Interview with Moritz Daan from Phiture - Applause 2017 Skip to main content

Interview with Moritz Daan from Phiture

Moritz will give a lecture about “The ASO Stack” next May 27th at W Barcelona. Moritz Dann is Partner & Co-Founder at Phiture, a mobile growth consultancy in Berlin which he set up with Andy Carvell in 2016. Phiture helps app businesses grow based on their industry-acclaimed Mobile Growth Stack. If you want to learn more, must-attend Applause 2017.

Every week we’ll publish an interview in our blog of each Applause 2017 speaker. Know more about Moritz in this interview!

Quick Quiz Moritz Daan – Phiture

Moritz Daan

1. What’s your story?

I founded and sold two browser-based gaming companies between the age of 17 – 23 and then made a U-turn by studying law. After finishing my masters of law in Munich I was drawn back into the exciting startup scene in Berlin, where I was lucky to join Andy Carvell’s growth team at SoundCloud. This is where I first did ASO and later took on the role of Product Manager for International Growth.

In 2016 I set up a mobile growth consultancy called Phiture (pronounced feature!) together with Andy.

2. How is your day-to-day?

With Phiture I consult exciting clients such as Skyscanner, Clue and IDAGIO on growth topics. We build quantitative growth models, help the teams choose the right vendors and improve their growth processes, but also assist more hands-on with topics such as ASO or mobile marketing automation. We do all of this based on a strategic framework that we developed, called the Mobile Growth Stack. When not working with clients, I like to write about these topics on our ASO Monthly Medium publication and the Mobile Growth Stack.

3. What was your biggest mistake and what did you learn from it?

With the second games company I had, we built a comic-style hooligan game in 2008. As we had tons of experience with Google AdWords and as these were the pre-Facebook marketing days, Google was our big bet for UA. They however didn’t like the hooligan touch of our game too much (despite it being a rather funny game) and blocked us from advertising. After spending quite a bit of legal fees on fighting the battle to advertise (quite ironic), we finally gave up on the title altogether. It took us another year to develop our next title. It definitely taught me to diversify your UA channels.

4. If you didn’t work in app marketing sector, what would you be doing?

Salmon fishing — or so 🙂

5. How many years have you been working in the mobile industry? What has changed since you started to nowadays?

Technically for 14 years, as the browser-based game which I made in 2003 was by-and-large a desktop game, there were quite a few people who started using it on those horrible first smartphone devices too! I have experience with native mobile professionally since 2013. In those 4 years it’s become much easier and cheaper to develop a high quality app.

6. Which are the hottest apps that have surprised you the most?

Quartz. I found their refreshing conversational way of bringing the news really cool, but unfortunately it didn’t stick with me at all. Whilst the conversational interface might make sense to use in your favorite messenger, I was definitely surprised about it’s success as native app even after the hype died down.

7. What’s the main contribution of apps to our society?

I think it’s pretty amazing that nowadays almost everyone can walk around with a smartphone in their pockets. Whether that’s a $600 one or a $10 low-end Android device, it gives everyone access to apps that can improve people’s lives (banking, comms, education, information, social, health, etc.)

8. How do you think the app marketing ecosystem would be in 3-5 years?

Tough one. Native apps for sure won’t be the only way to acquire, engage and retain customers on mobile. For some ‘apps’ it might even make more sense to be on the major messenger platforms such as iMessage, Messenger, Alexa or other more specific integrations. Acquiring users on those platforms hasn’t proven so easy just yet, but that will likely change in the next 3-5 years in app marketing.

9. If you’d have to give any advice to an entrepreneur/business who’s ready to launch an app, what would it be?

Spend more time on getting qualitative feedback on your app store page or play store listing right from the start. As every potential customer will see your listing, you need to consider your assets (text + visuals) as key part of your funnel. Not only do you need to convince users to install the app but you also need to treat it as part of their on boarding. If they don’t get the value proposition in the app store, chances are high you won’t be able to retain them beyond the install.

10. Could you give us a hint about your keynote?

I’ll be wearing a black hat.

11. What do you think would be the next app marketing hit?

I’m excited for Pinterest Promoted App Pins.

Did you like it? Well, get ready for the congress and discover much more about app mobile marketing industry.

 

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Daniel PM

Author Daniel PM

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