S07, E27: Applying AI to human intimacy (with Offer Yehudai)

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Welcome to the mobile dev memo podcast. I'm your host, Eric Seufort, and I'm joined today by Afair Yehudai. Afair, welcome back to the podcast.
Hi, Eric. Great to be here again.

We had you on I want to say like 18 months agoish if I'm correct. I might be actually might be longer ago than that, but a lot's happened with you with Arya, your company. So, maybe just let's start with you could reintroduce yourself to the audience and then tell us about all the exciting developments that have happened with your company Arya.
Absolutely. So for the community I previously sold fiber to DT and about four years ago together with Tor my co-founder we started Arya which is an AI couples companion for all life stages starting with intimacy and relationship health. Think of us as Samantha from Sex in the City that knows you and your partner and make sure you have a great relationship with support content recommendation and commerce actually shipping you what you need to bring those recommendations to life
and you recently raised around. Yes, we have raised to date about $17 million in equity and recently also took a cohort

financing from Bitcraft which is by the way a great tool I recommend for consumer founders. Maybe we can have an episode about that at some point. I think if you have healthy cohorts and you don't want to give away more equity from a cap table, finding a good partner like Bitcraft to kind of finance cohorts is a great way to grow
a healthy couple's healthy cohorts. [laughter] Yes,
I do I do need to record an episode dedicated to cohort financing because it's really it's a really fascinating it's it's just interesting how a lot of the the entire sort of like VC paradigm for mobile apps particularly in gaming but but even with utility apps as as with with Arya has shifted away from or or let's it hasn't shifted away from equity financing but there's been this new complement added which is non-dilutive which is great and it's become just a really big category but That's not for today. I want to talk about Arya. So I want to talk about Arya. I want to talk about applying AI to intimacy. And so when I had you on

the last time, we kind of talked about the origins of Arya. It's been several years now that you've been operating the company. It's been successful. It's growing. Talk to me about like like what you've learned to date. So like what's the core insight that convinced you that intimacy issues are solvable with AI and and how has that kind of changed? Because you know AI as like the dominant topic of conversation is let's call it an 18month phenomenon but you you started Arya before that. How how is this sort of the the journey of the company changed in this kind of in this newish environment and what's that core kind of insight that you're operating against today?
Yeah so let's break it down for a second because Arya is really my own personal story. I'm happily married. They have a great wife, four kids, and we are a great couple. And you know, I walk out, my wife is yoga teacher, so we know how to build a healthy routine for our lives. We have a smart mattress that yells at me if I drink too much. But when it comes to a intimacy, love relationship, you are on your own. And that's when again about four years ago,

my wife and I wanted to kind of build something that can really help us and then many other couples. So that's how Arya really came to life. And again, back then AI wasn't the story. But here is what we've learned. Because look, stigma around almost everything in life have collapsed in the last 10 years. Think about mental wellness, right? No one talked about their anxiety or depression or you didn't see athletes on billboards in the subway talking about their mental wellness challenges and how they're coping with it. That changed. amazing apps like like flow really took the stigma away from women health and period tracking and you've seen billboards about about that as well. Same goes to to fitness and nutrition, obesity, GLP1. So many examples at the same time tracking is now default. I mean we track about everything. We consult with a a device or with a service without thinking twice to get data about ourselves. see the spike in wearables and kind of over and whatnot

and intimacy was really like the last frontier like the last taboo that no one talked about and but it is changing now I think us as society are now talking about how millennials and Gen Z's are feeling lonely even within a relationship divorce is on the rise people even a sexless relationship so Gen Z are are more lonely than ever So the time is really now and AI just allow us to take all of the knowledge that we do have and make it more accessible to many people. Do you feel like I mean we we talk about how like AI's accelerated a lot of stuff and I think in a lot of those conclusions are probably attributing too much to AI but I think a lot of this does have to do with AI right because people are probably and maybe this is counterintuitive right they're probably more open to sharing personal information with an AI tool than they are with even like a psychologist or you know a therapist or

