Pinned Tweet
Marketing 101: I've had this awesome "features vs benefits" pix from @UserOnboard pinned since 2017.
Here's my additional 2cents:
Here's my additional 2cents:
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Thomasbcn retweeted
The latest themobiletakeaway.com issue contains summaries from @RevenueCat RAGA and they're pretty insightful
I recommend both the summary and the videos
I recommend both the summary and the videos
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Apple removed the debatable claim that 65% of AppStore downloads happen directly after a search
Sensortower/zoomd guesstimates, n=31
24.5% ASA
26.5% organic search
29.7% "paid" (app referrals)
15.8% web referrals
3.7% organic browse
Sensortower/zoomd guesstimates, n=31
24.5% ASA
26.5% organic search
29.7% "paid" (app referrals)
15.8% web referrals
3.7% organic browse
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Apple disclosed a number I hadn't caught before:
"95% of downloads after an ad tap occur within a minute"
(August 2024, Apple Ads only, all countries)
"95% of downloads after an ad tap occur within a minute"
(August 2024, Apple Ads only, all countries)
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18m paid views, 13 likes lol
as if X got the memo to let the worst possible ones might increase subs
as if X got the memo to let the worst possible ones might increase subs
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Thomasbcn retweeted
As @Thomasbcn announced, Apple Ads has removed the blue background from App Store search ads on iOS 27.2
Ads now look almost identical to organic results. Only a small "Ad" label is left.
For ASO: plan ASO + Apple Ads together and protect your brand.
#ASO #AppleAds #AppStore
Ads now look almost identical to organic results. Only a small "Ad" label is left.
For ASO: plan ASO + Apple Ads together and protect your brand.
#ASO #AppleAds #AppStore
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Missed out on RAGA live last week?
Sylvain & I will surface some of the best Gems💎
Sylvain & I will surface some of the best Gems💎
Thursday on Sub Club Live: @Thomasbcn and @sylvainww take over the show for the best of App Growth Annual 2026.
Sold-out room, 5,000+ online, 36 workshops. They'll go through what was worth remembering, then take your questions.
🕘 Thu, 9 a.m. PT / 12 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. CET
📺 Watch on YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=_YnW-H…
🗓️ Set a reminder on Luma: luma.com/raf5r1p1
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Thomasbcn retweeted
I have no idea if this post is legitimate or not, but:
When people speak of "signal engineering," this is what they mean.
You need to *engineer* (conjure up) a meaningful, up-funnel proxy for a consumer's willingness to buy, contextualized for your specific product.
When people speak of "signal engineering," this is what they mean.
You need to *engineer* (conjure up) a meaningful, up-funnel proxy for a consumer's willingness to buy, contextualized for your specific product.
Modern ad systems have always been run on machine learning algos, but in the past 5 years the trend has accelerated with AI now doing all the targeting for you. In the past you would hire a media buyer to tweak things. You could adjust the demographic you want to target, the exact locations, the time of day, etc... You used to have hundreds of these levers you could a/b test and optimize. In the past 5 years this has shifted to AI, so you don't need a media buyer anymore. You just set a conversion target and the AI targeting systems will grind on it.
When you're selling something cheap like yoga pants, all you have to do is create good ads and set your conversion target to gross margin. The AI will find you sales, and it will even optimize for the exact customer profile that you'll earn the most margin on.
However, when you're selling $20,000 items, you'll never hit enough of volume to properly train the ads. You need at least 50 conversions per week so unless you're doing $1 mil revenue weekly, you can't target margin.
Instead you target something higher up the funnel like a phone call or a lead form submission. You can even put additional qualifiers- such as the phone call needs to last at least 5 min.
What we did at first was to ask a follow up question after a customer submitted a quote request on our website-:
How were you planning to pay?
Option 1- Pay cash
Option 2- Finance with FICO over 650
Option 3- Finance with FICO under 650.
And then we simply targeted option 1 and option 2 as the reward function. This filtered out a bunch of the poors, but we still captured the lead even if they refused to answer. If they didn't answer the question, we would just pass them along to their quote automatically after 6 seconds, plus we had automated text and email notifications sent in case they closed out before they seen it.
