How Finch turned self-care into a $100M+ game

Wow,
this is the most interesting subscription innovation that I have seen in the last 10 years.
Man, these guys are so clever.
It's 4 a.m. and we're rolling the dice [music] with those coins. We're [music] the two and a half gamers, the midnight crew talking UA adverts and game design too. Mate, [music] feeling shaking the insight. We're rocking those vibes till the early daylight. But hey, you a master eyes on the prize. Tracking data through the cyerspace skies. Feeling stacks colors [music] like a wizard in disguise. Crafters lift us to the high. Two and a half gamers talking smack. Slow hockey sick. [music] Got your back. Ads are beautiful. They light the way. Click it fast. Don't [music] delay. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
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Baby 10 million DAO. How is this 10 million daily active users? It's my entire country's population in a game. What is this? Yeah, it's two Slovakas.
I am mind blown. And that's a hell of an intro.
That's a hell of an intro. Yes. Thank you very much. Yeah. Thanks for coming. This is two and a half gamers and we are going to talk about
an app rather than just a game or is appame I'm I don't even know any I don't Yeah know anymore.
Yeah
but it's working quite well and you will see
the thing is that it's a game but it's in the category that's called stress management and mental health apps.
I mean that's what I would give you for Christmas pretty much. And before we start my name is Mate. I'm Felix Proberg.
And I'm Yakubier.
And we are your hosts. We are your hosts. Okay. So, we're going to talk about finch.
So, here we are in our glorious world of

blue penguin or bird or whatever. What is that? I hatch. And um this is one of those like take care of Tamagoi pet apps. One of the things that you won't see here, but it's extremely important and extremely effective is the widget thing that these things employ which you know they put outside of the app on top of your phone. Just saying. So keep that in mind when you review this because you won't see this. This is an emulator and I'm not putting widgets on it. Anyway, you should So what we have here is that we have our pet and it's feeling thoughtful because it has completed all the goals for today. So what we do here is pretty much we can customize the pet a little bit like you could buy him stuff in the furniture department or outfit department which is outrageously expensive or just directly locked behind the subscription. Why not?
Of course that's just there. There's Mr. prickles, the shopkeeper. And this is

not even that big of an inventory, but you can clearly see that by by type of these things, the focus is quite clear and pretty much expressing your personality, whatever that may be. Like for instance, this blue insulin pump
or pretty much all the pride flags or whatever you can find here pretty much. So, they took it on like a great focus there. Then we have the quest section. And quest section and this is like this was very interesting to me today because you have some like base quests which are typical daily quest resets ever 8 hours so on so forth like name your emotion. Write a reflection. Complete the goal. Complete the goal was also pretty interesting because if I go into the main app we can literally add the goal anytime right now. Let's do
a goal right now. Come to the podcast
like drink water
safe.
Yes, that's it. You did it. You drank

water.
Yeah. And stick to your head. Yeah. Again, we had some new egg. Or brush your teeth or get out of bed. Take a stretch break.
Just be a perfect quest.
Yeah. So, you have a lot of these, let's say, mental health, wellness, whatever reminders that you get. I really underestimate people that are depressed in in their bed and they can't really get out
and it's the end of the [ __ ] world.
But yeah, but the gamification here when you complete a task feels great cuz the button when the confetti when you actually do something
people that are the president can get out of their bed need a real psychiatric help man like this won't save them. Just saying.
Yeah, sure. Okay,
just going.
You didn't know that. Thank you very much. Yeah, this is not the medical
My job is done
podcast. Yeah, your job is done. Exactly. We know that.
Anyway, so you have these quests that are based on like these activities. There are some that you can add and like literally farm these points that you get

here. Like I don't know if it doesn't even show those. Yeah, these rainbow stones that you can see if I go into the shop. I think yeah I have like 176 rainbow stones that I can get from quests achieving full energy by writing long essays or getting gift boxes or inviting friends. So basically the apps uh activity engagement monetization then we have this adventure which I completed already today which means that you can send your pet to like 6h hour cooldown mission basically or 7 hour cool down mission and he brings you something. Today he discovered cherries and then he ate them and he felt great. So yeah, that's there. I still haven't found like a typical farm where I'm, you know, I was alone and you didn't feed me or whatever nagging thing which I'm guess will happen tomorrow if I don't open this the first thing in the morning and then it will start either notifications time or some kind of a usual kind of

