“The way I see competition is I think it's actually a net positive for us. What it does is help more people realize that this problem is real, educate the market, get more people to use apps. There's 5 billion people in the world with a smartphone and probably a few dozen million that have ever used a screen time app.”

Competition is a net positive when you have brand — it educates the market you're trying to win

Schlenker reframes category competition as market-education rather than market-stealing. With only tens of millions of users having ever tried a screen time app out of 5 billion smartphone owners, the primary challenge is category creation, not competitive displacement. Every copycat app that launches runs ads and prompts conversations that expand the category's reach. Opal's brand, retention, and soul mean that users who try inferior alternatives and become dissatisfied will find Opal through word-of-mouth.