This had amazing results, so I realized that the biggest lever I could pull is setting a better target for the AI to grind on.
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Thomasbcn retweeted
Tim´s thread is so good, that I´ve tidied it up so it can be read as an article. There are many lessons here for the left in Spain. Vox/PP are best beaten by forcing a clear choice, mobilising the anti-right vote early, and exposing any lack of coherence or hidden dependence on the hard right before the campaign hardens.
It is no surprise that a football correspondent can deliver a better analysis than the foreign correspondents hanging out in the São Paulo Press Club. Football correspondents love their adopted country and know every inch of it. @sidlowe is the best writer in the English language on ANYTHING to do with Spain.
How Lula Beat Bolsonaro’s Heir: Brazil’s Election Explained
"Brazil’s presidential election was supposed to be a straightforward contest between continuity and change. Instead, it exposed the limits of polling, the weakness of Jair Bolsonaro’s political inheritance, and the scale of the anti-Bolsonaro coalition that formed almost at the last moment.
On the night of the first round, one question kept coming up: could Flávio Bolsonaro’s lead be overturned in the runoff? The answer was simple enough. Mathematically, it would be difficult. Politically, it was still possible. And that distinction mattered.
At that stage, there had effectively been no real campaign against him. Bolsonaro’s son had been treated by much of the left as such an obviously poor candidate that he had barely been stress-tested. The assumption seemed to be that once the second round arrived, his weaknesses would speak for themselves. That turned out to be partly true — but only after the opposition finally organized.
What happened next was one of the striking features of the campaign. The left mobilized on a scale that surprised even seasoned observers. It put millions of people on the streets and did something else that proved just as important: it learned how to campaign effectively on social media. That digital effort, combined with old-fashioned ground organization, helped drive turnout and widen Lula’s reach. One of the most visible signs of that mobilization was the participation of older voters, often brought to polling stations by their grandchildren. In a country where older citizens are not obliged to vote, their turnout was politically meaningful.
The decisive factor, however, was not simply that Lula’s side improved. It was that Flávio Bolsonaro was revealed to be a deeply flawed candidate.
The first weakness was corruption. Bolsonaro’s camp had hoped to run on anti-corruption rhetoric, but that line was hard to sustain once scrutiny intensified. Allegations and associations around business dealings undermined the image of clean politics the family wanted to project.
The second weakness was even more damaging: ties to militia networks and rogue law-and-order figures. Bolsonaro-style politics has always relied heavily on a hardline public security message, but in Brazil that comes with a dark underside. The campaign’s associations with violent actors and informal power structures made it easier for opponents to frame Bolsonaroism not as order, but as impunity.
The Ana Clara case became especially toxic. Flávio Bolsonaro had taken time away from politics to defend, free of charge, a police officer accused of murdering a five-year-old girl, Ana Clara. In the final televised debate, the child’s mother was in the audience. Flávio attempted to justify his actions and even addressed the mother directly, but in doing so he made a catastrophic mistake: he referred to her as “Ana Clara,” the name of the dead child. The mother’s anguished response — “She’s dead!” — turned the exchange into a public humiliation. It crystallized the impression that Bolsonaro was not just politically weak, but morally careless.
Then there was the issue of coherence. Bolsonaro’s economic messaging never really held together. He proposed sweeping spending cuts, while simultaneously promising major investment and saying he would preserve — and even expand — Lula’s social programs, which his political family had long opposed. It sounded less like a plan than a bundle of contradictions stitched together to appeal to everyone at once. The effect was not moderate pragmatism; it was insincerity.
Flávio Bolsonaro also tried to sell himself as the polished, modern version of the Bolsonaro family — the Bolsonaro who had taken the vaccine, in his own words, the less abrasive, more presentable heir. For a while, that image worked. But it made the eventual collapse worse, because once the mask slipped, there was no stable core beneath it.
That was evident in the final debate, when he mocked Lula for having nine fingers. The remark is common in the hard right, but it is not meant for public consumption. Lula lost part of a finger in an industrial accident when he was young and working a night shift. The insult allowed Lula, who is not especially strong in debate, to have his best moment. He responded indignantly by contrasting his own working-class rise to the presidency with Bolsonaro’s more privileged background and thinner political record. It may well have been the moment that decided the election. Bolsonaro later apologized, but the damage was already done.
