In this episode of the My First Million podcast, host Sam Parr interviews a former AppLovin employee (Speaker A) and Sean about the inner workings and culture of AppLovin, a mobile ad‑tech powerhouse. The conversation opens with a vivid description of the "feeling" of product‑market fit when a product suddenly scales, illustrated by a weather app delivering 200 million ad impressions per day. Speaker A explains how AppLovin’s ad platform could generate massive revenue, noting that advertisers were willing to spend up to $8 per user acquisition and see a three‑fold return within a week. The discussion moves to the company’s execution, highlighting CEO Adam’s rapid decision‑making, clear communication, and ability to reorganize teams on the fly. Sean expresses initial skepticism about why Speaker A left a high‑growth, well‑vested role, but comes to respect the guest’s hands‑on approach to building indie mobile games and directly engaging with users. Throughout, the guests contrast the allure of ad‑tech scale with the personal drive to create consumer‑facing products, offering insights into growth metrics, leadership style, and the mindset required to recognize and act on market momentum.
Chapters
It's like, man, this thing is doing 200 million, you know, impressions per day.
Um, can you talk about AppLovin? Because you said something. So the other day I was talking to someone about businesses and I'm like, when, when it's working, do you know it's working? What's that feel like? And, uh, you made a comment earlier, like it's the first time I've ever seen where just this is what working feels like.
Yeah.
Right. What, what, what, what was that like?
It's, it's the feeling of like, uh, like when you, when you're, you know, slamming on your brakes in the car and the car's kind of doing its own thing and you're like, I'm not controlling the car. It is just flowing on its own. It's like, it's that feeling where, you know, you're, you build all these products and even at Applovin, we did 9 ideas before that. I've done this for a long time where I'm just trying idea after idea. I try to get people to use it and you're looking for all these good signals and you're trying to spot it. And then when it's really working, it's not about spotting it. It's so obvious that there's no question that it's working. And so it's all the charts are flying up, but then every day you're not even like, man, is it working? Is it not? It's so obvious. I got to do X, Y, and Z to solve, you know, these problems that are coming up kind of day in and day out. And so it's definitely a feeling where the pull from the market is so strong that there's no middle ground. It's I always thought it was like, oh, it's— I'm gonna kind of realize when I'm close to it, but it's actually very binary. It's like you're here and it's not working and you're trying to push into the market, which you need to do. But when it happens, it just kind of takes off. And, you know, I just— I don't have really good analogies for it yet except for that. Like, it just— it's like the loss of control. The market is in control almost, and you're just like trying to catch up and like, you know, get into that mindset of like, okay, great, this is working. We're going to keep like pushing whatever we need to do to kind of support this case.
What was the revenue growth? I mean, you guys were at zero and then was it like one month it could have been like $20 grand, the next month it was like $1 million. I mean, was it that substantial?
It wasn't that crazy. But I think the interesting thing that I learned was there, you know, there were a lot of players in the market where you'd go to this weather app, right? And the weather app would do like, you know, you never realize the scale of some of these apps even at that time. It's like, man, this thing is doing 200 million you know, impressions per day. And I'm like, a weather app? Like, really? Like, why is it so big? And then you're like, great, if we get this customer, these things can happen. And so I think the—
a weather— the weather app does how many impressions?
I, I think I forgot which weather app it was, whether it was WeatherBug or the Weather app, but it was like 200 million impressions a day. Like, and I was like, I was really surprised at some of the scale of some of these apps. And like, you know, you Yes, we had the best ad platform. Yes, we made, you know, we made all these small tweaks to the product to like make it work better. And we made our server scale and we did all these things. But I think to me, the fascinating thing was there were all these major players. You didn't actually realize how big some of these opportunities were. And kind of working at AppLovin, I was like, wait, I wanna go do this. And like, when I left there, it was like, I'm not like a huge fan of like ad products. Like naturally that's not the product that I get excited about. I love money. So I like, great, it's a fantastic business. I like that. And I was like, oh, I'm gonna go make these apps and games that are gonna go do this. And actually, that's how I ran into Sean. I think he had checked out one of my games after— I think we connected on AngelList. Was that right?
Yeah, I saw him on AngelList, and I was like, something doesn't add up. Either this guy's full of shit, because who would leave this company that's crushing it? Like, most people, when you finally hit a grand slam, you want to do the victory lap, and people stay for 7 years, and then they write this cheesy letter about how great the journey has been, and they're finally ready for their next chapter. He basically left after 3 years. You weren't even fully vested, right?
Yeah. I left a little bit on the table, which again, I'm not complaining because everything's been fantastic.
