Panel: From App To Super App: Expanding Mobile Apps Beyond A Single Experience.

Hello everybody. Um, we have a I know Osman just did an incredible talk there. Um, but we had him just join the the panel as a surprise guest along with Simon here uh from Deliveroo. So, hello everyone. I'm Hannah. I'm Hannah Parvas. I run a growth consultancy, a full service growth consultancy called Aperture. Um I've been in the app space for about 15 years. So, hey Tim, I'm very excited here um that PGC has started running an app day. It's like really perfect for me. It's really awesome to be uh kind of taking part in this with Dolingo as well. So, today's panel is really about a point that a lot of very successful apps reach. Uh it's really about whenever we start to think

about what other jobs does someone want to do within our app. What other things might someone want to hire us for? Uh and that moment when a product starts stops being just for one experience and becoming a container for many. So sometimes that looks like just simply adding entirely new categories inside the app. You know, now you can play chess uh learn chess or sometimes it looks like layering payments or commerce or business tooling on top of core behaviors. Sometimes it's more of a portfolio approach where growth, identity, monetization, they're just shared across multiple products, but underneath all of this, the question is the same. How do you expand without losing what made people care in the first place? So, we've got four people on stage today that are kind of living very different versions of this challenge. So, we've got Osman, who we've just seen did an incredible job, Simon, Sebastian, and Push. So, I'm gonna ask you all to just quickly introduce yourselves, tell us a little bit about your role, your company, uh,

and then we'll get into the thick of it. So, Osman, we'll just start with you and then work this way.
Yeah. Um, yeah, everyone or most people who are in the room right before this saw me speak. I'm a product manager at Dualingo, mostly focused on a lot of the growth and retention work that we do.
Simon, go ahead.
Hi, I'm Simon. I'm a new recruit uh to Dualingo, working newer subjects. uh came in via acquisition from the games industry. Uh and so my super app experience is kind of limited. It's why I rubbed in for this. Um but yeah, tried to do similar things in gaming context and and I worked at Skype back in the day where we did a lot of this sort of stuff.
Hey everyone, uh I'm I'm P. Uh I'm right now group director of UA Nazara. It's in the gaming space, but over here in the panel like more to get into the experience of working at Uber, that's where Uber is sort of transitioning towards they're trying to transition into Uber app. So that's the one that I'm going to get into and also Simon like on the gaming side like what we've tried to achieve on our side as well. So nice to meet you and nice to hopefully

having a good conversation.
Absolutely. And Sebastian.
Hi everyone. So I'm Sebastian. Um I'm the programmatic partnerships manager at Racketin Viber. If you haven't heard of Racketin Viber, we are a messaging app and are now moving into becoming a super app.
Incredible. It's very exciting. And we were chatting earlier about what what that actually means. And everybody uses the term super app differently. It means a different thing for Viber and Dualingo and Uber and all of these different products. So I want to just explain for for our audience here today what actually is a super app in 2026 and also what is not a super app in 2026. I'll go to you first Sebastian.
Sure. So for us it's uh it's not just cramming 50 features into your app. Uh we are looking at uh how people are using the app today and how we can complement that

experience. So an example would be um within uh certain countries uh we see certain behaviors. uh in Greece we see that uh you can already talk to businesses but uh the use case was that um people were submitting their meter readings to their electricity company and then uh they would send like PDFs and and we use those signals to uh identify opportunities. So, we've launched payments uh ability to pay between businesses and between peers and uh that's kind of how we're looking at it. How can we add additional value to our users and and remove some of that friction to stop them leaving the app?
Awesome. P
uh he took the user side, so I'm going to take the advertiser side. uh [laughter] just uh because look I mean from from from an advertiser perspective nobody

