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Mobile Dev Memo Podcast
Season 7, Episode 27: Applying AI to human intimacy (with Offer Yehudai)
00:42:47
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- [00:02]
A
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- [00:36]
B
The problem is that the distinction needs to be drawn between the competence of the economists and the correctness of their analysis.
- [00:48]
C
Welcome to the Mobile Dev Memo podcast. I'm your host Eric Seufert and I'm joined today by Ofer Yehudai Ofer. Welcome back to the podcast.
- [00:56]
B
Hi Eric, great to be here again.
- [00:58]
C
We had you on, I want to say like 18 months ago. Ish if I'm correct, I might be. Actually might be longer ago than that. But a lot's happened with you with Aria, 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, Aria.
- [01:15]
B
Absolutely. So for the community, I previously sold Fiber to DT and about four years ago, together with Tomer, my co founder, we started Aria, which is an AI couples companion for all life stages, starting with intimacy and relationship health. Think of us as Samantha from Sex and the City that knows you and your partner and make sure you have a great relationship with support, content, accommodation and commerce actually shipping you what you need to bring those recommendations to life.
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C
And you recently raised a round.
- [01:52]
B
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 your cap TABLE Finding a good partner like Bitcraft to kind of finance cohorts is a great way
- [02:17]
C
to grow a healthy couple. Selfie cohorts. Yes, I do need to record an episode dedicated to cohort financing because it's a really fascinating. It's just interesting how a lot of the entire sort of like VC paradigm for mobile apps, particularly in gaming, but even with utility apps, as with Aria, has shifted away from, or 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 Aria. So I want to talk about Aria. 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 Aria. It's been several years now that you've been operating the company. It's been successful, it's growing. Talk to me about what you've learned to date. So what's the core insight that convinced you that intimacy issues are solvable with AI? And how has that kind of changed? Because AI as the dominant topic of conversation is let's call it an 18 month phenomenon. But you started to Aria before that. How has this sort of the journey of the company changed in this kind of this newish environment? What's that core kind of insight that you're operating against today?
- [03:33]
B
Yeah, so let's break it down for a second because A is really my own personal story. I'm happily married, I have a great wife, four kids, and we are a great couple. And you know, I walk out. My wife is a yoga teacher. So we know how to build a healthy routine for our lives, that we have a smart mattress that yells at me if I drink too much. But when it comes to 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 Aya 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 Flow really took the stigma away from women health and period tracking. And you've seen billboards about that as well. Same goes 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 device or with a service without thinking twice to get data about ourselves. See the spike in wearables and kind of 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 live in a sexless relationship. So Gen Z 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.
- [05:33]
C
Do you feel like, I mean, we talk about how, like, AI has 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, therapist or something. Because there's just no judge inherently. There's no human judgment there. Like, is that. 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 system. 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.
- [06:20]
B
But.
- [06:21]
C
But the reality is, even if there's a licensed professional on the other side of that conversation, they might be judging you. You might just still be kind of embarrassed. But there's nothing to be embarrassed about if you're talking to a chat. Bottom do you think that's the case with some of these topics where AI really has achieved what people are stating that it is achieved?
- [06:37]
B
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 phenomena. It's about how we as people understand stuff. And I'll be honest, I mean, we at ARIA 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'll 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 sexologist 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 for 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 spot AI, it's part human for context. Aria is a very small team. We're like 15 team members. The concierge team has about two humans and we support again tens of thousands of users. So again, it's not a one to one coaching, but you do have to have the kind of part human in the loop. And that may be counterintuitive.
- [08:38]
C
Right. Has there been any resistance from consumers to about any of the AI components of our 100%?
- [08:44]
B
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 chatgpt like experience for the user and you know, you know the feeling when you cannot talk to chat and I use chat as 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 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.
