How to Succeed on iOS vs. Android — Matt Rouif, Photoroom

David Barnard:

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Hello, I'm your host, David Barnard. Today's conversation is shorter than usual and will be featured in RevenueCat's State of Subscription Apps report. Each episode in this series, we'll explore one crucial metric and share actionable insights from top subscription app operators. With me today, Matt Rouif, co-founder and CEO of Photoroom. On the podcast, I talk with Matt about why some apps see 30 times higher revenue on iOS versus Android, the challenges of running a business on multiple platforms, and why you should consider offering a free Android device to employees. Hey, Matt. Thanks so much for joining me on the podcast.

Matt Rouif:

Thanks, David. It's been a while.

David Barnard:

Yeah, it has. So I want to have you on. Y'all have been on both iOS and Android since very early on and has seen some really interesting things on the Android side, but I did want to kick off on a higher level of just what are the things that you think about as a CEO, running a super-fast-growing app that's on both Android and iOS? How do you think about the differences between the two major mobile platforms?

Matt Rouif:

Yeah, it's a question top of mind for a lot of topics. To give some context, yeah, photoroom started with iOS and later on went on to Android. I think it's one year later, iOS 2019, Android, even 2021. So even one year and a half between the two. High level, I think the big differences are when I think iOS, I think super penetration in the American market. When I think about Android, I'm thinking about all the other countries where it's a mix and some countries that are big for a mobile subscription like Brazil, Southeast Asia. Even Europe where there's a good mix. So I'm actually thinking some people might be only focused in the US and in this case, iOS makes sense. If you're like, you care about localization, you want to launch in tons of countries, then Android, you need to do ... Can't do iOS only.

David Barnard:

Was there a lot of demand? Did you hear from users like, "Build this in Android app?

Matt Rouif:

Photoroom was still like a MVP. The tech was good but not as good as it is now. So it wasn't like I absolutely needed it yet. I think when we started to get traction on ... I think it was eBay early days as marketplaces, when then people, we had influencers talking about us and people in the comments. The comments were, "I needed time on Android, I'm on Android, I'm on Android." So I think when you start to do marketing, you feel like you're paying for ... Actually, you pay for some influencers. Then all the comments are "When is Android coming?," and all that stuff. So I remember that now. So you feel people are asking when you start to [inaudible 00:03:24] product market fit? I think before that, you can tell yourself like, "Oh, it would be better because then the [inaudible 00:03:30] loop, the famous K-factor, all that stuff, would be better. But I'm not sure. It's like you don't feel the pressure.

David Barnard:

If you had to do it over again, would you have launched simultaneously Android and iOS? Or do you feel like it was better to go ahead and prove out the product market fit on iOS first?

Matt Rouif:

Yeah, never. I would do exactly the same iOS. And then one hour or two years later, Android. I do think all the adopters of apps, as a general rule of thinking, would be more on iOS than Android. And as a general rule, but even more so for the photo space, photo video category.

David Barnard:

When you started to build up to the launch on Android, did you build up a whole separate Android team? And is that how you run Android to this day, is you spun up a whole separate team that works in conjunction with the iOS team?

Matt Rouif:

Yeah, we have two different teams, Photoroom. So with time, what we developed is shared engine, that is running like the pixel rendering part. So everything that is pixel rendering and AI is common. We do have some native device algorithm that run on Apple that is very ... We didn't even try Android. It's too fragmented, the hardware, to run on device machine learning inference. But the engine is all the same on iOS, Android now.

David Barnard:

So how does that workout today as far as, are you still doing earlier explorations on one platform and you would maybe test something first on iOS, and then move it to Android? Or now do you more simultaneously release on both platforms? Or are you even experimenting with certain things that you think might work better on Android, and then bring them to iOS? How do you manage that development process?

