After Making $7 Million in Weeks, Gas App Exits to Discord

Welcome to The ZenChad, the only newsletter calmly stacking cash in your bank, as you artfully cook that protein-filled, morning omelet.

Let’s dive in.

Who’s most likely to end up as president? Who’s most likely to punch someone? Does someone in Calculus class have a crush on you?

You might be getting flashbacks to your middle school yearbook.

But, we’re talking about Gas, the anonymous polling app that’s been ranked higher than TikTok on the social networking charts.

The questions mentioned are just a few of the anonymous polling questions that users of the Gas app send to each other through anonymous polls.

The catch?

To get hints about whose voting on these polls, you’ll need to upgrade to God mode.

God mode??

Yup, that’s an in-app subscription that is $6.99 per week.

With this $7 weekly payment, you get features such as unlimited hints, two bonus reveals, crush alerts, and full anonymous mode.

Basically, it’s Linkedin premium meets Tinder :)

Though it's an anonymous polling app, it has generated a whopping $7 million dollars in revenue in around 14 weeks. Simply incredible growth.

Nikita Bier, the founder of the Gas App, has officially sold the app, Gas, to discord. The sale price is an undisclosed amount. What’s important to note is that this is not Nikita’s first rodeo- he built and sold a social polling app called TBH to facebook in 2017.

Notice any similarities? The guy gets social networks.

Based on normal exit multiples in social apps, we can estimate Discord’s acquisition of Gas to be in the ballpark of $35-60 Million dollars. Simply wild.

Built with a team of 4, The app has been the top-ranked social media app in the app store for months now.

Let’s dig into their Growth strategy because building social apps requires skill (and a bit of luck):

1. They used Geo-fencing features- Specifically, they focused on building network effects within certain target high schools. When building a social app or a network-based business, density, volume of usage, and retention are far more important than the top-line number of users. So, it was critical that you go high school by high school to build really strong atomic networks of users. Nikita and the gas team understood this and executed it.

 2. Invite-based growth- in order for kids in a high school to keep playing the app, they are required to invite their friends, or they’ll be locked out of the app for an hour. This strategy actually puts pressure immense on the user to invite friends- imagine Uber’s refer-a-friend program on steroids.

3. Prioritize your app’s K- factor. What's that? It's the metric app developers use to measure virality. Basically, it measures how many additional users each existing user brings to the app. Typically, you’re golden if you’re above 1.

4. Analyze Nuances- Nikita talked about the fact that he analyzed screenshots of Snapchat that took off, and found that 20% of teens have Zoom mode enabled. So, the team prioritized this and saw their virality skyrocket.

 5. Naming is Super important- Nikita actually changed the name from Crush to Gas after noticing that Men mainly invited men, and women mainly invited women. As a result, invites doubled

6. Make your startup known- Gas had its bit of controversy. News outlets alleged that Child Trafficking had been occurring through the gas platform. Nikita quelled those concerns, but it got the app’s name into the public eye regardless. Nikita also went on the Today show multiple times to talk about the product- smart move.

7. Fit into Consumer behavior- A lot of apps die trying to change consumer behavior in a large way. At most, slight tweaks in human habits are possible, and if your app becomes part of this tweak, you’ve got a killer app. For example, Nikita noticed that from 13 to 18 years of age, the number of invitations per user drops 20% every year. This means a social app that aims to get 20-year-olds right off the bat will have huge customer acquisition costs unless it strikes lightning in a bottle

8. Laugh a little! Not only is it good for your health and mental state, but it will also make the execution of your business strategy more efficient.

Nothing like some good-old shitposting from Nikita!

Anyways, lads, enjoy your weekends and work on upping that K-Factor if you're building a consumer app.