- [09:48]
C
Yeah, I mean the sick of fancy issue is I think is something that is maybe just like a relic of like this early ish phase. I mean if you think about like the consumer acclimation to chatbots, like we're pretty far down that path. I Probably like, yeah, maybe 18 months, I don't know. So, you know, ChatGPT 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 is over time. Let's call it. Yeah, three. 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 sycophancy issue, there's a really funny tweet I saw once. It was like, just remember that the dumbest person you know is seeing this every day. And it was like, it was like a ChatGPT response saying like, that's a great insight and you're right to. And so like, I imagine with the relationship issues, that is probably a very dangerous potential, right?
- [10:45]
B
Yes, very. And 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 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 are 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'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 make a good coding design great. And then a very bad relationship advice.
- [11:51]
C
So today it's funny because I woke up this morning and there's a profile of a woman I used to work with in the Wall Street Journal. And I stayed in touch, but I've just been following her career and just very impressive career over the last few years, just kind of from afar. And it was a Wall Street Journal article about people who've started seven figure businesses as solo founders. Right? And she makes the point at the end of this profile that, yeah, okay, it's easy to build this stuff, but people overestimate how much impact just building a thing had versus how much impact my own experience and intuition and ability to distribute it and market it and position it had. And I do think a lot of these tools just make productive people very, very productive. But all of those 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 to your point here, without that domain knowledge, without that domain expertise, you're just pointing a chatbot at anything and particularly probably stuff that relates to intimacy and the stuff that's more personal is just going to fail. And you truly need that foundation of domain expertise with anything. But certainly with a top paper like
- [13:14]
B
this, I would imagine 100% and I want to also add another word. So we say 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, I want to make them happy. And again, we are not a therapy product. Aria 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 kind of love life relationship. And again, much more than that. As we're going to talk about Aria'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.
- [14:14]
A
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- [14:42]
C
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 talk about scaling and the growth and how involved you are because 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 domain expertise element into it. 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 could imagine, 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 over, you're done. 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 again, that's another outgrowth of your own domain expertise being brought to bear here that I think a less experienced founder just wouldn't prioritize. But we had never talked about this, but I believe that you understand that probably better than it, you know, than most would talk to me about that. How does trust factor into the way that you operate the company?
- [16:08]
B
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 the 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 you have been put in and that's it. And because we have this real life, this commerce platform where the concierge can say, hey, offer, you know, let's talk about your body confidence. Here is a great exercise. I want 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 off Amazon or whatnot and introduce 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 don't get me. And I will share here. I mean, one of 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 age of AI and people kind of shipping apps like crazy and like barrier of entry is like non existent. I want to beg a different. 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, not by shipping apps necessarily faster. So I want again, trust is really about control and it's really about understanding your users and of course the foundation of keeping the data and making sure they really understand that you're never going to share this with any third party. Or again, our concierge is one to one. So whatever I tell my concierge, my partner will not know unless I give information. So it's really about respecting but giving control to customers. And that's for me even more important than again, the pure AI or the tech of it, if that makes sense.
- [18:54]
C
Right. And then managing the consumer life cycle. Right. Just ensuring 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.
- [19:05]
B
Eric, you remember in the early days going back to ad tech, 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 away. You've had playable ads that were not properly labeled and people got really furious. And you get 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 quite different or not exactly what you played. And again, going back to trust, it's about how is your actual experience. Do I have control over everything? That's super important. So yeah, I mean you might increase your top line metrics, but the bottom of the funnel will just not work if you don't have that level of trust.
- [19:55]
C
Right. And deteriorate the you're basically borrowing is the future. You deteriorate the whole foundation of DAU accumulation. Right. It's just, you know, you will pay. Yeah.
- [20:06]
B
You would pay a price in attention.
- [20:07]
C
Yeah, yeah. And cohort compounding and all, you know, happy couples. Happy cohorts. Yes, exactly. What's the biggest misconception people have about how consumers interact with your product? And what's surprising once you look at the data, what surprised you most about the data?