The traditional right also played a crucial role in the result. The biggest loser in the first round was not the left but the conventional right, which had been eaten up by Bolsonaro’s party. That left a broader conservative electorate facing a difficult choice. Some prominent figures, especially those with government experience, were repelled by the authoritarian drift of Bolsonaroism. Others made a colder calculation: a Flávio victory might produce a new dynasty, especially after comments from his economic team suggesting there might be no elections for the next eight years. For many on the traditional right, the alternative — four more years of Lula followed by an open field without a Bolsonaro heir — looked preferable.
That helps explain the unusually low number of spoiled ballots. Many voters from the traditional right appear to have voted against Flávio rather than for Lula. They were joined by other sectors of society, including prominent public health figures and older voters alarmed by what Bolsonaro represented for the health system and democratic institutions.
The rejection of Bolsonaro was crucial because it revealed something polls had failed to capture properly: the depth of unease with the movement, especially at its extremes. Bolsonaro himself had once described some supporters as “a band of crazies,” and the campaign supplied ample evidence of that fear. Whether it was demonstrators carrying a plastic missile emblazoned with “Trump Nuke Brazil,” or supporters posing with grotesque racial imagery, the rhetoric and symbolism around Bolsonaroism were often unsettling. That made it hard for a candidate like Flávio to expand beyond the already committed base.
So why did the polls get it wrong?
Probably for two reasons. First, the movement away from Bolsonaro came late. Second, after underestimating the right in earlier rounds, pollsters may have overcorrected. By election day, the mood on the street had shifted clearly. Anecdotes are not data, but in many neighborhoods the visual balance was striking: far more Lula stickers than Bolsonaro ones, and a sense that enthusiasm for the incumbent camp was thin at best.
That may be the biggest lesson of all. There was never a great wave of enthusiasm for Flávio Bolsonaro. Unlike his father, he did not inspire a messianic following. A victory would have left him in a powerful position, backed by Congress and with the possibility of reshaping the judiciary. Many Brazilians did not want that.
The result will not end the tension. There will be protests, and Bolsonaro’s camp will try to stir trouble. But the election showed that the coalition against him was broader than many expected — and that, in the end, his political inheritance was much weaker than it first appeared.
It is no surprise that a football correspondent can deliver a better analysis than the foreign correspondents hanging out in the São Paulo Press Club. Football correspondents love their adopted country and know every inch of it. @sidlowe is the best writer in the English language on ANYTHING to do with Spain.
How Lula Beat Bolsonaro’s Heir: Brazil’s Election Explained
"Brazil’s presidential election was supposed to be a straightforward contest between continuity and change. Instead, it exposed the limits of polling, the weakness of Jair Bolsonaro’s political inheritance, and the scale of the anti-Bolsonaro coalition that formed almost at the last moment.
On the night of the first round, one question kept coming up: could Flávio Bolsonaro’s lead be overturned in the runoff? The answer was simple enough. Mathematically, it would be difficult. Politically, it was still possible. And that distinction mattered.
At that stage, there had effectively been no real campaign against him. Bolsonaro’s son had been treated by much of the left as such an obviously poor candidate that he had barely been stress-tested. The assumption seemed to be that once the second round arrived, his weaknesses would speak for themselves. That turned out to be partly true — but only after the opposition finally organized.
What happened next was one of the striking features of the campaign. The left mobilized on a scale that surprised even seasoned observers. It put millions of people on the streets and did something else that proved just as important: it learned how to campaign effectively on social media. That digital effort, combined with old-fashioned ground organization, helped drive turnout and widen Lula’s reach. One of the most visible signs of that mobilization was the participation of older voters, often brought to polling stations by their grandchildren. In a country where older citizens are not obliged to vote, their turnout was politically meaningful.
The decisive factor, however, was not simply that Lula’s side improved. It was that Flávio Bolsonaro was revealed to be a deeply flawed candidate.