setup what these apps have kind of mastered eventually. I think lots of these pets apps like eventually the pet actually dies or or leaves or like something like you didn't take care of me. There's just a letter here that's like I I remember sometimes that that happened there. Then we have pretty strong uh friend functionality where you can again invite friends always incentivized first friend second friends gives you more rewards and all these other things again. So typical farmable stuff. Then we have our bag which is pretty much our inventory with all these micro pets as we are hatching one currently and just like other pretty much cosmetics. Then we have our let's say profile card of the pet not not mine with of course the most important thing being the streak mechanic and you can already see that there streak repair protect your streak when you skip a day or two and I'm guessing when I run out of these hammers I can buy them or something. So that's definitely is

happening.
Pay me [ __ ]
Yeah. So these micro pets have their own micropedia which is I guess collectible mechanic for these
collectible album.
Yeah. Not really. It's more of like a streamlined version of sticker album
albumish.
Yeah. Because I don't think so there's trade functionality or you know you don't see it being on like two months timer grand prizes and everything that royal match employ. So it's like water down version of that. And then uh yeah, that's pretty much it. Like that's the feature set. Like the guy doesn't really do that much once you complete all of the daily quest.
He doesn't really need Yeah, he doesn't really need to do much.
It's just cute. Just cute.
See, I can't even send him on quest like I can my RPG characters. Like he's too sleepy to go outside.
Thank god you need to take a rest, Jakob.
Oh, he's hatching an egg.
See, see about Yakob's undertones that he's not a fan. But
that's what exactly it's what I wanted to say. As soon as he thinks this is stupid, like yeah, this has all of this really to it. Blah, blah, blah, blah.

Then we're going to talk about designers are notoriously hard to win over because they build entire worlds.
No, no, no. The next we are going to talk about the [ __ ] wifus and he's going to be glowing all over.
Yeah, exactly.
Look at the numbers, Jakob. Go to sensor tower numbers.
Be mind blown.
Yeah, I know. is the category leader. So, as I said, um the revenue I guess it's kind of pretty big, but I'm guessing that uh K a day, but this, if I understand, is this subscription mainly?
It's going to be way more, my friend.
It's going to be way more, my friend, than this. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
Yeah, but is this subscription included or no?
There's no subscription.
The subscription, this is what they're earning on mobile. But as you remember what's going on now with the biggest trend that Machi has been talking about,
it's app to web. And I have a feeling that this is bigger on web as well, right?
Downloads wise pretty good. Something like 30k a day. And now to the main metric of the day, which is the DAU,

which is Yeah.
And look at the geos. Look at the geos.
76% US pristine one. Like I've never seen as good deal.
And also, you know, like you you work with Tamagotchi apps before like the retention is insane.
Yeah.
It's going to be like day seven 70%. You know, like something crazy.
Day one.
I can tell you this is not true. This is no way this is right. No way. And this is still good metrics.
Still pretty good. Still pretty good. But it's this is definitely better than
day. You're looking at January 2022 if you go on the filter. Yeah, maybe December. What's going to be there?
Whoa. Whoa. 54% day one.
Day 7 3. Okay.
25% day.
Okay.
Day 60 20%.
Not bad.
Yeah.
Now we're talking.
That's pretty good.

Now we're talking.
The thing is here there's no ads, but such a big user base. Like I probably don't think ads would work here unless you clever segmentation.
The problem is that who would you segmented everybody's us already? The thing is, right, with these big numbers and such pristine DAU, even if you get 15% of the user base watching two rewarded ads a day, you're earning 100K a day in ad revenue, which means that you're earning pretty much the same
double as they're making.
Seriously.
Yeah. Doubling your revenue by just having 15% of people watch ads. And I can confirm this because you can clearly add ad revenue in in most of the apps and even if it's just like one or two placements immediately jumps up the the revenue by like 10 10 15%. Everything else stays the same. Obviously if you if you [ __ ] it up and just put it in the wrong placements but