that in the industry that has started ever started to with an aim of becoming a super app it sort of transition into that space right similar to Viber and Uber and everybody else because I think it it solves the problem of distribution you want the user to stick to the app right at the end of the day and it solves the entire UA cost that you're going to get for you to get the same user through a dating app or through a WhatsApp pay or whatever that uh you know version of the super app is it it has been in the works for the last five six years in China and that has really sort of uh you know become very big in the west it's yet to become big in my opinion like it's not there yet and also I think there's going to be uh there's going to be an impact of agent take AI and stuff like that coming in and see how that transitions into it but from uh from an advertiser perspective he has rightly told the user side from an advertiser perspective it just makes sense uh that you know it's just about solving the distribution side and getting the user to stick to the app while performing different functions rightly said based on the data that you're seeing within in the app
and in in you you know you're just talking about China and East Asia as

well. It you know there's apps like Grab there and things where everything is unified into one specific product but I mean just to call back to Uber you know Uber decided strategically to have two different apps for Uber and Uber Eats like can you talk a bit about that?
No so uh slightly different because right now you can order food through Uber. Yeah. uh you have that Uber Eats was a separate app because it started as a separate app from in 2016 but the idea from because I was there uh you know DH used kept kept on saying that you want to become the super app of transport essentially so now you're seeing every single feature being added which is you know getting into the entire booking Expedia booking.com space uh you know they're launching their own
taxi uh you know autonomous cars and stuff like that so they want to become so
his vision at that point I mean that was also Travis vision which is end to end mobility should be solved by Uber. So this is an example of being within the same category. For example, what V Wiber is doing or whatsApp is doing is crosspollination of different categories itself, right? Which is WER is getting into dating space as Sasha and I were talking about it and WhatsApp for example in India and Brazil, they're

getting into WhatsApp pay and they're getting into other they already have a dating app through Facebook or something like that but they're not integrating right now. So within once for me this Uber modern makes a lot more sense because it's within one category. Absolutely.
Uh and I'm not like sort of disagreeing with it. who knows where the world is sort of leading into, but it's sort of a different crosspollination of genres in that sense.
Thank you. We'll come more to that in a bit, but Simon, go ahead.
Uh, yeah, I like to think of it from a consumer perspective. So, if you've got two distinct features or services or businesses that make sense, sort of being unified from a from a from a consumer's perspective, that to me is a super app. um as opposed to say distinct features that might not stand alone or uh sort of backend synergies that we as app developers would love to exploit but like when it makes sense from a user perspective that's that's kind of like the my definition super app I don't know
thank you and this one might be good for Osman but when because you've been at Dualingo how long were you there have you been there
five years now
five years so you know a lot of about

what's been going on there so when Dualingo for example decided to expand how did you decide how to do it like horizontal expansion going deeper into a specific vertical. What was that process? What was that decision framework that you that you had?
Yeah, it's a really interesting story and I wasn't like fully involved in a lot of these decisions. So, I'll speak to how much I know, but maybe things that something that folks might know is when Duolingo was first getting into other subjects. The first one we did a foray into was math and we had actually launched that as a separate app. There was a separate Dualingo math app that you could download and we were working on that for I can't remember how long maybe a year and there was a strategic pivot that we made a few years back where we realized that building out different apps for different subjects will get pretty unwieldy pretty quick. There's a lot of synergies that we weren't leveraging things like that. So we reversed that decision and then decided math and any new subject we add

going forward will all live under the same one Dolingo app. And we did that for a lot of reasons of um easier for from the consumer the learner perspective of if I want to learn Spanish and work on my math I don't have to switch apps between the two every day. uh internally from my point of view when I was working on the growth team, it just made a lot of the optimizations at Dualingo work together better across all courses. So back when we had launched the independent math app, I was working on notifications in the main Dualingo app and then the math team had to come to me to get all my insights and apply those to the math app. But when everything was under the same hood, it was just that I was working on notifications whether or not you were learning Spanish or math from the learner perspective. So it made things a lot simpler. And as we've added like music and chess, we've taken that same process of embedding it into the same app and I think it's worked well for us.
Awesome. Thank you. And Sebastian, you said earlier you look for broken bridges between users and businesses. Can you expand a bit on that?
Absolutely. Um, an example would be our