- [20:22]
B
Okay, I think what I heard often and again, full Disclosure, Eric is one of our very early investors. Right. But you know, in the pre seed and I'm thankful for that. And then we spent time, you know, with VCs and other investors and often I hear, oh, but you know, after one month I could just do it myself. One month of Aria or whatnot. And why should, why should I or why would consumers stay and keep using the product? I mean, you gave me 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 exercises 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 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 the data says otherwise. I mean, people say with Aria, 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 think, oh, you could just solve it, just give me the recipe and just about it. It's much more than that.
- [21:50]
C
And then talk to me about how you measure success. Right, so cohort compounding is obviously important. Do you look at keeping the customers happy? But you've got two customers. With every sub, there's two customers. So how do you kind of measure success? Is it like equal engagement from both people or how do you actually engage with the customers? Because like you said, I mean, personal trainers, 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. Because when you go to the gym on your own, 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 to me about how you measure success 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 customer life cycle?
- [22:43]
B
So as a consumer Founder, I'll give you the consumer founder angle is that Tomer and I have defined the North Star for the company, which is our tax 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 North Star. And we can talk about the numbers and how we get there. But I want to answer from a different angle, which is, is I 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 AYA platform trying to find statistical significant proof that we're actually making an impact on people's life. Because look, even if I click payback is amazing and cohorts compound. I want to know if AI actually works. That's the thing. We have found that people who use ARIA 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 more about kind of communication, closeness. You know, so many couples in the US report feeling more like, 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, both sides of intimacy. That was very important for us to see the data and make sure we actually make an impact. I'll go to the science for just one second, but then pull back. It's really about again, it may sound simple, reflecting the previous answer a question. It's about breaking the routine. Routine gives us comfort and safety, but routine also kill passion and make us feel like partners running a household and not like lovers anymore. So again, if you have this accountability body that makes sure that you break the routine 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 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 Bitcraft work enough to finance it. But making people happy, that's really the thing.
- [25:31]
A
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- [26:09]
C
How do you weight feedback from consumers against just like the metrics? I feel like there's probably like a qualitative component here that's important to recognize.
- [26:17]
B
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 give 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 Aria and the one that are staying and obsessed. You know, I get an anonymous digest 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 Aria. There is no freemium. 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 or 4. So people actually use ARIA all the time. It does become daily or a weekly habit for couples who stay. So that's where the data meets what people actually telling us.
- [27:28]
C
And talk to me about context. I'd imagine that in this use case 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, a more capable foundation model, for instance in the applications that use that. Right. So I know you've got this, this balance against of you know, the sort of AI capabilities and 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.
- [27:57]
B
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 ARIA 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 an example. When you join aria, there is an onboarded questionnaire and then 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 six, 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 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 eq, you understand, okay, this is what they want to know, this is what they aspire to be. That's not necessarily how they are right now. So I think context here, and especially in a text based interface context is very limited. Right. And that's something we also kind of face with Aya because we don't offer video sessions, we don't offer audio sessions. So I mean 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 models get very kind of different or better. It's really about kind of our training data and what we understand.
- [30:01]
C
We talked about like sycophancy and needing to avoid that. Right. And why it's important to avoid that and why, you know, in this context actually probably getting some resistance or some pushback to the way you're feeling might be like the best, might produce the best outcome. 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 for that from a product perspective? How do you tune that?
- [30:24]
B
You don't just plug into OpenAI API. I mean, yeah, we talk about it. You don't want to have your kind of your chat GPT version. I mean, look, 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 Aria was not going to AI driven the way it is today. But we have about more than three years of, you know, actual unique training data. So when you interface with Aria, you don't feel like you are chatting with ChatGPT. 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. Oftentimes 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 concierge will put you on a journey to achieve your goals. It will not tell you what you want to hear. I mean, go to ChatGPT if that's what you want. For us, it's really, really important to set 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 kind of honest voice here is critical.
- [31:41]
C
And what have you personally learned about human relationships from building the company that was new to you or maybe you went to believe beforehand. What have you learned about people in the process of building the company?
