the user is already engaged. For apps with inherently familiar mechanics (calendar, podcast player), zero-friction onboarding beats education every time.
“Users care a lot about what their cohorts say — that's one of the better ways to understand if it's worthwhile to download. Having good store ratings is more important than just affecting your rank.”
Good ratings are a conversion mechanism, not just a ranking signal
Michael targets 4.5+ stars not primarily to climb search rankings but because ratings are social proof that directly influences the download decision. He acquires apps that already have strong ratings because high ratings are a lagging indicator of real product utility — and utility drives almost every other metric: retention, referrals, organic word of mouth.
“Cross-promotion starts helping when you have loyal users who really like what you do. But you have to be very explicit — tell users 'this is my app, you would like it' — versus confusing it with an ad.”
Cross-promotion must be explicit and from a known brand to drive installs
Maple Media found generic app-carousel cross-promotion ineffective. What works is explicit, brand-attributed promotion: 'from the maker of WeCal.' Native integration also outperforms banner ads — for example, embedding a finance-focused podcast section inside a stock app, then pointing to Player FM. The common thread is transparency: loyal users follow developers they trust.
“I look at UA as supplemental to everything else we're doing, not the other way around. If I'm fishing in the exact same pond as every other weather app, how am I going to create a competitive advantage?”
Treat paid UA as amplifier of organic — not the foundation of the strategy
Every weather app buys the same keywords; every competitor bids on the same Facebook audiences. Michael's response: build brand through PR, partnerships, and native content distribution so that paid spend amplifies an already-working organic engine. Apps that make paid the foundation have no competitive moat — and discovered this the hard way when ATT degraded their attribution.
“People are used to paying subscriptions for their carrier plans or cable. WeCal makes sense because people are used to paying a premium for software. We really match what models make sense in the world.”
Match monetization model to what users are already accustomed to paying for
Maple Media doesn't use one monetization playbook across 37 apps. Productivity and calendar apps get subscriptions because users already pay for Microsoft 365 and Adobe CC. Games get ads because users historically paid once upfront or not at all. Fighting users' existing mental models — even with better economics — is harder than aligning with them.
“If it's an app that provides good value to users, almost everything else falls in place: they rate it well, they have affinity for it, organics are sustainable. It sounds boring but it gets back to the core.”
Acquire apps that already provide genuine utility — almost everything else follows
After 37 acquisitions, Michael's primary acquisition filter is simple: is the app genuinely useful? Apps with real utility self-generate good ratings, organic growth, and retention. He's not trying to engineer those outcomes — he's looking for products where they already exist as a natural consequence of value. The M&A screen is a product-quality filter as much as a financial one.
“Don't mess with something that's really good. We look to refine but the main proposition is already there and there's a lot of users that really enjoy it — we have to continue to deliver on that.”
When you acquire a great product, don't overhaul it — refine the edges
A common acquirer mistake is re-architecting a beloved product post-acquisition. Maple Media's rule: if the app already has loyal users, the product-market fit is proven. Day-one focus goes to implementing the Ivory platform (consistent infrastructure) and fixing presentation gaps, not redesigning the core. The value at acquisition is already there — protect it first.
“We have our own in-house platform called Ivory that allows us to manage all these apps at scale — the same codebase, same connections to analytics and advertising platforms — which is imperative when you're managing a lot of different products.”
Shared infrastructure across a portfolio removes the overhead of scaling individual apps
Without shared infrastructure, each acquired app becomes a separate engineering silo with its own analytics integrations, monetisation wiring, and reporting. Maple Media's Ivory platform standardises all of that so every app speaks the same metrics language from day one. This is the operational moat that makes running 37 apps with one team viable.
“When you have one app you have to grind on every single piece of it. But when you have a portfolio, we're looking at incremental things we can roll across multiple apps to lift the entire business.”
Portfolio thinking shifts you from grinding one app to lifting all apps simultaneously
Price testing each individual app yields marginal gains. But a paywall colour test proven across one app, then rolled to 36 others, multiplies the return. Michael deliberately avoids deep per-app optimisation in favour of insights that are portfolio-portable. The strategy is ruthless prioritisation: only do the work that compounds across the whole.