dating feature that we've just launched. Uh, typically we see, you know, dating apps start with the matchmaking and then move you to a conversation. So we already have that conversation uh functionality. So it was kind of an easy uh step for us to try to do that matchmaking and then move you into the conversation. Uh same with we have three areas dating, payments and commerce. So I already mentioned two and the last one is the commerce and um similar to Facebook marketplace in the Viber app you can do the same and a lot of the conversation is between businesses. So we are making easier for businesses to sell uh their products uh on our on our Viber marketplace
and anyone can just create a business right be selling mushroom powders and
Exactly.
Here we go. But whenever you download the Viber app, so you have dating,

you've got commerce, you've got payments. What What is that onboarding flow like when you've got such dramatically different cases that you're accommodating for?
Yeah, we we want to make sure that um those entry points are optimized for the specific user. So we we're not going to slap, you know, like commerce and and payments and dating at the bottom. uh we're we're kind of adapting it based on uh that specific user journey. Uh a lot of it is specific to countries. Um so Greece has uh a lot of the payments and um other countries uh I think Ukraine is where we've launched the dating and so we're surfacing the right uh products to the right people uh at when they most need it.
Do you want to add anything P? Uh no I I wanted to ask a question actually from a data perspective from for the user because like people would want to not share the data on the dating app versus

a messaging app right is is that built in separately is that backend data completely separate for you?
Yes it's a really good question and even the experience itself is is separate so when you see a little heart icon in the in the Viber dating uh within Viber and you click dating it opens kind of a separate app. It looks separate but it's it's within the same app and um so to answer your question yes everything is very much separate um when you match with someone that chat is not happening in the same chat as Viber uh between your normal friends and family and businesses even the businesses is its own separate section so got it we keep everything separate
great no I just wanted to ask a question
it's a it was a great question so and I'll come back to to push as well. So as you add more jobs into your product, how should monetization evolve as a part of that as well? Should it follow usage?

Should it monetization like actually just lead the road map? You know, for some companies that that is the case or should it stay deliberately constrained especially in trust sensitive products.
You want to add or do you want to go?
Oh,
I was going to go push. Oh, sorry. Please.
When you're looking at me, I thought you were looking at
No, no, you you you is looking [laughter]
no it is it is a tricky one look uh from as he said right I mean the at the back end it's a separate app alto together uh it's just uh you know whenever you create that because the data is completely separate I don't think there's going to be an overlap because uh again it goes back to I think the more we are entering the world of AI and stuff like that the there is going to be a growth of users being concerned about their privacy right at the end of the day and they don't want to overshare uh you know data points and bas based on what I'm I'm pretty sure you would have done your own data analysis to say that okay from this section dating makes sense to sort of transition into but the more jobs you sort of uh add obviously the the problem over here is and it's

slightly tricky which is why like Uber slightly in that sense is better because it's still doing mobility across the board because the uh as you rightly said the monetization is going to be different for a dating app the monetization is going to be different for a messaging app the monetization is going to be different so it's very uh it's slightly trickier to sort of uh build that across the board and uh you know see how exactly the uh you know and I wanted to ask you guys I mean how you guys are seeing monetization on your side when you have multiple sort of layers.
Yeah Simon oh I thought Simon was going to add something.
Go ahead.
Oh no you can go first. [laughter]
I think the the way we are looking at it is um around maintaining that positive user experience. So uh we're looking at the monetization techniques that are going to be the most non-intrusive. Uh, for example, with ads, we're using native ads. Um, when it's maybe less in like less custom format like a banner, um, we're showing that after a user has taken a specific

action. So, when you hang up, uh, the phone, you can make a call in Viber, we show an ad a after the call is finished in the call summary. Um, within dating, we're using um, native ads. what we're going to start using native ads and actually we're exploring rewarded video. Um
so you're still within the ad space. You're not getting into the whole subscription with the dating side yet.
Well, we have Viber plus so that's the premium um where you can have additional features. There's you know you can pay for calling and uh also for dating um there will be a premium subscription as well. Uh but that will also be supported by ads in the future rewarded video ads. So, it's something we're looking into.
Got it.
Yeah. I I think um there's an interesting sort of organizational design question that gets thrown up around how you monetize and value the different services. Like just my experience coming into Dualingo for example like I'm used to extreme autonomy like I founded companies like