something because there's just no judge inherently there's no human judgment there like is Do you feel like that's the case that like some of these topics you know where you said that the you know you made the point that the stigmas have collapsed like probably that's because there's just no barrier to discussing this with an AI and again that might be counterintuitive you might get a lot of people that think well no people don't want to talk about that with the machine they want to talk about it with a person but but the reality is you know even if there's like a licensed professional on the other side of that conversation they they might be judging you might just still be kind of embarrassed but there's nothing to be embarrassed about if you're talking to a a chatbot do you think that's the case with with some of these topics where AI really has achieved what people are stating that it has achieved.
Eric, let's close the Silicon Valley playbook and let's talk really for a second because AI is great, but AI is not the reason that everything has changed. It's more about cultural phenomenon. It's about how we as people understand stuff. And I'll be honest, I mean, we at Arya are part AI and part human. And I don't think that will

change not because of the technology but because to your point I can tell you that our audience split. Some people feel more comfortable knowing it is AI on the other end and there are people who still prefer to talk to a real person and the real way to do it is actually to blend them together because there are parts there are answers or content recommendations where AI can do an amazing job that will work for all audiences. For instance, my wife and I, we can consume the same content like body confidence. So, how to initiate and we just consume the same essence differently and AI will do the work. But I want to know that there is a human on the other end that have made that recommendation. Even if it's like a one-to-one chat with a real person, I want to know there is an intimacy coach or a certified psychologist that made that happen for me. And look, we have

couples really all around the country. We are US only, but it's all around the country. And when you go out from kind of LinkedIn and Twitter into the real life of people in whatever Nebraska, Colorado, wherever they are, you have to speak the language. So again, it's part AI, it's part human, core context. Ari is a very small team. We're like 15 team members. The concierge team has about few humans and we support again tens of thousands of of users. So again, it's not a onetoone coaching, but you do have to have that kind of part human in the loop and that may be counterintuitive,
right? Has there been any resistance from consumers to about any of the AI components of our
100%. You definitely have and that's not just a loud minority. You have people who say, you know, I'm not comfortable speaking to to a bot on my love life or about my husband. And I think again what we found out is how do you interface?

How do you make sure they understand that there is a real person? Sometimes they will get a faster answer because the AI can make it more accessible for them. But this is the chat GPT like experience for the user and you know you know the feeling when you're going to talk to chat and I use chat just an example but it's always on your side. It's like going to to a bar with your friend and you talk about your life and no matter what in most cases your friend will support you. Yeah, you're right Eric. I mean they should not say that but you know in real life if you go to a coach or or a sexologist they will put a mirror in front of you and will tell you look I mean this is your point and there is more to see here and that's what we try to do being part human and not really relying on just the public LLMs and the experience you get there. Yeah, I mean the sick of fancy issue is I think is something that [clears throat] is is maybe just like a relic of like this earlyish phase. I mean if you think

about like the consumer acclamation to chatbots like we're pretty far down that path. I probably like yeah maybe 18 months I don't know. So you know chat GPT launched I want to say in 2022 so we're you know kind of four years in but it really was I don't know GPT 2.5 or something that we're talking probably let's call it yeah three three was probably like the watershed moments we're probably like let's call it like two and a half years in two two years so I but the sophancy issue there's a really funny tweet I saw once it it was like just remember that the dumbest person you know is seeing this every day and it was like it was like a chat GPT response saying like that's a great insight and you're right to to [laughter] Yes. Um and so like I imagine with the relationship issues that is probably a very dangerous potential, right?
Yes. Very. And and I I'll tell you this. I mean AI lacks intuition. Okay. AI lacks EQ. It may be great in coding, in complex engineering and

design, but you know, Eric, when I'll use as an example, if you if you allow me, when your wife comes back home from work, you know, in a split second, how was her day? because you know her. You know, it might be a subtle the way she puts her stuff down or when you were at work and you look at your colleagues or in a business meeting, you get signals beyond just text. And if you have a good kind of intuition, if your EQ is in the right place, you can feel it. And I think that that's a very important part that applies to relationship and intimacy that AI lacks. And that's where the part human is so important. That intuition, that split of a second that can makes, you know, a good coding design great and then a very bad relationship advice.
So today, it's funny cuz I woke up this morning and there's a profile of a woman I used to work with in the Wall Street Journal and we stayed in touch, but I've

