Ryan Thorpe

"What the App Store actually needs is two tiers. Think of it like football leagues. The App Store as it exists today that's the Premier League. The top division. Where 99% of the traffic goes, where the rankings mean something, where the established apps compete on merit built over years. Then there should be a second division. A proving ground. New apps start there by default. Vibecoded apps, first-time developers, fresh submissions they all enter Division Two. The bar to get listed is lower. You can ship fast, test ideas, find early users. But to get promoted to the main App Store, you have to earn it. Consistent updates. Real engagement metrics. Retention that proves people actually use your app beyond day one. Reviews from real users. Maintain that for three to six months and you graduate to Division One. Stop maintaining it and you get relegated back down. This solves everything. New developers still get to ship and learn. The main App Store stays clean and high-quality. Users don't have to wade through thousands of half-built apps to find what they need. And the developers who've built their apps into real businesses don't have their organic real estate diluted by apps that will be abandoned in a month. Apple already does this informally the algorithm effectively creates these tiers by burying new apps. The difference is right now it's invisible and feels arbitrary. Making it explicit would be fairer for everyone."

@_rosebennett @hunterjisaacson Dropped you a message

This is one of those takes that sounds profound until you think about it for 30 seconds. A product with 50% monthly churn and high replacement rate isn't growing, it's a revolving door that looks busy from the outside and is hemorrhaging value underneath. Also, I have reached out regarding a paid collab, please check your dm

The only thing that matters is user replacement rate Optimizing for retention is just a band aid for a product that’s not growing on its own

@T_Zahil Yes I’m going to try make it over

@helloryanj Will you be joining us Ryan?? 🤩

It's happening. Here are the participants for the first batch of the Uneed Residency 💥 But all of this wouldn't be possible without our 2 sponsors: 🏆 Fload[.com], one of the most impressive projects I've seen in the past few months: an AI employee for your mobile apps. Be careful if you decide to read their landing page, you're going to be impressed 🔥! 🏆 @creem_io, the best platform to sell your products online! They have the lowest fees on the market, are a MoR, and trust me, the design of their product will make you melt 🍦 And the residents are........🥁 👉🏻 Dmytro (@DmytroBavykin) and Alexandra (@olexalysenko) will be working on SimplePoo and a new project 👀 👉🏻 Luca (@ikoichi) and Mattia (@heymattia) will grow BlackTwist, their Threads scheduling tool 👉🏻 Soraia (@SoraiaDev) will be building MiroMiro, a chrome extension to copy any website's design in 1 click 👉🏻 Maxence (@MaxInPublic) will be working on Beplan, his social media scheduler 👉🏻 Pauline (@Pauline_Cx) will probably reach $2M MRR before everyone of us with all her projects, like Feedbask and IAcrea! 👉🏻 Filip (@filippkowalski) and Emanuele (@ema_totaro) will work on their mobile apps empire 👉🏻 Marina (@cinamarina) will grow Luma, an app to help manage anxiety and stress with science-backed exercises. 👉🏻 Dmytro (@DmytroKrasun) will certainly make us all wiser, and will work on ScreenshotOne, his screenshots API ‐ if we grant him some free time 👉🏻 Nicolas (@NicolasPapegaey) will grow his mobile apps empire, probably sharing secrets with Filip and Emanuele 👉🏻 Hugo (@hugolassiege) will work on Writizzy, our blogging platform, and will help me organize the whole event! And last but not least, Benjamin (@benjamincode, if you're French and between 7-77 you know him) will work on meetsponsors and AutoTrim, and will probably make us famous just by being there 🙇🏻 From May 26 to June 2, all those fantastic people will gather together in a nice manor in France, to build, share, and grow together for the first Uneed Residency. I can't express how excited I am 🤩! In the coming weeks, I'll share an interview with every resident with you, so that you can learn more about them. We will also be planning the week, and we have some pretty exciting stuff ahead 👀

🚨 Who's the best person in the business to make a launch video with, any recommendations!

Fload sponsoring the UNEED residency 🚀 Looking forward to seeing everyone at the house! 🏠

@burakeregar Yes it’s a huge change, they clearly see where the future of apps are heading and want in on it!

