My sense is that we’re entering a new cycle for consumer apps.
Over the past decade, mobile-first consumer apps have been met with persistent skepticism. They’ve been seen as hits-driven, hard to monetize, and reliant on lightning-in-a-bottle virality. CACs were volatile, retention was fragile, and unless you became the category winner, outcomes were often binary: breakout or bust.
That skepticism was warranted. The list of true breakout successes has been short. TikTok stands apart. Discord, Duolingo, Robinhood, and BeReal found success - but for most of the last cycle, consistent, venture-scale consumer wins were quite rare.
My sense is that this may be changing.
I’ve seen a noticeable shift in the past year — in founder ambition, investor appetite, and product surface area. And I think the conditions are forming for a much higher volume of meaningful consumer bets, and with them, a greater number of actual winners.
Why I’m paying attention:
1. AI is expanding what consumer products can be.
We’re seeing early traction in voice-first journaling, AI companions with memory, adaptive coaching, and emotional support tools. These aren’t UX upgrades — they enable new behaviors. Combine that with form factor shifts like Ray-Ban Meta glasses and we’re likely heading into a new interface layer. These products feel native to the new stack, not retrofitted onto the old one.
2. Distribution is still hard — but more accessible.
TikTok has reshaped discovery. Creator-led, interest-based reach has replaced paid UA as the default motion. Execution still matters, and the shelf life of attention is short, but the marginal cost of testing GTM has dropped dramatically. That alone increases the number of viable teams who can get to critical mass.
3. Monetization is no longer the question.
The playbooks exist. Subscriptions, microtransactions, and affiliate models all work when paired with real utility or habit. We’ve moved past the phase where consumer startups had to hand-wave around revenue. The question now is about unit economics, not business model viability.
I’ve been building in this space for a while — as a founder, investor, and operator. I’ve helped scale products from zero to millions of users and now work on a platform reaching nearly 200 million globally. My sense is that the volume and velocity of viable consumer companies is about to accelerate.
That said, skepticism is still common. Here are the objections I hear most often (which I’ll explore more fully in a follow-up post):
There’s no moat. Everyone is building chatbots with different skins.
We’ve seen this movie before with DTC and social apps that couldn’t retain or monetize.
Incumbents already own distribution. Where’s the wedge?
All valid. But the environment is different now. (Followup post on this)
Curious what others are seeing — especially those building or backing the next wave of consumer products.