started uh we own games and and my pitch was like cool we could like ring fence the revenue and like you'll pay me based on how much it does and like and and uh Louise the CEO of the deal was like yeah it's not like not even we're more about engagement and and and that made it really challenging and but there's there's a there's a trap that I think it's easy to fall into that I've seen companies that I've worked for fall into before where you end up with a sort of like a a Lord of the Flies hung hunger games kind of system where you like you set up a bunch of competing teams uh and and it really does require sort of extreme clarity and communication of companywide objectives like in our case it's very clear if there's ever a monetization engagement trade-off always wins. if it's a free user experience uh is improved, you know, then even if we lose money, that's the that's the winning formula. And so that makes it really difficult sometimes to sort of like find your way as a as a sort of secondary service. Um but the the the

the opposite is is I think probably much worse.
Can you expand a bit more on that as well? So it's a top down approach, but you were saying just then if it's engagement versus monetization, engagement always wins. For a lot of companies, monetization would be the thing that always wins. Can you just expand a bit on that and how that works in Dualingo and why that's the most important thing?
Yeah, so Dualingo is in a kind of uh privileged position, I guess. I guess they've earned it, but it's also they're they're in a uh in a situation where they're they're growing really aggressively. uh uh they've made a lot of money. They're sitting a lot of money and the the the strategy has recently not changed but it's been it's been clarified around uh driving engagement improving the free service way to grow.
Has it shifted more towards that like pro pushing more engagement features as you've got bigger and you felt more comfortable?
That's the intentional sort of strategy. Yeah. So the uh uh uh like just one data point for example is as said there's 10 million people that have logged in every

day for a year and and the trick is now give them more to do get them to drive more engagement get the brand kind of associated with learning different things uh and evolve and deepen that experience more than making money and I think that's uh that that's helpful uh but yeah it's also challenging sometimes for indiv independent teams
but isn't that the basic difference between app and super right app would always go for a Roas based sort of strategy super I would always chase retention and you know D1 D730 retention in order to make more money because you have multiple layers of making money through that right
yeah I guess like ultimately that's it's a business and so ultimately you want to but it's yeah in terms of like the dayto-day things you're prioritizing against um that's the challenge
yeah that's I mean that's a really good distinction is a super app when you're more focused on the actual engagement that I mean that could be it and we're talking we've talked a little bit about the risks of expanding too are right but when when does staying too narrow become a bigger threat can anyone tell me a little bit about that I think you've got some comments on this

yeah so we look at it as the uh value leakage uh which is one of our biggest signals um and and that's kind of guides or opportunities as well
uh when you have you know people in a group chat talking about dinner plans and then they need to leave the app to make the booking or split the Those are opportunities uh for adding additional functionalities uh to complement that super app experience.
And how how are you getting those signals that someone is leaving the app to go and make a booking somewhere else? Like what are the signals that are telling you?
Yeah, it's it's pretty difficult when when you have a enter an encrypted messaging app. But um there are ways where uh users will interact with businesses and um you know
yeah those are publicly available and you know it's safe we see that people are sending uh PDFs uh to to a certain business we can use that as a signal as well
and push did you want to add something?

Um I mean I mean uh again back back when I was at Uber it's it's like it's it works as you know in a similar philosophy because it's it's technically not too narrow but at the same time because as I said like it it's speaks to one genre like they transition naturally. So if you look at the evolution they started with Uber then they went to Uber Eats and they went to Uber courier then they went to you know so they started doing all the things that can but that was more supply oriented thing. What I mean by that is how can drivers make more money? That was the objective when it started with that. Then slowly slowly went from a user perspective. So in I think pro uh sorry post 2019 to 2020 is when they started looking at this as a super app altogether. Before that it was more about okay we have drivers what else can we do with it essentially that's where Uber Eats concept came from. That's where Korea concept came from and then now the whole booking thing and everything the entire transition and the good thing is because look as I said like different category would have different for example I know people who would want a different mail ID for a dating app versus a you know a booking