just been following her career and just just very impressive career over the last few years just kind of from afar. And you know it was it was a Wall Street Journal article about the people who have started you know seven figure businesses as like solo founders right and like she makes the point at the end of this profile that like yeah okay it's easy to build this stuff but you don't you people overestimate how much impact just building the thing had versus how much impact my own experience and intuition and ability to distribute it and market it and position it ad. And so, and I I do think like you like a lot of these tools just make productive people very very productive, but all of those sort of developed experiences and the whole framework for thinking about these problems and how to actually accomplish tasks in that domain is critical infrastructure for success with any of these products. And so, like kind of to your point here, like without that domain knowledge, without that

domain expertise, you're just pointing a chatbot at anything. and particularly probably stuff that relates to like intimacy and the stuff that's more personal is just going to fail and you truly need that that sort of that that foundation of domain expertise with anything but but certainly with a topic like this I would imagine
100% and I want also add another word so we said AI lacks intuition there is also the matter of accountability and not just not responsibility but accountability because if I'm working with a couple and again with two partners separately in a relationship ship I want to make them happy and again we are not a therapy product area is a wellness product so we are for great couples who want to become even better right but there is still this accountability part where I want to make sure they are they are there I want to make sure that they are actually doing what they're doing and that are following their journey and again it's one thing to complete maybe a very complex engineering project versus tracking and being accountable for a

couple's kind of love life relationship And again much more than that as we kind of talk about Arya's vision it's for all life stages. So I mean intimacy is the first kind of first part but from there you expand to so many other parts of life. Mobile game developers no longer need to pay up to 30% in major [music] app store fees. With Exolo Web Shop, you can create a direct storefront, cut fees down to as low as 5%. And keep [music] players engaged with bundles, rewards, and analytics. Start today [music] at exola.com. That's xsol.com [music] or use the link in the episode show notes. A lot of the domain expertise you bring here is your history in the mobile app space. And I want to talk about trust for a second because I want to I want to talk about scaling and and the growth and how involved you are cuz I know you're very hands-on but before we get to that just kind of anchoring to the

current topic but bringing more of the the domain expertise element into it. So so you know more than anyone that the app store I mean despite what Apple says it's rife with scam apps. You know Google Play is rife with scam apps. You lose consumer trust you're toast. Like there's no coming back from that. And the failure state is one article, one article gets out about, you know, some horrible experience or someone got scammed or, you know, there was you can, you know, like any number of things that you read about things happening with AI apps now where the company did not take that seriously.
It's it's over. You're done. It's there's just no there's no returning from that. So talk to me about how you think about trust, how you think about curating that relationship with the consumer, ensuring that they feel comfortable, ensuring that that never happens because it, you know, that's again that's another outgrowth of your own domain expertise being brought to bear here that I think like a less experienced founder just wouldn't

prioritize. But we have never talked about this, but I believe that you understand that probably better than you know than than most would. Talk to me about that. How does trust factor into the way that you operate the company?
Well, I mean, look, trust is key in everything. Everything you said is right. I will give you maybe one or two examples, kind of real life examples about about trust. I think when you build a consumer brand and in such a sensitive topic like relationship and intimacy, it is really about giving your customers control. So, I want to talk about control. It's one thing to tell them what you think as as the you know concierge. That's how we call our intimacy coach. And then making sure they understand that they have control and they can change. This is not like a rigid journey that has been kind of that you've been pulled in and that's it. And because we have this real life this commerce platform where the concier can say hey offer you know let's work about your body confidence. Here is a great exercise. I'm going to ship you kind of

a couple of products to try because I think it's going to help. If that first experience will work well and I will try something that I would never try myself. I would never have kind of bought those products of Amazon or whatnot and introduced them to my relationship. If that experience works well, the trust level will will jump dramatically like oh my god this service have opened up something completely new for me. the same time if that first experience does not hit you will say oh you know f this this is not they they don't get me and I will share here I mean one of the the biggest reasons for churn because we do have some churn is when our algorithm when the concierge is making the wrong recommendation if we did not get you and or your partner and we recommend the wrong thing yeah you might give us a second chance but I just lost a lot of points in your trust level, right? So, making that first experience is so important. And look, in the in the age of AI and people kind of shipping apps

like like crazy and like the barrier of entry is like non-existent. I want to be a different I mean this is it was never about the tech. It was never about compiling an app and publishing to the app store. That's not the barrier to entry. The barrier to entry is to really understand your customer and speak their language and make the right recommendation. That's how you gain trust, right? not by shipping apps necessarily faster. So I want again trust is really about control and it's really about understanding your your users and of course the foundation of kind of you know keeping the data and making sure they really understand that you're never going to share this with any third party or again other concier is onetoone so whatever I tell my concierge my partner will not know unless [clears throat] I give him permission so it's really about respecting but giving control to customers and that's for me even more important than the the pure AI or or the of it if that makes sense,
right? And then managing the consumer life cycle, right? Just ensuring that