The first weakness was corruption. Bolsonaro’s camp had hoped to run on anti-corruption rhetoric, but that line was hard to sustain once scrutiny intensified. Allegations and associations around business dealings undermined the image of clean politics the family wanted to project.
The second weakness was even more damaging: ties to militia networks and rogue law-and-order figures. Bolsonaro-style politics has always relied heavily on a hardline public security message, but in Brazil that comes with a dark underside. The campaign’s associations with violent actors and informal power structures made it easier for opponents to frame Bolsonaroism not as order, but as impunity.
The Ana Clara case became especially toxic. Flávio Bolsonaro had taken time away from politics to defend, free of charge, a police officer accused of murdering a five-year-old girl, Ana Clara. In the final televised debate, the child’s mother was in the audience. Flávio attempted to justify his actions and even addressed the mother directly, but in doing so he made a catastrophic mistake: he referred to her as “Ana Clara,” the name of the dead child. The mother’s anguished response — “She’s dead!” — turned the exchange into a public humiliation. It crystallized the impression that Bolsonaro was not just politically weak, but morally careless.
Then there was the issue of coherence. Bolsonaro’s economic messaging never really held together. He proposed sweeping spending cuts, while simultaneously promising major investment and saying he would preserve — and even expand — Lula’s social programs, which his political family had long opposed. It sounded less like a plan than a bundle of contradictions stitched together to appeal to everyone at once. The effect was not moderate pragmatism; it was insincerity.
Flávio Bolsonaro also tried to sell himself as the polished, modern version of the Bolsonaro family — the Bolsonaro who had taken the vaccine, in his own words, the less abrasive, more presentable heir. For a while, that image worked. But it made the eventual collapse worse, because once the mask slipped, there was no stable core beneath it.
That was evident in the final debate, when he mocked Lula for having nine fingers. The remark is common in the hard right, but it is not meant for public consumption. Lula lost part of a finger in an industrial accident when he was young and working a night shift. The insult allowed Lula, who is not especially strong in debate, to have his best moment. He responded indignantly by contrasting his own working-class rise to the presidency with Bolsonaro’s more privileged background and thinner political record. It may well have been the moment that decided the election. Bolsonaro later apologized, but the damage was already done.
The traditional right also played a crucial role in the result. The biggest loser in the first round was not the left but the conventional right, which had been eaten up by Bolsonaro’s party. That left a broader conservative electorate facing a difficult choice. Some prominent figures, especially those with government experience, were repelled by the authoritarian drift of Bolsonaroism. Others made a colder calculation: a Flávio victory might produce a new dynasty, especially after comments from his economic team suggesting there might be no elections for the next eight years. For many on the traditional right, the alternative — four more years of Lula followed by an open field without a Bolsonaro heir — looked preferable.
That helps explain the unusually low number of spoiled ballots. Many voters from the traditional right appear to have voted against Flávio rather than for Lula. They were joined by other sectors of society, including prominent public health figures and older voters alarmed by what Bolsonaro represented for the health system and democratic institutions.
The rejection of Bolsonaro was crucial because it revealed something polls had failed to capture properly: the depth of unease with the movement, especially at its extremes. Bolsonaro himself had once described some supporters as “a band of crazies,” and the campaign supplied ample evidence of that fear. Whether it was demonstrators carrying a plastic missile emblazoned with “Trump Nuke Brazil,” or supporters posing with grotesque racial imagery, the rhetoric and symbolism around Bolsonaroism were often unsettling. That made it hard for a candidate like Flávio to expand beyond the already committed base.
So why did the polls get it wrong?
Probably for two reasons. First, the movement away from Bolsonaro came late. Second, after underestimating the right in earlier rounds, pollsters may have overcorrected. By election day, the mood on the street had shifted clearly. Anecdotes are not data, but in many neighborhoods the visual balance was striking: far more Lula stickers than Bolsonaro ones, and a sense that enthusiasm for the incumbent camp was thin at best.
That may be the biggest lesson of all. There was never a great wave of enthusiasm for Flávio Bolsonaro. Unlike his father, he did not inspire a messianic following. A victory would have left him in a powerful position, backed by Congress and with the possibility of reshaping the judiciary. Many Brazilians did not want that.