- [31:52]
B
Okay, that's funny. There is a sentence that Homer, again, my co founder, use a lot. So I will quote Homer here. And look, Aria 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 Aria up and not just on kind of, you know, in the bar with my friends, you know, I, 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 the proper 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 Aria are really obsessed about what we do. And it's not for everybody. We had people who say, look, I'm in Aria not for me. So that was my kind of experience. But when people open up and share, it's amazing.
- [33:07]
C
Think about five years from now, everything goes right, the trajectory sort of takes shape, as you and I both hope both believe it will. What does Aria look like and how do you think the consumer behavior has changed? I do feel like there's probably an element of that is pretty critical here, but what does the company look like in five years? Everything's gone successfully. The company looks. It's a behemoth, it's huge, and it's incredibly successful. What does it look like? What does it already look like at that stage?
- [33:36]
B
Here is the secret sauce. Here is what we believe will happen in five years. I think 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 my companion, I can talk about other topics. 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 ship me what I need. I don't have time or capacity to go and research and find whatever you are just told me to buy. So those three elements together, what made Aria 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 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 successful. We have four kids. But when you go through that, that takes a toll on your love life 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's 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. 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, postpartum, infertility, perimenopause, 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.
- [35:47]
C
Well, let's hope you Follow the cohort. That's the long term, some deep retention. Yeah, you follow the cohort.
- [35:53]
B
Yes.
- [35:55]
C
I want to shift gears a little bit. I want to talk about scaling Utility app in 2026. We've spoken about this and I know you're incredibly hands on on the operational side. 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 three years ago and up until about three 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 subscription model dominates the web. To apply flows dominate, you just get a lot more opportunity to optimize on the web in the pre subscription flow. Just talk to me about the state of growing a utility app in 2026 because I think it is pretty fascinating to see how that's evolved.
- [36:55]
B
Look, there are a couple of things I think we talked about last time which I will not repeat but ton and I really believe from day one, hard payroll. So start monetized super early, no free trials and I think again not to get into 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 payroll 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 have to be more competitive and get the right users you need in this super competitive space. Right. So if your LTV is low and then your car cannot be competitive, that's definitely kind of going to be more challenging. But I want to share something different. Look, like many others, we, and I being very hands on, kind of media buyer myself as CEO, rely on the big platforms for user acquisition and that's always a concern and a challenge. When Meta earlier this year made an algorithm change, many, many companies felt it. By the way we included, you've seen companies like Oddity, a public company reporting that as well, making a huge impact. So and that's definitely tough. So you need to have other venues to grow. Something we realized and 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 the audience definitely resonate with our vision and by rolling up those apps we actually unlock high intent audience all at once 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 opted in to invest in the relationship. But again, Flame and it's funny that they did a great job but monetization was lacking. So we can come in with the strong monetization and the value proposition by Aria and I can share that we're having 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 I think, I think Eric, you're currently, if I can share currently in Italy. So take bending spoons as an example of 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 social 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.
- [40:00]
C
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 tremendous sort of growth in the number of apps launched. I mean, I wrote about this recently in the App Store. I mean there's like 86% increase in the number of app submissions in Q1 2026 versus Q1 2025. 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 it. 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 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 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. 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 you certainly have that. I mean your background is very unique and highly prized in this environment. And so I think that that acquisition into rollup 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.
- [41:48]
B
Yes. And thank you. And look, going back to also commerce, I think gone are the days where you can just take an app and put an annual membership and slap whatever 59.95 and just expect people to pay. Content is great, but content is accessible in other venues. So solving real problems 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.
- [42:14]
C
Alfair, this was fantastic. Any closing remarks you'd like to leave with people? How can people learn more about Aria?
- [42:20]
B
First go to aria, FYI or get aria.com and you can learn more. And Eric, let's open calendars and let's have another one in two years so we can check in and see how we are doing. I'm loving this.
- [42:32]
C
I'm in. Let's do it. Thank you so much for taking the time today.
- [42:35]
B
Thank you, Eric. Bye Bye, Sam.