@helloryanj this sounds like a massive upgrade compared to the mess with the previous program it was a messy process so even though i am a turkish citizen, my company is based in the uk now, i am seriously considering creating an entity in turkey

Keep it coming Claude ❤️

you're right that build costs are going to zero. But that's exactly WHY the broker market is exploding. when anyone can build an app, the scarce asset isn't the code, it's the distribution. An app that already ranks #3 for "meditation" with 50K organic downloads/month is worth more now than it was 2 years ago, not less. because good luck getting there from scratch when 100K new apps are flooding the store every week. ad costs will go up, yes. But organic rankings become real estate. If you already own a keyword position, that's appreciating in value while everyone else fights over paid traffic. the brokers showed up because institutional money figured this out. Private equity, ex-gaming companies, media groups, they're all entering app M&A because apps with proven organic distribution are one of the few digital assets where the moat is actually getting deeper, not shallower. the squeeze you're describing will kill apps that depend on paid UA with no organic base. But apps with strong organic positions? They're the ones being acquired at premium multiples right now. build cost → $0 means more supply. More supply means organic distribution becomes the scarce resource. And scarce resources attract brokers and capital.

@helloryanj Why this is happening in your opinion? If the cost of development is going to 0$, this eliminate an entry barrier. So (i think) everyone will focus on distribution, this will raise adv cost and squeeze margin. I am very curious of what is happening and what do you think about.

Had dinner with 25 app owners last night in Dubai. shoutout @herreraevel & @andjdavies for organising Probably ownership of over 800 apps were sat at the table. Here's what I noticed:

organic first. Always. app Store page optimisation before anything else title, subtitle, screenshots, keywords. If your page doesn't convert, nothing else matters. find your 3-5 core keywords and obsess over ranking for them. Even position #10 for the right keyword can beat a viral TikTok get reviews early, ask every user personally if you have to. 50 genuine reviews with a 4.5+ rating changes how the algorithm treats you. post about the journey on here and LinkedIn. People love watching someone build. Your "day 1" content is your cheapest distribution channel. creators come later. Distribution comes first.

@helloryanj I just built my first iOS app. How will you suggest me to approach the marketing distribution if there’s no capital yet to pay creators? Phone farm?

Apple's new App Store design blurs ads and organic... Apple's new App Store design blurs ads and organic results. I analyzed what this means for indie devs. Thread 📷

Yes 🙌 Using Claude code/cowork for go-to-market has shown me just how much more productive we are all about to become. Now I can do it from my phone. This is all I wanted to not use Clawdbot. I’ll be sharing my setup soon

3/ App brokers are at every table now. Two years ago, M&A brokers for apps were nowhere. It was individual app operators like myself just reaching out to app owners and negotiating app deals. Now there are dedicated brokers sitting next to the operators. The market is maturing fast - and as more apps come to market, app acquisitions are accelerating. Liquidity in buying and selling apps is going up massively.

@TheMattBerman @openclaw @rapidapi 1000

I replaced a $200K GTM hire with @openclaw 😱 here's the system that runs my outbound: step 1: mine LinkedIn engagement → @rapidapi scrapes everyone engaging with niche content → someone who commented on specific posts = 10x warmer step 2: enrich + verify → Hunter/Apollo finds the decision-maker + email → @Perplexity deep research pulls signals like hiring, fundraising, media appearances, quotes step 3: score against your ICP → title, company, signals = ranked 0-100 → only A-tier leads get touched step 4: write personalized outreach → Claude writes outreach referencing what they ACTUALLY engaged with and talk about step 5: send via @instantly_ai → 3-email sequence. automated follow-ups. step 6: pre-call deep research → @PerplexityComet builds a 1-page briefing 30 min before every call input: your ICP + niche keywords output: booked meetings with people who already care $200K/year GTM engineer → $130/month in APIs. I packaged the entire system as the First 1000 Kit: - all 8 @openclaw skills - every prompt - tool-by-tool setup - email sequences that convert giving it away free. comment 1000 + like + follow (must follow so i can DM)

@habazzi @herreraevel @andjdavies @FaresKsebati We found out he had been ignoring my LinkedIn request for 4 years after I tried to buy My Swim Pro back in the day 🤣

@helloryanj @herreraevel @andjdavies i spot a @FaresKsebati in there! Glad you two met

The app economy isn't shrinking. It's exploding. The era of one person with one app is being replaced by operators running growth systems across portfolios and the infrastructure around them (brokers, capital, AI tools) is finally catching up. If you run apps, this is the most interesting time to be in the game

5/ Nobody's panicking about AI though. They're adapting. The operators who've been through cycles before are treating this the same way they treated every App Store algorithm change - figure out where the market is moving, get there first, and use the chaos to acquire undervalued apps from people who are panicking.