that they're getting what they want kind of consistently and that this is something that they feel is worth the money over time, right?
Thank you. Remember in the early days going back to edtech, you brought it up. You remember when playable ads were kind of introduced and got into mainstream and we know today that playable ads is a very powerful ad unit. But in the early days, still a bit today perhaps, but I've been I've been away. You've had playable ads that were not properly labeled and people got really furious and you got playable ads that don't really represent the actual game. So, you play a version of the game and then the game is actually something, you know, quite different or or not exactly what you played. And again, going back to trust, it's about how is your actual experience? Do I have controller? Everything kind of that's super important. So yeah, I mean you might increase your topline metrics, but the bottom of the fun will just not work if you don't have that level of trust,
right? And just deteriorate the you're

basically borrowing is the future, right? You just deteriorate the whole foundation of of DAOU accumulation, right? It's just, you know,
you would pay Yeah. You would pay a price in attention.
Yeah.
Yeah. And cohort compounding and all, you know, happy couples, happy cohorts. [laughter]
Yes. Exactly. What's the biggest misconception people have about how consumers interact with your product and and what's surprising once you look at the data? What what surprised you most about the data?
Okay, I think what I heard of often and and again full disclosure, Eric is one of our very early investors, right? But you know, in the preed and I'm thankful for that and then we spend time, you know, with kind of BCS and other investors and often I hear, oh, but you know, after one month I could just do it myself. one month of Arya or whatn not and why why should why should I or why why would consumers stay and keep using the product I mean you gave me the the juice and that's it and you know it really makes me laugh because you know I have a personal

trainer I really know all the exercise by heart but it's really about the accountability it's really about kind of pushing me harder it's really about making sure I don't skip legs day yeah I mean I again I know the drill the same goes for your therapist or actually every every hobby you may have. So I still find it funny where people say, "Oh, but you know, maybe after a month I guess your retention drops and and the data says otherwise." I mean, people stay with Arya, which is about a 60 bucks a month membership. So it's not like a free or a very cheap one to forget about. You see it in your monthly statements. People stay with Arya for a very long time and our LTV is in the hundreds of dollars. So it's really about building a habit. And that kind of still surprised me that people, you know, think, oh, you can just solve it with just give me the recipe and and and just about it. It's much more than that. And then so talk to me about how you measure success, right? So is cohort compounding is obviously important. Do you look at like are you and you know keeping the you know the customers happy

and but you've got two customers with every sub right is two customers. So how do you kind of measure success? like equal engagement from both people or how do you how do you actually engage with the the customer because like you said I mean a personal trainer is I think a great example here. Yeah. You don't go to a personal trainer to learn the exercise. That's not the point. You go to get pushed cuz when you go to the gym on your own it's you're very likely to kind of phone it in. You go with a personal trainer and they push you to the max and that's the whole point. It's not the exercises per se. It's them pushing you every week harder and harder and that's how you grow. So talk talk to me about how you measure success and and what kind of things are you looking at to improve the consumer experience to ensure that people are getting what they want. How do you think about the the customer life cycle? So as as a consumer founder, I'll give you the consumer founder angle is that we Tom and I have defined the northstar for the company which is our C payback because at the end of the day as consumer founder you want to have healthy cohorts and you

know CAC may change based on the plans blah blah blah but how quickly can you break even on each cohort and that's your fully loaded payback and that's the northstar and we can talk about the numbers and how we get there but I want to answer from a different angle. which is a founder and CEO what's really important for us so our head of science Nicholas he's a grad from Washington University in Seattle so end of last year Nicholas conducted actually the first academic research on users who actually been on the area platform trying to find statical significant proof that we're actually making an impact on people's life because look even if our payback is amazing and cohorts compound. I want to know if Arya actually works. I mean that that's that's the thing. And we have found that people who use Arya for more than six weeks, all right, six weeks, less than two months report two very important

