A Chat with Thomas Kriebernegg, Co-Founder & MD at App Store Optimisation Tool: App Radar

App Radar enables best-practice marketing for all businesses with apps. Our platform empowers app marketers to reach more users through organic and paid user acquisition, by combining simple analytics and standardised marketing workflows.

Apps are increasingly how businesses interact with their customers, and entire businesses are built around entertainment apps for example. But if you can’t get your app on people’s radar, then you can’t succeed.

Our international team is working with customers like DEGIRO, ProCamera, Ironhide Game Studio, and Kolibri Games.

App Radar was founded in 2015 in Austria by Thomas Kriebernegg and Christian Janesch. App Radar is managed by myself, Silvio Peruci and Michael Müller.
 
 

 

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 
The idea for App Radar came through my personal background. During my studies in Information Management, I developed a strong interest in online marketing. I then started working in the field with the goal of reaching customers online. I specialised in search engine optimisation, helping websites and businesses all around the world to attract users and be found on search engines, namely Google.

When mobile apps and app stores then came along, I could predict that visibility will become a challenge in the future. It seemed logical that there will be more and more apps competing for app store visibility. So I identified this as a market need and began to consult customers that wanted to optimise their apps and gain better app store visibility.

Already at the start, I was working with some really big mobile apps and games. At some point, I concluded that I needed to scale the business because working as a freelancer I wasn’t able to accommodate the workload.

This was the starting point for App Radar. I teamed up with Christian, my technical co-founder, and we founded App Radar together. Fast forward to 2022, we’re a team of 40+ people, have had our first acquisition of a competitor and are known globally in the field of app store optimization with more than 1,000 customers.
 

 

How has the company evolved over the last couple of years?

 
We’re at a really exciting place, both for us and the market. In 2021 we acquired a big Spanish competitor – rather than rely on organic growth alone, we wanted to turbocharge our customer share in Europe. TheTool had a great customer base and product features and acquiring them was too good an opportunity to pass up.

The market is growing really quickly, the pandemic has accelerated the adoption of technology and apps have been a big part of how businesses now access their customers. We’ve been able to grow our clientbase by 200% in the last year, and there isn’t any end in sight.
 

What can we hope to see from App Radar in the future?

 
App Radar has had an exceptional few years. We’re growing at a huge rate, entering new markets, making our first acquisitions and taking on more and more customers. However, such is the talent that we have and the confidence we have in our product and services, that I believe we can go much further and become one of the most dominant players in our market – not just in Europe, but globally.

As we move to an app-centric economy the opportunities are almost endless. Our end goal is to become the leading app user acquisition platform. This means going beyond app store optimisation and providing our clients with a whole range of services that covers every channel and gives them the complete picture.