And but it was something counterintuitive. I was like, why would this guy leave? Either he got kicked out, he got fired, he's not good, blah, blah, blah. I was like, or this guy's amazing. He really just does love— his story was like, I just love startups. I want to build something that consumers use, not really an ad tech platform. And he was like, I was interested in mobile because I saw how big these mobile apps were on our ad network. So he locked himself in his bedroom. It's like, I'm going to learn mobile in the next 6 months. And he just built a bunch of Android games. And then I saw him on Twitter tweeting back with people who played his game. And I was like, dude, none of my developers, all the developers I have in my company that are great, none of them would ever go tweet at a customer and be like, hey, you know, I'm gonna fix that bug. You know, I can make this better. Hey, what do you think about this? So I was like, there's something different about this guy.
What apps were you shocked at that, uh, how big they were? A weather app.
There's 200, uh, casino, the casino game apps.
I mean, that's not shocking, is it?
Um, the size of it was definitely shocking, uh, just because you always assume they're big and they're addictive. But then, uh, that and then Candy Crush and their initial rise was the first time in the industry where I heard like, man, like this thing is a money printing machine. It's like, you know, they would, you know, and not all of this was at AppLovin. It's like once you're an ad tech, you're like learning about the industry, you're meeting other people and you're like, hey, these guys are willing to just blanket pay $8 for a user in the US. And I'm like, okay, well that seems pretty expensive. Like, why are they doing that? And like, how much are they making?
$8 is what they were spending.
Yeah. I think at that time it was like, hey, for like a male, you know, 18 to 35 or something, it might be $8 or something like that. And then on the other side, I talked to somebody over there and I'm like, they're like, yeah, dude, we make like $20 on them, like in like 7 days. And I'm like, and maybe those numbers are slightly off, but like they were making a multiple to where you were like, wait, so you just have this machine where you just press this button and you put in money and, you know, 7 days later, 3 times more money come out. And I'm like, wow, like, how do I get that? I don't empty my bank account every single day to go do that.
Well, you guys had that a little bit with AppLovin.
Yeah, AppLovin had that. I mean, I didn't have that, right? Like, I don't have the same mechanic. Obviously, you're at this company, you're vested, you have a shared interest in the long run. But, you know, me being me, I was like, I want that. Like, I want the ability to have that and then the freedom to work on things that I'm really excited about. And so I tried that. Obviously it's a lot harder than just, you know, one person in their bedroom doing it.
But, um, what did Adam at AppLovin say? Was he like, this just, we had no idea? Or was he methodical enough to see?
Adam is, uh, so fantastic at execution that it's just like, he's like a machine. It's like, you know, when, when the thing I really loved about him and the things I learned the most from him were like, when you wanted to go do something, like, you know, sometimes you're like, oh man, man, this situation isn't working.
And Adam's the CEO of AppLovin.
Yeah. He's CEO of AppLovin. And you know, you have these situations where it's like, I gotta go do X, or you really feel like you gotta go make this move. This deal's bad, maybe this hire was bad, or this hire was good, or something like that. A lot of people kind of wait on it a little bit after deciding, and you kind of create some time. What's a good time to do it? For him, it was like, okay, we'll just go do this now. Like, what's stopping us? And then, you know, the other things like that were, you know, I started there as kind of an engineer, and then very quickly he was like, oh, you could run this team, you could manage the whole team. I was like, great, we talked. And then that's kind of always been my experience that like that never really gets communicated. And then it feels like, cool, I'm like the manager but not. Like, I think a lot of people end up in that situation, especially in companies. And then like the next morning it's like a meeting with the whole team, he puts the org chart up, and then every time we changed it, the same situation happened. He was so clear and effective with his communication and execution that I was like, like, I really need to be like that. Like That's what like, I think A+ execution looks and feels like day in and day out. And it's like, it's not emotional. It's very logical. It's very quick. And I think speed in these situations helps create clarity because when you—
or the other way around, clarity helps create speed.
Yeah. Or both. Right. Like, you know, and I think clarity in the sense that if you delay it, your team becomes unclear and then it gets a little muddy and then you're like, wait, what is, what's going on here? Why is this guy kind of acting like that?
And.
That person not. And I think just being very fast and quick in that execution— once you decide, you should go and execute it. Uh, and I think that that's, that's the thing that I learned is like, how quickly can you do that and how effectively can you do that? Whether it's an email, uh, and I'm really not good at this. It's kind of one of the reasons I point at it because I see myself kind of like, oh, wait on this a little bit, or send this email tomorrow. I don't want to open up this can of worms right now, like, ah, and then It's actually, that's the exact opposite trait. It's like, just go have a bias for action and kind of go do that. And so from him, I learned just an amazing amount in like, how do you operate at this level? And I mean, since I've left, they've grown so much that it feels like I was only at the 1% of it. Like, I feel like I don't know 99% of the story anymore because they've grown well beyond that. They've expanded into other areas. They're really big now from the revenue side. They're really big now from, you know, what their marketplace is, and they're very well known. And, you know, I kind of get all the benefits from being there a long time ago, which is great for me, but, you know, I'm sure there were more learnings that I missed along the way.
