App Masters Greatest Hits: Episode 7 with Greg Isenberg

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

The most action-packed content from the top mobile experts. This is the App Masters Podcast with Steve P. Young.

Steve Young (0:11)

Welcome to the Mobile App Chat Podcast. I am your host, Steve P.

Greg Isenberg (0:15)

Young.

Steve Young (0:15)

We've got an awesome, awesome guest for you today. His name is Greg Isenberg, and he's the CEO and founder of 5by, which recently got acquired by StumbleUpon, and he's also a venture partner at Good People Ventures, an early stage angel fund. Greg, welcome to the show.

Greg Isenberg (0:33)

Thanks for having me, Steve.

Steve Young (0:34)

So, Greg, I heard back from the audience, they say, you know, give a little bio of the guest before I go in straight to the interview. And so as a little bio, you sold two companies before the age of 24 How does that feel?

Greg Isenberg (0:51)

You know, I think, you know, to be honest, it feels pretty good.

But I still think I have a lot to accomplish. I try to surround myself with really successful people. My theory sort of on the world is, you know, I like playing tennis with people better than me because that's the only way I can get better at playing tennis. And the same thing happens with entrepreneurship. So, you know, I have friends who've sold companies for 100 million or 500 million, taking companies public. I think there's a lot more ground I need to cover. So on one hand, I give myself a pat on the back, but it's only for one second. And the rest of the time, I'm trying to think of how can I build, you know, massive value?

Steve Young (1:36)

Yeah. I love it. What did you, was there any extravagant things that you spent money on? What's that big purchase that you made?

Greg Isenberg (1:44)

You know what? Not nothing yet, you know? I'm really scrappy with my money, to be honest. So I just, I haven't found it yet. Actually, I did an article at Vanity Fair a couple of weeks ago, and we were talking about boats, and somehow, I don't know how the interview turned around, but they said, you know, will you buy a big yacht? Is that what you're interested in? And I would like to buy a boat. Haven't bought one yet.

But so that's something I'm interested in, but haven't pulled the trigger.

Steve Young (2:18)

Okay, cool. So, Greg, I like to start off every show with some download numbers. Do you mind sharing the download numbers of 5by?

Greg Isenberg (2:25)

Yeah, so we haven't really publicly disclosed it, but what I could tell you, and I haven't said this to anyone either, is that we're in the hundreds of thousands of downloads within four weeks.

Steve Young (2:33)

Nice.

Greg Isenberg (2:34)

Yeah, so we were featured by Apple on the homepage. We actually still are in the entertainment section. And as a best new app, and bottom line is, is if you get your app featured, you get a ton of downloads.

Steve Young (2:49)

Right. And did you happen to... I've heard that you can actually email, I think it's App Store Marketing or App Store Promotions. If you guys just Google it, you'll figure it out all out. But you can actually email somebody and be like, hey, take a look at my app. Did you guys do any of that? Or was it just by happenstance?

Greg Isenberg (3:05)

So the weird thing is they actually reached out to us. So we submitted the app. We actually had some contacts at Apple.

And I was planning on using them. But all of a sudden, I get this email. Hey, could you give us some images for marketing purposes? And obviously, I respond eight seconds later, and I give it to them. And yeah, I guess the next day, they featured us.

Steve Young (3:32)

Yeah, that's how I actually found out by you guys. And then we happened to connect through email, and I was like, oh, this is perfect. I just downloaded the app. So it was kind of perfect timing in terms of how we connected and already having downloaded the app as well.

Greg Isenberg (3:45)

Yeah. I mean, if you're developing an app, it's very hard to get eyeballs and downloads.

I think that developing a website is actually a lot easier to get traffic. And as app developers, we're all reliant on the app store. So any way you can figure out how to get your app featured is really gold. Nice.

Steve Young (4:07)

So where did this original idea from 5by or about 5by come from?