Wabi just raised $20M to build "YouTube for apps"—anyone types an idea, gets a working app, shares it with friends. Same week, Lovable—which hit $200M ARR in 12 months—is raising at a $6B+ valuation.
Most people see this and think it's time to build the next viral app. The real opportunity sits one layer deeper—become the Blackstone + Night Media of AI micro-apps. Scout promising apps across platforms, optimize them, aggregate the winners into a portfolio you partly or fully own.
Portfolio math wins here. The window to execute is measured in months.
The Setup: Apps Are Becoming Content
Eugenia Kuyda—founder of Replika, 35 million users—just launched Wabi with $20M from Naval Ravikant, Garry Tan, and a dozen other heavy hitters. The pitch is dead simple: type what you want, Wabi builds it. No code, no app store submission, no technical barrier.
Early users built 40,000+ apps in beta. Everything from fitness trackers to business tools to weird niche utilities nobody would fund as a startup.
The infrastructure shift has legs. Lovable reached $200M ARR in roughly 12 months and is now raising at a valuation north of $6B. Vibecode raised $9.4M from Alexis Ohanian's Seven Seven Six—40,000 apps built since June launch. The no-code AI platform market was $4.9B in 2024 and projects to $24.8B by 2029.
Revenue is flowing. Platforms exist. The infrastructure works.
But here's the asymmetry: most people building these apps have zero idea how to position, price, or grow what they've made.
Early YouTube had the same dynamic. Millions of creators, almost none knew how to build a real business. The ones who figured out talent management, growth ops, and monetization infrastructure became studios worth hundreds of millions.
That gap exists again. It's wide open.
Why This Isn't Just Another Agency
The obvious move is consulting: "I'll help you monetize your app for a fee."
That frames it wrong. You're building a portfolio of cash-flowing assets with diversification across platforms and categories, not selling hourly services.
Start with platform risk. Everyone else worries about Wabi's algorithm or GPT Store payouts changing overnight. When you spread across Wabi, GPT Store, Poe, FlowGPT, and off-platform products, one platform changing terms leaves 80% of your revenue untouched.
The power law becomes your friend. Most apps make nothing, a few crush. Individual builders face binary outcomes. A portfolio gives you exposure to 50+ apps via rev-shares or buyouts, capturing the upside without the winner-take-all risk.
Data starts compounding after the first dozen apps. Every pricing test, onboarding tweak, and retention experiment feeds a proprietary dataset on what actually works. New apps launch with tested playbooks instead of guesswork—an unfair advantage that grows with each experiment.
Distribution stacks naturally. Each app becomes a discovery vehicle for others. Users of your "AI meal planner" see your "AI habit tracker." At scale, this creates a cross-promotion engine individual builders can't match.
You're not trying to be the best at one thing. You're being systematic across many things. Different game entirely.
The Current State: Messy Infrastructure Creates Opportunity
OpenAI's GPT Store launched with a stated plan to pay creators based on engagement. Over a year later, the revenue-share program remains in pilot, limited to select US builders, with no public details on percentages. Speculation suggests 10-20% of subscription revenue, calculated on usage metrics nobody fully understands.
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