Matt Rouif:

We don't have like tightly loose specs where we want to release everything at the same time for all platform. We have iOS, Android, and even web now. The way we think about it is we need to run ... You have two legs. If you really tie them together, you don't make big steps. We try to have some flexibility to make sure we move fast because that's the key to success for startup and we use resources when it's easier. I do think there are a few things where we try where it makes more sense based on the platform, to try on different versions. So I don't know, there are more experiments or it's easier to track.

'll give you an example. You can create a team in Photoroom and you can invite someone. For Apple, you can't really track because of privacy reason through the App Store if you're inviting someone. So it's much easier to have a good benchmark of what would work, what would be the dream path on Android than iOS. So it depends on resources. How big is the team? iOS team is bigger than Android. So usually, it's iOS first. But there some stuff where it makes more sense to try Android, that would go Android first.

David Barnard:

And then how do you think about monetization between the two platforms? I know this is something where Photoroom is maybe a little bit unique from other apps. But how do you think broadly about monetization amongst the two platforms?

Matt Rouif:

It's not exactly the same, the two platforms. What I remember quite clearly is ... So I was at GoPro before and it was very challenging to have a good monetization on the Android side. What I learned is that there ... Well at first, it's difficult to build a good video app on Android. The APIs from Apple are really good on the video side and the hardware is less fragmented. There are still some device where you think there are some GPUs and they're not here, or it's not plugged in the right way. Apple owns hardware and software. Obviously is a bit easier. And then there's ... I think Apple has an amazing brand on the photo side. So if you're a photo hobbyist, like the reality is you're probably going to buy an iPhone. You're really passionate about photography. So what I noticed at GoPro is basically people were doing 3X more revenue on average on apps, and there were 2X more people or maybe 4X more revenue and 2X more people.

So basically, it was one to 10, the ratio of a user, the ARPU, by average, when I was looking at some benchmarks, iOS to Android. And then I dig into the photo space. Basically, the ratio for photo apps were 30X. So value of a user on iOS was 30X bigger than Android. So that was a big learning. There's a lot of marketing from Apple about photography. You actually, if you look at the keynote, it almost as if ... Well, we should call that a camera more than a phone now because that's the marketing sell. That's why a lot of the reasons why people upgrade is because the camera got better. So if you taking photos of your family, it matters, you want to spend time on photography, then you're probably buying an iPhone. Especially in the biggest market of all the US. And that makes a huge bias towards people spending money on the photo apps on the App Store, compared to the Play Store.

What happened with Photoroom is we got very international, and the most important part is that people buy Photoroom because Photoroom helps them make money. We helped your store grow, we help you as an eCommerce owner, as an entrepreneur, as a restaurant owner, to have good quality imagery to present yourself on marketplaces, on social network, in your emails. And so as a business owner, it doesn't matter. There's no filter on your iOS or Android person. There's actually no bias. And so that's why at the end of the day, everyone is working. A lot of people have small business owners. There are a lot of them in the world who are on Android. And so they spend more. They don't care. They just spend the money, the subscription that makes them more successful. So there is no bias in that. And so we're much more successful relatively on the photo space on Android than the other apps that are hugely biased towards iOS. And because of the API also, you see so many apps that never went on to Android. So it's like it never made sense economically for them, where it's very different for us.

David Barnard:

You've mentioned several times the fragmentation of devices on Android and the challenges there. Do you have any advice for folks who are building on Android, as far as QA or minimum required specs for the app? How do you think about making sure that people do have a good experience on Android devices?

Matt Rouif:

The best way to make sure you have a good experience is ... It's very practical advice, but I remember the thing I did is for a year or so, I just switched as a founder, as we were building the app to Android. And so I was only using that to make sure it's important. There is like a ... You pay attention to details. So that was first very practical. Just remove your SIM card from your iPhone, buy a good Android device and make sure you test. Dogfooding is key. Then keep in mind also that iOS people update and upgrade their device to latest OS a bit more than an Android. And Apple is really good at that. They always give this last feature that is fun, that makes people move. And I think it's ... I don't know behind the scene, but I think they really care about that and they advertise that a lot. So yeah, keep in mind you can't ... Like maybe on iOS, you can keep two versions of the major OS, and Android, you need to keep a bit more.