things. Number one, feeling more connected than before. And that word connected, you know, in the research is is more about kind of communication, closeness. You know, so many couples in the US report feeling more more like partners than lovers after several years together running a household. So, people are feeling more connected and people are feeling more intimately satisfied and that's both for emotional and physical intimacy. Okay? So, both sides of of intimacy and that was very important for us to see the data and make sure we actually make an impact. And I'll go to to the science for just one second but can I then kind of pull back it's really about again may sound simple reflecting the previous answer a question it's about breaking the routine routine gives us comfort and safety but routine also heal passion and make us

feel like like partners running the household and not like lovers anymore. So again, if you have this accountability body that make sure that you break the routine in the in the way that works for you and your partner and gives you the tools and take the mental load away by shipping you all the products you need and and making sure again both sides are into it and talking about it, people will feel more connected and more satisfied. So for me that's much more important. Paybacks are great. Hence bidcraft work to finance it but making people's happy that's really the thing. AI is changing everything, but it's only as good as the signals behind it. Branch connects customer interactions across paid, organic, offline, [music] email, web, and app touch points and turns them into the trusted context you need with links and attribution that capture the full user journey. Learn more at branch.io. [music] And while you're there, check out Branch's AI search and discovery report covering insights from more than 300

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How do you weight feedback from consumers against just like the the metrics? I feel like there's probably like a qualitative component here that's important to recognize.
Yes. And look, I think always you have to look for your super obsessed audience and see how they talk about the product and also the one who are leaving you and understand why had they have left and again when people leave it's because we gave them the wrong advice or that they really wanted but their partner was not on board. That's kind of the second reason why people would leave a platform like Arya and the one that I was staying in and obsessed it. You know, I I get anonymous digest of kind of what people are sharing with the concierge and it's really really amazing how it's changing people's life. And again, it's tied to retention. There is no free version of Arya. There is no premium. I mean, you wouldn't pay 60 bucks a month if you're not happy. And we also track, you know,

we talk about retention a lot. We also track engagement retention. So okay, you are paying but are you actually using the product? After about month four, it nicely plateaus. So people in the ninth month or whatever 12 are as active and engaged as the ones on M3 or4. So people actually use area all the time. It it does become a you know daily or a weekly habit for couples who stay. So that's where the data meets what people actually telling us.
And talk to me about context. I'd imagine that in this use case that context and like long-term context is very important. So how how much value comes from long-term memory and personalization versus just having you know more capable foundation model for instance in the applications that use that right so I know you you've got this this balance against of you know the sort of AI capabilities and the the human sort of curated and human sort of augmented tasks but talk to me about how long-term memory and context plays a role here.

Yes. So it does I do want to go back to kind of you know where AI lacks intuition that's also kind of very true here. So yes, you have context and intuition is so important even the way people express or give feedback on their experience the the Ara experience I mean it is really really important to understand how people talk about their experience what they're willing to share and I'll give you an example when you join Arya there there is a there is an onboarding questionnaire and then the the concept will ask you a bunch of questions and there is a gap between how people answer about themselves and then how they actually act 6 eight weeks later because there is a version of what or how we want to think about ourselves and that's what we type in the answer and then there is reality and why is it so important because if you are a an LLM I will take those answers and treat it as is I mean that's truth the consumer just told me they

want to feel more connected when you have more intuition and emotional and and EQ you understand that okay this is what they want to learn this is the what they aspire to be that's not necessarily how they are right now so I think context here and especially in in a in a textbased interface context is very limited right and that's something we also kind of faced with a because we don't offer video sessions we don't offer audio sessions so I mean we we definitely kind of you know finding ways to overcome those limitations but they do exist so you need to really understand So kind of okay so they answer those bunch of questions and that's how they they chat with us but let's look at their actual feedback on their experience and what products that they actually use and what what did the partner be may have said about it and bring all of this together really really helps. So it doesn't really matter to us if the foundation will get very kind of different or better. It's really about kind of our

training data and what we understand. We talked about like sickency and and needing to avoid that, right? And and why it's important to avoid that and why, you know, in this context actually probably getting some resistance or some push back to the way you're feeling might be like the best might produce the best outcome. How how do you balance giving users what they want with giving them advice that's actually in their long-term interest? And how do you orient that from a product perspective? How do you how do you tune that?
You don't just plug into into OpenAI API. I mean, yeah, we talked about it. You don't want to have your kind of your chat GPT version. I mean look we when we started going back to what you said earlier about four years ago that was before the spike of chat. So the very first version of area was not kind of AI driven the way kind of it is today. But we have about more than three years of you know actual unique training data. So when you interface with area you don't feel like you are chatting with chat GPT. That's not the experience you get and that's really really important.