that's why we are here.
Exactly [laughter] here.
That's what I do.
So yeah. So then you can you can clearly bank a lot of money on top of this. But this is the first time where I see such a large DU without ads that basically where it would make sense to have it because I have a feeling that nonweb revenue you'd easily be able to dwarf it with ad revenue if you did it in clever way. 25% of user base you're earning more if 25% of the user base watch two ads a day rewarded you're earning more than on the mobile that were being reported right now in sensor tower. So it's like huge possibility huge possibility. As for the category number, so let me just finish this one. Number three in downloads last 30 days, which is still like quite close to the first one or like double 1.7 against 1 million.
Revenue is already top one, which is like 3 mil
a month, but DAU again the chart that

you want to look at, which just wipes the floor with everybody else. So that's that's there. But I'm think that um if I had to double check regarding this regarding these apps or the things that I'm This is still not under like the pet category, is it?
No.
I mean like apps like Pangu.
It's self app. No, it's not the same category as them.
Yeah. Yeah. But it's very very similar, isn't it?
It's similar, but basically how they market it is completely different. So they how they marketing this is basically all for self-help. So, it's supposed to be the self-care category, right? So, it's very different from the other ones when it's like best friend, I guess.
Okay. Because I think there was this other app that I was kind of checking which is what's called vegetable. Yeah, I know this one which is also it's called customization ringtones. Actually, this app is also the one where

you like take care of your pets and you take raise a pet and a plant in the combo. Yeah, actually two the ones. And they have also been doing some pretty good before. I guess they didn't really make it. Yeah, they were doing like 30k before, but yeah, not anymore it seems. Even though active users isn't that bad, too. It's 4 million. You're making less than 30k a day and you have 4 million dau.
Okay, good.
But see, they had it's the same. They have like 9.5 million again bad bad stuff because like don't care about like the health, mental, whatever. This is basically Tamagotchi on steroids. Both of these this this should have their own category basically tamagois on steroids. And you see how how effective it was because this is the one where you need to actually have a pet with your friend
and nudging your friend through a phone

number contact and literally cannot
same as Pangu.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And this is again uh I would guess this is not that pristine but it's still like us being the top one. But yeah, but yeah, these guys definitely have ads. So just a comparison. Show me.
No, no, no. I mean, there's way more stuff. So, let's start like with this, which is basically super super simple website of Finch Care.
Classic mobile app website,
classic layout of for Windows.
Yeah. Yeah. But then,
no, I mean like you should put it on full screen.
I do. There we go. Then uh I mean this is also their page for the web to app campaigns but that doesn't matter because then he was like let's see what is in here shop guardian plus gift fus

whatever [ __ ] what is this shop and it's not web shop dear guys unfortunately we will get there we will get there wait a second we have merch [ __ ] ton of merch okay nice
there's an addition revenue stream. Oh, okay. Join us in feature. Okay, nice. Perfect. Yeah, the app obviously community. What do you think is the in their community? 250,000 members in [ __ ] Facebook group.
Mhm.
Same thing on their Discord. It's 245,000. Now it's 25,000 online right now. But uh so that's there. Really interesting stuff. And then and then we have another thing which is oh guardian what what's like what's I want to become a guardian of course sponsor finch plus subscriptions for others as gain exclusive benefits. Oo wow

let's go wait a second.
Oh wait a second.
Here is also I can be an ally but I can be a protection or I can be a superhero and just [ __ ] give them my own price per month.
No.
Wait a second. Oh, this is such an amazing way to increase spend depth.
Yes, exactly. And this, my dear friend, if I become an ally, it's obviously yearly or monthly. So, we can all go here and continue. Maybe it's going to go. Oh, where? Stripe. Of course, it's [ __ ] web business. Can you imagine how much money how much more money they make on this website?
Double.
Jesus.
Double at least.
On at least.
Oh, here. Wait, wait, wait. Each year people your custom contribution. Wait, you contribute? How does that work?
You can just uh send people subscription or like Yeah. subscription. See, you can gift to other people one per month and you can get 300 bonus rainbow stones for