app for whatever like
for whatever reason that that they have but but within Uber like the whole entire ecosystem would they comfortable with just sharing one sort of central data point across the board because it's Uber Uber Eats and you know Uber kura whatever
delivery you know
it's very easy that Okay. And it's a natural progression uh in that sense. So,
and for the Duolingo guys, I'll see who wants to take it, but like what what signals are you looking for that's showing that you're going to narrow and how are you deciding what is the next thing that you're going to expand into?
Yeah, I think uh rather than talk to Dualingo specific strategy because I'm not close enough to it, but I think engagement saturation is probably like the clear signal. So when you're accelerating, just having more time per user and more users, then that's probably a signal that not to distract yourself. When that starts to slow down or or not accelerate, uh that's maybe a signal that you're competing in the for time and attention. For us, we're in the sort of enterainment business and so we're competing against doom scrolling and gaming and that sort of thing. It's

different if you're like serving a utility need. But uh but yeah, that was that was uh um you know, Dualingo has accelerated every year. Um but it's accelerating sort of a less pace in the last couple of years and that's coincided with them getting a new subject. So that that's that's probably part of it. But getting more engagement, more things to do to keep people in the app more and grow more.
And how do you decide if the next subject is going to be Cllingon or maths though? I don't think there's a clear.
Yeah, I guess the way I've seen it play out over the past few years um is the decision of getting into a new subject at Dualingo is honestly very like missionoriented. Um more so than what is the business opportunity here or what is like the market saying? Uh for example, the reason why math was one of the first subjects we went into was because um Luis, our founder, um is from Guatemala

and he has this very like personal belief that education can like change your life and like enable economic opportunity. And that was why uh for a large part Duolingo started with language learning because for example by learning English you can double your income opportunity and math was almost the next adjacent thing of if you are proficient at math you will have x% more income or like likely to get that much more income. So it was very much about like the mission of making education available and that was more of the conversation of of is this a brand fit like does this fit in rather than oh if we monetize math or if we capture the math market we'll get this many extra dauus.
Yeah that's a really interesting one for you to highlight though as well because it's not like I see ads for Dolingo saying use this app and make more money you know even though that's a kind of social job to be done
it's not going to work. [laughter] I mean I mean another fun example of that too was the way chess evolved right because I chess chess was uh like kind

of a passion skunk works project by a couple of senior people that just went off and wanted to make it
and uh and and initially uh it was it was rejected because you know Juling is not in the business of making games right but at some point along that journey uh I think someone was talking to the Guatemalan education minister and she shared this um insight based on a lot of like real research that if you give kids chessboards, their learning stand, you know, their interest in learning and their ability to learn language and math goes up. And so that was the the thing that flipped this from a game to like a game that helps you uh sort of helps further this sort of education mission. So yeah, it's kind of a roundabout way to get there.
Yeah, that's good. And what about the decision around music as well?
I don't know. I wasn't there, but I think it's probably similar to to math. There was like a lot of passion for it. It's an obvious area where there's huge demand to learn uh and there's a lot of associations between training your brain in music and then learning doing better at maths and and learning generally.
Brilliant. Thank you guys. And

where are super apps most often failing in ways that aren't necessarily obvious from the outside but might be very painful or chaotic internally. So P, you want to add something in this?
I want to hear Sebastian first. Sebastian has some comments. [laughter]
I think the the biggest challenge has been the the war for the like the home screen real estate and uh what what we surface first and with various teams you know you have the core team you have your your dating team marketplace team they all want to be on the home screen. Um I think the the main way we address this is by um customizing the experience for the individual users, showing them the most relevant screen and adapting it um for for that user and for the specific offerings within that country. Yeah, I couldn't agree more because again the [clears throat] the the home

screen of Uber is the real estate right at the end of the day and that's the real state that you want to capitalize the most on and it does create a problem because everybody has their own goals and then you know uh sometimes you as Simon was also pointing out about the top down approach that you have a priority clearly sort of structure but when you're trying out something new it takes time to sort of reach there and during that time you might lose out on the user that you are sort of trying to acquire through that strategy so I think to to reach to a place where it becomes very uh conditioning based sort of approach where you know that okay this user is coming in now they're going to order a food now they're not going to go and book a book a flight or a train ticket or whatever like they the entire journey is sort of understood and utilize it very well on the home screen because that's the most precious asset that you have uh that becomes slightly trickier sometimes uh I also feel look I mean fact is that super apps have not been dominating till now like just just giving you the facts. I mean if you look at the stats also right so it's not like

