Kyle
When I first heard about Apptopia and the words “app” “sell” and “purchase” were in the same conversation I instantly thought we had another third party app store on our hands. No, that’s far from what Apptopia is.
This Boston based start up is headed by Jonathan Kay and Eli Sapir. Kay was the Ambassador of Buzz for Grasshopper, the phone service for startups. Sapir was the former Entrepreneur in Residence at GreatPoint Ventures. Sapir also founded GPush a Gmail notification iPhone app. It was GPush, and his difficulty selling the business which prompted Apptopia.
Apptopia is a marketplace, not for downloads, but for app developers to sell their businesses, not just licensing either, the whole shooting match. Betabeat characterized Apptopia as an exit strategy for unprepared developers.
More after the break
Although being unprepared developers may not be the case at all. In some cases developers make a game or an app and for them, that’s the fun of it. Once the app is launched, whether it’s a kick ass game with millions of downloads or a simple app with a few thousand downloads, for many devs the thrill is in developing the product.
Historically developers have always been good at coding and developing. Matches made in heaven happen when a developer and a sales marketing guy can tolerate being in the same room with each other. For the others there’s Apptopia. Use your download analytics, set a price for your app and hopefully you’ll attract a very easy, no-haggle sale of your app outright.
Prior to launch there were 176 apps for sale and 65 interested buyers. During their pre-release stage the Apptopia marketplace was successful in selling two apps for $17,000, apps that may not have found the means to sell if it hadn’t been for Apptopia.
Techcocktail describes how Apptopia works:
- Log in with your Apple or Android account.
- Enter basic information and set a price for your app. (If you’re unsure, Apptopia created a tool to help calculate a reasonable price.)
- Approve the final ad, which automatically pulls in download data from Apple or Android (see below).
- Wait for the bids to flow in. Apptopia has already helped sell 2 apps for $17,000 total (and is in the process of closing a “very big” deal), and the startup has enlisted acquirers including “a few Fortune 500 companies, and a handful of other household names.” If you score a sale, Apptopia will take a 15% cut, up from 10% for early adopters (the Cambridge, MA-based startup was founded last November).
That’s it! With nothing else on the market like this, Apptopia looks like it could be a huge win for developers, buyers and Kay and Sapir.
source: Betabeat, TechCocktail