recipient. So, you can actually get Yeah. This is basically an affiliate program.
Yeah.
Kind of a little bit reversed, but still it's I mean,
but you're still paying for it monthly.
Yes. Because you are
you want to be you know you want to help people
obviously so you want to help people and you will get bonus for for
wow this is the most interesting subscription
innovation that I have seen in the last 10 years
right
man these guys are so clever like this is so clever
because hall of guardians let's see all of the jeez look oh my god this is this is this amazing you I care you're not alone hold this inspire so you see because people actually want to help so they buy this so they can help others they are in the need of you know like getting some help so oh my god this is so good yeah obviously powered by Stripe great yeah they're

all since it's all the US right they actually don't need payment provider that's a merchant record they can just use stripe because it's all in one
yeah That's that's insane. I mean, it's it's mainly mainly US as as all the
75%.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And uh definitely web revenue is Did anyone say web revenue? Oh, yeah. This episode is brought to you by Fastpring, the no drama D2C partner that's been scaling with mobile publishers for over 20 years. They're fast growing, profitable, and seriously reliable, which is more than you can say about most vendors in this space. Anyway, whether you're launching a new web store, replacing your current D system, or adding a backup plan, Fast Spring is here for you. Visit fastspring.gg to set up your web store today.

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This is why they don't need ad revenue, right? Like if they're probably doubling on this, right? Like they don't need to. Yeah.
And because again, think about this. You have the potential to capture whale spend now. Like what's the to the subscription possibilities?
Oh, you mean this one?
One one page before this one.
Yeah.
So, what's the superhero price? Your own price.
Your own price.
Your own price. Exactly. Which means no limit.
Click that one. Be a superhero. I want to see that one. What happens when you click on the purple?
Yearly, monthly. See, I can help 2,96869 people if if I pay.
This is the whale extension.
Yeah. And honestly, um I have this on my substag as well. It's just like you can put your own price. People do that. Some people do that.

Yeah. So that's that's your spend depth right there. And you pay 5% or whatever 3% on top of this thanks to Stripe.
Stripe is usually cheaper like if you're doing volume, right? It's going to be one or 2% like very low, you know.
That's true. Yeah, that's true. That's true. I think I have three. So yeah, it could be 2%. So So yeah, uh anything that we see on mobile, it's relevant, but I don't think it's that relevant as this. This is just perfect.
This is amazing. Just the screenshot. Yeah, just this. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I just need to do this.
We put that on the cover like this is the this is the icon. This is just wow.
This is perfect.
I had no idea this episode was going to be this like wow.
Yeah. Know this is interesting. It's insane because I was I was kind of looking basically here like okay so creatives and I'm going to go through it like wait a second.
Do you think they run much more web UA than this? Yeah.
U mobile UA
retargeting as well to web would work

probably, right?
We'll see. We'll see. So I was like, okay, so what are they actually running? Facebook, Instagram, sure. Tik Tok. Okay, fine. It's like, okay, so if they're running so much Facebook, I need to go to Facebook and check like, okay, what's happening? So I open this like there's [ __ ] ton of ads. Okay, install now. Learn more. Oh, wait a second. You learn more. And how do you learn more? You go here, but this is only one iteration. So this is basically the landing page or the web to app, which is kind of the middle ground. And then they use this to to get people in in the store. But this is only one one uh or a couple of creatives that I saw with these landing pages because if I go if I always go here I need to check through all of the account all of the the creatives and it's all you see also learn more learn more install now. So they're running a lot of different things. I mean here it's most likely the same landing page. Yeah. But then they

don't really need to go to to the actual like web to app flow which is you go to the web and then you basically have all these questionnaires [ __ ] blah blah blah and then after after you finish the question. Yeah that's perfect. It's ASMR ASMR episode and it's basically you don't really need need the the end of the question or IQ test or whatever with the the subscription or the payw wall because then you have all the like other pay walls on different places and it's it's so smart. See, but before you joined Yakob, we're talking about like Felix thought this is actually like kids app or like mainly because like
actually I think like I don't know why but Pengu is of the store but I'm guessing they took a lot of inspiration from it.
I would guess so because Pengu is older than this. No like the bird literally