That's the balance you're asking about. We can't just tell you yes man you're right like oh I'm going to give you exactly what you want. Often times you can get exactly what you want. Like I can't bench what I want right now. I need to get there. It's a journey. So we again the concier will put you on a journey to achieve your goals. It will not tell you what you want to hear. I mean go to chat GPT if that's what you want. For us it's really really important to set the right expectations and again you asked about trust earlier if we will not do that we will lose trust very quickly and they will they will churn like I cannot do that so having that unique training data and really keeping our our kind of honest voice here is is critical
and what have you personally learned about human relationships from building the company that you know was was new to you or maybe you wouldn't have believed beforehand what have you learned about people in the process of building the company
okay That's that's funny that there is a sentence that that Tomer again my

co-founder use a lot so I will quote Tomer here and look Arya is like cilantro you either love it or hate it right like it's not for everybody I can tell you that what I've learned is how and surprisingly how quickly people open up once you know I bring Arya up and not just on kind of you know in in the bar with my friends you know I've you know I've met partners in great VCs or whatnot and people immediately open up and start sharing their own experience like it's a topic that if you give it the popup venue people will share so much about their personal life and also people think like I can give an advice which is not like I know nothing about intimacy other than being a husband I hope a good one and a father but it's really about how people want to open up and will open up if you give them a chance and that's really really amazing and it's also true when you know when we hire people people who join Arya are really obsessed about what we do and and it's not for everybody. We had people

who say look I'm in Arya not for me. So that's kind of that was my kind of experience but when people open up and share it's it's amazing.
Think about you know 5 years from now everything goes right the the trajectory sort of takes shape as as you and and I both hope both believe it will. What does Arya look like and how do you think the consumer behavior has changed? I do feel like there's probably like an element of that is pretty critical here. But what does the company look like in five years? Everything's gone successfully. You know, the company looks it's a behemoth. It it's huge and it's incredibly successful. What does it look like? What does R look like at that stage?
Here's the secret sauce. So right here here is what we believe will happen in 5 years. I think we we have developed and building three very important components. one is the concierge and the trust with the concierge having that trusted companion that hey if I can talk about intimacy with with my companion I can talk about other topics so that's

one of very important part second is the content recommendation so really understand the content and giving you real advice in the way I want to consume it and then commerce so actually make my life easy just just ship me what I need like I don't have time or capacity to go and research and find whatever you are just told me to to buy. So those three elements together what made Arya kind of successful so far with intimacy and relationship and now we're looking at other life stages because I think I shared with you before and and I've spoken about it like my wife and I we went through several IVF cycles and you know luckily you know it was eventually we have four kids but when you go through that that takes a toll on your love life and and intimacy, right? And you know, even when everything goes great, you know, first kid or any kid really change the

dynamics between partners. So, there are so many different life stages that we as couples are going through and we need help. We need a trusted companion. We need some content and someone that will just ship me what I need because I don't have time for this. So, in five years time, it's really about how do we expand and support couples wherever they need. There is still the base of the pyramid. Your relationship with your partner, your love life, your intimacy will always be on the base of the pyramid. But on top of that, so many layers, first partner, infertility, permenopause, menopause, all those stages impact relationship. And we can take the assets we've built to make couples life easier, radically easier. That's super easy, actually.
Well, let's let's hope you follow the cohort. You know that's the long term some deeper attention.
Yeah. Be part of the cord. Yes.
I wanna I want to shift gears a little bit. I want to talk about scaling

utility app in 2026. So so you know we've we've spoken about this and I know you're you know incredibly hands-on on the operational side. Talk talk to me about like what's what's the state of user acquisition for utility apps today. So like I think the you know my kind of state of play assessment is that you've seen utility apps become the dominant advertisers in mobile right so that wasn't the case you know maybe 3 years ago and and up until about 3 years ago it had never been the case it was games were you know far and away the majority and now it's it's apps and you know the the subscription model dominates the web to app flows dominate you just get a lot more opportunity to optimize on the web in the sub in the sub in the presubscription flow. Just talk to me about the state of of growing a a utility app in 2026 because it I think it is pretty fascinating to see how that's evolved.
So yeah, so look, there are a couple of things I think we talked about last time