there must be a reason why users are not sort of hooking up as quickly as they are back in back in China and India as well and Brazil as well like I'm seeing sort of fraction but in the west it's not it's not like that so maybe we have to understand fundamentally I maybe from the user perspective why exactly is that the second thing I'll say is I don't know if it will fail but like it has to be more f future proof and what I'm trying to do is what I'm trying to say is like uh when it comes to the world where it's going to be agentic AI and you know Everybody is just going to okay, book me a reservation here, do that, do that. At the back end, they're going to interact with all the Uber API and booking.com API and Expedia API or whatever. But in the front end, it's not would there be a requirement of a super app because all is going to be become conversational, right? So I I don't know and it could all be really bad. I was speaking with Sebastian about this
which is you know Johnny Iv and Sam they're coming up with the device altogether. [laughter] Would you even need an app there? I I don't know. So is it future proof? I'm not sure. So that's my sort of
yeah they're coming up with the the device open chat GBT has its own app store Uber's on the app store you know I

can just
how would distribution look like in that world right that that we don't know
exactly and do you guys want to add anything to that one
I mean the the uh I'm going to age myself by giving an ancient history example like from my times at Skype in the late 2010s but like the the the Uber app kind of approach that we were taking the the projects that failed invariably were top- down rationale who say well we're good at we own communication therefore we should be able to compete in X therefore we should bolt it on and force people that you know or drive people or exploit our traffic invariably those initiatives failed whereas the ones where the users want oh we just want to use we video calling or you know I just want to be I want it to work when I'm at in my you know for work those sorts of applications uh were more organic and userled they they kind of lend themselves else they were more successful. So, so yeah, my speculation would be super apps that draw that come from the user use case first like you're

saying they're already sharing PDFs or they're already going off app and we know it, we're going to serve it as opposed to we own this audience. How can we exploit it by doing other things? You know, the former seems like a better strategy to me.
Thank you guys. So, it's 100 p.m. We're nearly at lunch. So last thing is just what is one takeaway that you want to leave everyone here with today? So Osman,
um I guess one thing I'll say is when thinking about like com combining functions or jobs within an app is using it as a way to stay true to your brand. I think at Dualingo, the reason why we liked having everything in one app is this is just Duolingo. There's not Dualingo Dualingo math and having to spin up different brands for each uh each service. Um, and it it's allowed us to really build like there's one green owl and you know him as the Dualingo bird. Um, and there's not separate things for different subjects. Uh, so thinking about how you can tell your brand story while like working on these

sorts of combined efforts, uh, I think is very powerful.
Thank you, Osman. Simon, go ahead.
Uh, yeah, follow follow your users rather than trying to hurt them.
Stay to YouTube brand. Follow your users.
What else can I add? Uh [laughter] no absolutely right but which is just uh at the same time for all the negative things that I've said about super apps just want to uh join in on a positive note which is like uh you still have an app like Amazon which keeps on integrating new ideas all the time right I mean they have gone from uh being books to like everything they they have everything back in they have Amazon pay and career and stuff like that. So at the same time they un they they develop an app on the basis of what the users are bringing in in the entire ecosystem not within their app
right so it's slightly tricky not not how to monetize the users within their app but how they're looking at the entire ecosystem saying okay this is the new growth area and I want to sort of capitalize on that and then becomes like sort of a new super app so that's also

one strategy that is working uh clearly for them so yeah that just wanted to end on that note
look for opportunities
yeah I mean kind of repeating what what's been said already, but just continuing to serve your your existing users and not um going away from your your current strategy. So, for us, it's messaging. You know, what what are they doing in messaging and how we can better support that um that process and and add value in their day-to-day.
That's amazing. So, stay true to your users, don't hurt them. Look for additional jobs that are related and stay true to well, stay true to your product. So, thank you guys all for watching and you're free to go now. And thank you all. Give them all a round of applause, please. [applause]
Thanks, Hannah.
Thank you, Hannah. Thank you, panelists.