looks very similar.
Yeah.
No, this is older than Pangu. This is two three years old. Yeah,
I think this is Yeah, this is older than than Pangu. I mean I can I can check
Pango is not off the store. I think it's just renamed.
Oh, really?
Yeah, that's true as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like the whole company was renamed.
Yeah. After slay race. Yeah.
Yeah. So So what I can do is just go in here and check this. So here
end of 2023. You're right.
Yeah. Look 21. Yeah. 2021. Yeah, the set scaling kind of here, which is amazing because I think you just need to add like loads of different uh different features features and elements into the into the app. So, you actually keep the users in. That's why they have such a great retention because they are [ __ ] they have [ __ ] ton of stuff. So, there's just slapping features on features which is great. And then if you go here and look at the all

the all the creatives, I mean, you know what?
Yeah. You know what's great? There is a song and she's singing the lyrics that you see here. Thank you, Suno or whatever. Whoever was that literally Yeah. Amazing. Amazing. And this is basically the creative.
So again, I was so happy when you said like let's let's talk about this because they basically they were my inspiration for a lot of different these like wall of text creatives before because this is exactly what you need and that's it. really like the ones that you were using two years ago.
I mean it was this and then other other almost mental app uh health mental health health app. Yeah, because look I mean it's very simple. It's just it's sends the message across. You need to get you need to do chores and you need to you know if you're depressed whatever you can play with with these pets also [ __ ] ton of different stuff. Also, this is basically the

misplay ad that she's talking to herself. So, it's like one person. I mean, we saw it before, but again, POV, which is again like a Tik Tok trend from the past, still works quite well because it's ads on on the messaging. They also have some playables on. They said I couldn't make ads without the dev [music] team. They said I couldn't understand the tech. Guess what? I just made [music] a fully working gorgeous top to play while eating [music] noodles and watching trash TV and taking care of my daughter. All thanks to playable makeup. No code, no stress, [music] no [ __ ] Sherlock Applavin. So this is interesting because they are I thought they're going to be way bigger on Applavin than they are actually. Yeah, because they only have like 40 creatives in last 30 days on Applvin. Although they do have like two, three, four. Yeah, at least four play five playables.

So, it's not bad because here that's already pretty solid. And I see this creative. Oh my god, this is running for some time.
Okay, so honest question. How much UA do you think they run in comparison to mobile on web?
They're making let's say 200k a day. Yeah. How much do you think they're running?
Let me think because this can be monthly and yearly. So,
you mean Ross?
Let's see. No, no, no, no, no. Let Let me Let me finish the Where's the here? I need to check. You know what? this because if they're front Yeah. Because if they're frontloading the the annual means they are going to get a lot of money up front which means again early where quicker payback
small
if they're earning what
I mean like uh not
sure like quick payback
ROI. Yeah. Like it's
Yeah. Quick R. Yeah. Yeah. Because like if you are buying so many users and

they're like paying annually right away then it's insane.
What's the then there?
I think it's not actually really
big
cheap. I would say on this
so sticky it can be
yeah 10 for like like a US person 60 retention shouldn't be no problem.
Exactly. Even more right.
Wow.
So but okay. So if they're making let's say 100k on on mobile and I'm absolutely sure like they're making at least double on on web if not more then they could be spending definitely more than like well 200k per day at least I would say even more I would say yeah I would I would go just adventurers and I would say they can earn more money on the web and even if it's more if it's monthly subscription that's like the the cohort is going to grow forever. because of the of the retention. So they can spend like yeah

like easily 300 400k per day.
So you think these guys are spending between somewhere between 73 to 100 mil a year on UA?
[ __ ] it. This I hate
impossible to say, right? Yeah, I know. But this is why we do the podcast. This is good. I know.
No, no. I I mean I'm hate I hate your your yearly calculations.
Yeah, because it goes up and down, right? Right. So yeah,
we do we do we do monthly revenue and you Oh, but there's like 150 million run rate. Like [ __ ] hell.
So let's say yeah, let's say anything between 250 for to 400 per day they can they can spend. It's going to be a lot of money actually. You know what? Let's see here.
What do you want to check? I still see the same screen.
Here's some spend for this app which is 22k. See we have you this is in UK. So they are running UK, US and I would say some some tier one countries and if if only this one gets like 20k spent. Come on like they're spending them.
Yeah. Wow.