David Barnard:

Do you have a separate QA team or what does quality assurance look like on Android? And do you even have a ... Does Android team have 20 or 30 devices that they test on? Or how do you think about that quality assurance side of things for Android?

Matt Rouif:

We don't have QA at Photoroom, so that's the one thing. Everyone is in charge of their own bugs and everyone is using the app. We do have a strong beta TestFlight, Android internal. So these are managed at different ways, but where people like the app for a week and they have the latest feature. But sometimes, it's again, we look in the analytics, what's happening. If there is anything weird, we have some signals. Photoroom is lucky enough to have a product that is ... You can use your everyday life. So we have people using regularly and the team internally using the app. I do say I want to be fair with the Android team. One of the difficult thing is the distribution of iOS versus Android. In most tech companies, it's heavily biased towards iOS.

So it's much more difficult to get people testing an Android. What we do give is anyone that wants an Android, as a Photoroom employee, who's on iOS and [inaudible 00:11:43] and is going to use it or test it or try it. Or is a PM, which is you can have two device, if you're going to help the Android team.

David Barnard:

Any other learnings that you've had now, operating on Android for five years, that you think folks could take away?

Matt Rouif:

One of the challenge that we haven't really solved is how do you solve for design and product? Because most people and most PMs, they would go on iOS at our scale. I'm sure if you are 10X bigger, you can have someone that is specific. You can have a design that is specific to Android. But reality is it's like two different languages. You can take Portuguese and Spanish and grammar is similar, but some idiomatic expressions are different, and then you can make a faux pas or stuff like this. So give some freedom and make sure that the Android team understand and that you say, "No, you understand the differences."

The obvious example is a share icon. I had so much debate with the design team and product about the designs and you see these old arrow compared to the three circles, the branching on Android that is the share icon. People on Android, they don't understand the iOS icon and it doesn't look native. It's like you're using your word in another language in their platform. So if you're making the bet, and that's Photoroom bet that native is better, then yeah, you need to adapt and adapt the language. And we don't have two versions of the designs, that one for iOS, one for Android. So it makes things a bit difficult. But yeah, you have to allow for this freedom based on the native language.

David Barnard:

Any last tips that you think people should be thinking about and the differences between iOS and Android?

Matt Rouif:

There's one big thing that people tend to forget, is Apple is very percent commission on new subscription. They have some people, if you renew, stay on 15%. Android is all 15%. So it does make a difference for your margin, especially for a company margin like Photoroom where you have GPU costs for machine learning and GenAI. So it does make a difference.

David Barnard:

Yeah, I think a lot of people forget that. I forget that often is 30% versus 15%. And for those of you maybe aren't familiar with this, on Android, Google made the decision three or four years ago that just all subscriptions ... It doesn't apply to games and consumables and single in-app purchases, but on all subscriptions, it's 15% across the board. And as Matt was alluding to on iOS, once a user has retained for more than a year, you do get bumped down to 15%. But on initial conversion, that spread instantly gives you more margin. So definitely something from a business perspective to be thinking about it. Even if your average revenue per user is lower on Android, your margin is actually higher on those pairs. So yeah, great tip for folks to be keeping in mind.

Matt Rouif:

Yeah, but build on Android is great too.

David Barnard:

All right, anything else you wanted to share as we're wrapping up? Any especially great roles you're hiring for these days?

Matt Rouif:

Yeah, we keep growing and so we hiring both in engineering, both platform, iOS and Android. And also, we are hiring for top of funnel of the App Store. Like if you are an App Store hacker, you know all the details of that and you want to look very top of funnel of apps and actually play with ... There are many things like hack new things, use Photoroom API to make screenshots. All these things. It is a very interesting role.

David Barnard:

Awesome. All right, Matt, thanks so much for joining me. This was really fascinating. Thanks for sharing your insights.

Matt Rouif:

Thanks, David. It was a good time.

David Barnard:

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