which I will not kind of repeat but Tom and I really believe from day one. hard pay wall. So start monetize super early. No free trials. I think again not to get into it right now when you have a free trial you start optimizing for the wrong users and the wrong metrics. That's our point of view. So kind of hard pay and monetize early and set the right price. Don't be shy. I mean set the right price. That's your edge because ILTV will to be more competitive and get the right users you need in this super competitive space. Right? So if your LTB is low and then your CA cannot be competitive, that's definitely kind of going to be more challenging. But I want to share something different. Look, like many others, you know, we and I being very hands-on kind of media buyer myself as CEO rely on the big platforms for us acquisition and and and that's always a concern and a challenge. You know, when meta earlier this year made an algorithm change, many many companies felt it. By the way, we included you've seen companies like Audit a public company

reporting that as well making a huge impact. So, and that's that's definitely tough. So, you need to have other venues to grow. Something we realized and you know connecting to our also larger vision is that there are so many apps, communities and high intent audience out there that we can actually purchase. So we can actually roll up apps, services and communities that don't have our strong monetization, don't have our strong retention, but their audience definitely resonate with our vision. And by rolling up those apps, we actually unlock high intent audience all at once [snorts] very quickly. We have just completed our first acquisition of Flame, which is a relationship app about 250K users worldwide. again high intent people who kind of opted in to invest in the relationship but again flame and it's finally they did a great job but

you know monetization was lacking so we can come in with the strong monetization and the value proposition by by Arya and I can share that you know we're having you know more conversations like this and actually getting more and more inbounds for different apps and services not necessarily in the relationship space but again adjacent and other life stages and for me it's really interesting like five years from now and and I take you know I think Eric you're currently if I can share currently in Italy so take bending spoons as an example of you know rolling up and making those kind of audiences more efficient so again user acquisition efficiency financing that we bring to the table monetization retention bring to the table the three core elements trust content and commerce and then I think user acquisition beyond just paid gets really really interesting when you unlock and kind of open up those audiences with acquisitions. That's going to that's going to play a big role in how we're going to grow in the next

couple of years.
Yeah, I mean I think that's like what you did is truly fascinating. I think and I absolutely agree that that's a viable strategy going forward. I think you know and again just kind of just tying this back as we kind of finish up the conversation that foundation of domain expertise creates the settings that are needed for a viable company here because you saw a tremendous you're seeing now a a tremendous s sort of growth in the number of apps launched. I mean it I wrote about this recently that in the app store I mean there's like is 86% increase in the number of app submissions in Q1 2026 versus Q125 and so yeah that's great I mean it's much easier to build an app now guess what it's still really hard to monetize and it's probably harder to monetize an app now it's probably harder to distribute an app now because there are many more and so you know you had a lot of companies that were sort of like launched into this environment where it's just okay I can spin up an app very quickly and easily but that monetization

expertise becomes even more critical to actually growing a business. It's not just launching an app. It's growing a creating a business and like you know this has always been the case and it's always been more competitive year-over-year in in mobile you know since 20 you know 2008 since the inception. It's always gotten more hard UA's gotten harder and harder every year and and but it's inflected now. It's inflected now and so people with true genuine deep domain experience have a massive competitive advantage operating in the space and and you certainly have that. I mean your your background is very unique and and and highly prized in this environment. And so I think that that acquisition into roll up into we've got a monetization engine that people can't just clone with a prompt. We have experience that you can't clone from a prompt. That's incredibly valuable and there's a massive premium on that.
Yes. And thank you. And look, you know, going back to also commerce, you know, I think I think gone are the days where you can just kind of take an app and put like an annual membership and slap

whatever $59.95 and just expect people to pay. Content is great, but quantity is accessible in other venues. So solving real problem for users, if it's through commerce or other aspects, that's how you can properly monetize and that's really hard to scale and to kind of replicate.
Al this was fantastic. Any closing remarks you'd like to leave with people? How can people learn more about Arya?
First, go to arrya.fyi or get aria.com and you can learn more. And and Eric, let's let's open calendars and and let's have another one in two years so we can check in and see how we're doing. I'm loving this.
Well, I'm I'm in. Let's do it. Afair. Thank you so much for taking the time today.
Thank you, Eric. Bye-bye.