Easy easily. So yeah and also like that like all the different concepts. I mean
UK is the third biggest demo
6% of the
see like all these different
for selfcare. Yeah. Exactly.
Exactly right.
I'm hydrated.
Yeah. It's better. Yeah,
100 is like that's all you need. So all these different things like it's just ah and I I don't even know and we can actually try to check because
this only a part of the equation only a part of the equation.
Who's looking at?
Let's do this.
Was that Crash Bandicoot from Wish?
Yeah, whatever.
Is that half a million followers on Tik Tok?
Yes,
of course. because it's all Tik Tok.
So, exactly. That's what I want to say. Like, you know how much more there they could be spending for the creator program or like create program like creators just doing this for them. And

even if we go to actually see this is this is interesting. This is really interesting. Now, we can actually check this. Where's the Tik Tok side here? because I'm pretty sure they're running so many of these that we will see in I would say here as well. Yeah. Yeah. This is the guy from the from the Tik Tok easy. So all of these could be run as sparks.
Yeah.
Yeah. Exactly. And honestly like this all finch care and their their own page but these are the ones that I'm interested in. See, like other things that other people do. Yeah. I mean, this is insane. This is like the the actual like how how you
juggernaut like this.
Oh, hello. Hello there. I didn't see you. Thank you very much for coming to this episode. Uh, it's brought to you by our sponsors, PVX Partners, the simplest and most effective credit line for marketing. If you're scaling your

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This is so big. [laughter] This is absolutely big.
Crazy.
Even if we I'm pretty sure like if we go to Instagram and we would do the same activity like this is going to be like full of Instagram full of stuff.
Can I so simplistic?
Show one thing as well.
Can I show one thing as well? But it's market. I think this is the marketing that does it right. Like self-care
and it's the gaming app intersection.
And then just look at these. Same as

Impulse. Like literally same as Impulse, just different category.
Yeah. But like look at like 10,000 reviews on iOS and like you're reading some of these and it's just like I'm always thrilled when I can take check off a task no matter how ridiculously small. This is a self-care app. It includes brushing your teeth.
I could send them to psychiatrist.
Yeah. [laughter] With heavily medicine instead of using finch.
People like to do structured things. People like to do very much structured things. Like if you can do checklists and get rewards for that and get this all kind of structured experience, it feels like great
with a dopamine kick.
Exactly.
Cuz basically every time when you click off the item, it explodes with confetti and it looks amazing and you actually feel really good when you do it. Like when I wake up for the last two days when I'm doing this, it's like
when you open gachas, that's more dopamine. But checklist also work pretty well.
Checklist work. No, I mean this is and also as I said like they need to add features on top of everything because the apps retention honestly like all

these like utility apps and and all the [ __ ] is just it's terrible because you don't use it every day and even if the Tamagotchi is the only thing there. It's just not exactly the only thing that that needs to be in place because what would you do? Take care of this little guy and then [ __ ] off. But now you need to do tasks, goals, you have collectible something. So it's like on things on top of this. And I remember when I was talking to to guys from Reface last year, they got the beat pal, which is a like a food tracker application with a pal, which is a little raccoon. And I was like, I hope the who the [ __ ] cares about the raccoon, man. Like you should just check your
Everybody cares.
And then everyone everyone cares.
Everybody cares. Yeah, exactly. Everybody cares. Everybody cares. So yes. Exactly. Because again, it's this it's this like you know natural experience of being gamified without actively trying to search for games even

though you [ __ ] playing the game like Dualingo like exact same thing but you still think I'm not playing a game. I'm doing you know self-care learning blah blah and then you have zero Spanish skills after 2 days straight
but you spent [ __ ] ton of money. I mean who cares?
All right let's end it here. We've talked this to death before we go on a tangent. This has been another fantastic, insightful episode of the Two and a Half Gamers podcast where you can stay two and a half steps of the mobile industry. Thank you very much for tuning in. Bye-bye.
Thank you very much. Bye-bye. So, such a great stuff that went blur.
Cheers. Bye-bye.