Mobile App Marketplace Raises $1M from Investors Including Mark Cuban

Apptopia.com, the marketplace for buying and selling mobile app ownership, recently raised a $1M seed round from prominent investors and VCs, including Mark Cuban. The company is off to a great start with a business that includes selling and transferring app ownership, code, users and revenue. For each app sold, the company takes 15% of the sale.

According to Founder and COO Jonathan Kay, Apptopia will be one of the more powerful ways to app developers to make money within the next six months. On average, apps sell for around $7,500; the highest app sale so far has been for $26,000. In the first three months, the company doubled sales, went through a big hiring/growth spurt and is now positioned to double sales again, says Kay.

Right now, Apptopia is comfortable with the amount of funding they have raised. Kay told SBN, “You can expect our next round of funding to take place in the next 9-12 months.  We are well funded right now, we know exactly what we need to do, and we now just need to go do it!  We are also very much a cash business, in that we bring in revenue every month, so it allows us more time between raises.”

Apptopia serves all types of developers and buyers. However, Kay says the most successful apps so far tend to be Casino, Puzzle, Cards, or word related. He said, “The reason for this is that these sort of apps have a very long shelf-life.  There is no clear end to the app, or any reason for someone to delete it. As a result, user activity is stronger and hence more profitable.”

Local iOS app developer and Founder of Apptitute, Chris Boyd, shared his thoughts about what a company like Apptopia could mean for the New Orleans tech community. Boyd said, “I think something like Apptopia would serve New Orleans well. We have the huge entrepreneur community here, ripe with ideas for apps, and you have people like me who are building these apps for the entrepreneurs. Apptopia would be the third and final link in the chain for people that have a great app, are looking to sell it for a profit, but haven’t quite found any takers in the market, perhaps because they’re not large or established enough yet.”

Boyd believes there is a nice, streamlined ecosystem for apps in New Orleans. He mentioned a local startup, Yupp, that is working on creating an international rating system for app ideas and concepts. Boyd said, “an app idea is vetted for quality by the public, the app gets developed then goes live in the App Store, once the app has a user base and some traction, it can then be sold on a marketplace like Apptopia…it makes the process much more open and democratic.”