The result will not end the tension. There will be protests, and Bolsonaro’s camp will try to stir trouble. But the election showed that the coalition against him was broader than many expected — and that, in the end, his political inheritance was much weaker than it first appeared.
I worked the Brazilian elections for France 24.
For what it's worth (and armed with a degree in History and Politics!!), here's my take on what happened.
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Thomasbcn retweeted
Revolut founder Nik Storonsky says one of his investors tried forcing him to fire his best person:
“He was forcing me to fire my best person, because he was too hardcore.”
“Of course I didn’t fire him. I said no.”
“Pretty early on I realized that quite a few VCs, they are not hey can be actually dangerous for the company if they have enough power. So every single investment round, we just remove VCs.”
“Now I don't have any VCs on the board. I think that's the best. You always need to have operators rather than VCs on the board, people who actually build business and who know how to do things.”
“He was forcing me to fire my best person, because he was too hardcore.”
“Of course I didn’t fire him. I said no.”
“Pretty early on I realized that quite a few VCs, they are not hey can be actually dangerous for the company if they have enough power. So every single investment round, we just remove VCs.”
“Now I don't have any VCs on the board. I think that's the best. You always need to have operators rather than VCs on the board, people who actually build business and who know how to do things.”
Nik Storonsky is one of the most hardcore and competitive founders I’ve ever talked to. He’s the founder of Revolut, a $115 billion company, and wants to be the number one bank in 100 countries.
When someone asked Nik if he was coming for Jamie Dimon's lunch, he said “I’m coming ant to dominate, otherwise what’s the point?”
He removed every VC from his board, and when one investor pushed him too far, he started his own fund to compete with them.
Nik has a lot of ideas on talent, product design, marketing, constraints, and what makes founder-led companies special.
This is a fascinating conversation about competition, speed, and building a machine-like company.
0:00 Coming for Jamie Dimon's dinner
2:04 Building the #1 bank in 100 countries
6:12 Why founders beat professional CEOs
8:45 Revolut's biggest mistake
12:47 Why legacy banks can't innovate
17:20 Running a company like a machine
20:28 Funding winners and cutting losers like a trader
23:31 How AI is changing Revolut's team structure
25:23 50 direct reports and spreading innovation fast
29:59 Hiring self-guided missiles
33:31 Too much money makes founders weaker
37:38 What Europe's constraints taught Revolut
41:08 Why VCs are like football cheerleaders
49:28 Starting a fund to compete with VCs
54:28 From zero marketing to buying Europe's airports
1:00:21 Funding moonshots like a global tech company
1:03:58 Building an unstoppable machine
Includes paid partnerships.
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Thomasbcn retweeted
Live in 20 minutes, you DON’T want to miss this!
Tomorrow: Sub Club Live from New York , with a studio audience.
@drbarnard hosts in person with @AnadaLakra (BoldVoice). In the room, taking turns in the hot seat: @Thomasbcn, Ashley Black, Julian Pscheid and more of the App Growth Annual workshop hosts.
12 p.m. ET / 9 a.m. PT / 6 p.m. CEST
Watch on YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=Ft1AQV…
Set your reminder: luma.com/vqf5d6sa
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Thomasbcn retweeted
Tomorrow: Sub Club Live from New York , with a studio audience.
@drbarnard hosts in person with @AnadaLakra (BoldVoice). In the room, taking turns in the hot seat: @Thomasbcn, Ashley Black, Julian Pscheid and more of the App Growth Annual workshop hosts.
12 p.m. ET / 9 a.m. PT / 6 p.m. CEST
Watch on YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=Ft1AQV…
Set your reminder: luma.com/vqf5d6sa
@drbarnard hosts in person with @AnadaLakra (BoldVoice). In the room, taking turns in the hot seat: @Thomasbcn, Ashley Black, Julian Pscheid and more of the App Growth Annual workshop hosts.
12 p.m. ET / 9 a.m. PT / 6 p.m. CEST
Watch on YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=Ft1AQV…
Set your reminder: luma.com/vqf5d6sa
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