Intro
Website: Business of Apps – Connecting the app industry
In this episode of the Player Engage podcast, Greg is joined by Artem Dogtiv from Business of Apps. Business of Apps is a B2B platform that provides insider news about all things app-related. They discuss the importance of staying informed in the app industry, and how Business of Apps serves as a valuable resource for app marketers, developers, and advertisers. They also highlight the website’s comprehensive collection of app news and their informative podcast. The episode concludes with a thought-provoking question about where people get their news in today’s digital age.
Transcript
00:00 – 00:15 Intro Welcome to the Player Engage podcast, where we dive into the biggest challenges, technologies, trends, and best practices for creating unforgettable player experiences. Player Engage is brought to you as a collaboration between Keyword Studios and Helpshift. Here is your host, Greg Posner.
00:16 – 00:42 Greg Posner Hey everybody, welcome to the player engaged podcast and we have a special episode today. Today I’m joined by Artem Dogtiv from the business of apps. If you’re not familiar with business of apps, it’s a B2B platform that provides you with insider news about all the different apps and just all news about them. I don’t want to take too much thunder, so maybe you can do a better job at that introduction of business of apps part, but thank you for joining me today. I’m excited to have this conversation. Can you mind saying a few words? My pleasure.
00:42 – 01:09 Artem Dogtiev Thank you for having me. Yeah, business of apps is the place for everybody in the app industry to get together, learn new tricks, see what the case studies of other folks have to say, and see what’s coming, pick up the trends, and be knowledgeable in anything that comes to mind when it’s about app industry marketing, development, funding, advertising, anything.
01:10 – 02:29 Greg Posner Yeah, I highly recommend you go check out their website. It’s just businessofapps.com. We’ll have a link to it on the playerengaged site. But it’s like the white pages or just like an encyclopedia of all the different apps, all the different news that’s out there. They have a great podcast as well, which I actually think my CEO, Eric, was on a couple of weeks ago. And it’s just this great community where it’s great information learning. And one of the questions I always like to ask myself as well as out loud is, where do people get news these days? There’s like Reddit, where people post a lot of news to some LinkedIn, but there’s no, it’s hard to kind of aggregate all the news and information about what’s going on. And while we focus on the gaming vertical, typically here, a lot of this translates really well to other verticals as well, whether it be fintech, or e commerce, or, or, um, try to think of travel, hospitality. So I think it’s a great place where best practices can be shared across the different networks. And I’m really excited to be having this conversation with you. Getting started, right? Your, your background is really media focused, right? You are a, uh, you were in, uh, head of business content and stuff like that. When you were younger, was this your dream of being able to come and talk about kind of best practices and trends in the industry? Where, where was art years ago when he’s determining what he wants to be when he grows up?
02:29 – 03:41 Artem Dogtiev Oh, uh, when I was a kid to be perfectly blonde, I did not have any role model. I wasn’t dreaming to become anybody. That’s just the reality. I was pretty into sci-fi. I read a lot. I think the books were my constant companions when I was a kid. Sci-fi only, nothing related to fantasy. So don’t ask me anything about the Game of Thrones, but if it’s about the Expanse, you’re my guy. Uh, so, um, I vaguely remember, um, just, um, you know, from, um, Monday to Friday on the weekend being, uh, with the bunch of books. Um, and, um, I think that that was a point where my curiosity about the world, um, about science, about what are we doing in this planet where this whole thing is going to, and, uh, Where did we come from? That was my world. And again, no particular role model. But yeah, I guess sci-fi was my window to curiosity about this world.
03:42 – 04:02 Greg Posner I think The Expanse is one of the greatest shows that has been on TV. And I think Amazon did a ton of justice with it by picking it up after SyFy let it down. It was a very big disappointment to see that leave. And I know Telltale came out with a game about The Expanse. I haven’t played it yet, but it’s something that is on my list of things to do.
04:02 – 05:44 Artem Dogtiev Yeah, exactly. That was a great thing to see that boy picking up when everybody was kind of sighing, oh, And now the show is gone because of financial problems, which every show has to face with. Yeah, so I don’t think that when I was like a toddler age, anything would tell you anything about the work I’m doing right now. And when I was in school, high school, I graduated as the, believe it or not, metrologist, engineer metrologist. Never worked a single day, a single minute in my life by that profession. But I guess it kind of gave me this take on the world that nothing is perfect. There is always the margin for an error. You may try to measure anything as much as you can, but there’s got to be an error all the time. But yeah, the profession, like how I started my career as a search engine guy, did not exist, so everybody was just learning on the job, having zero experience, no books, nothing, you’re just inventing the whole thing on your own. And it relates to what came later, obviously, the mobile world didn’t exist back then, so I was kind of, my career was going along the trajectory of mobile industry development. That’s how, this is my part of, Um, yeah, I don’t, I don’t think I can put anything on top of it. This is how it went.
05:44 – 05:51 Greg Posner You’re, you’re currently residing in Canada. You were, I believe you were born and at least raised in the Ukraine. Is that correct?
05:51 – 06:15 Artem Dogtiev Yeah, that’s, that’s right. Um, I spent, uh, most of my life in, back in Ukraine, moved only recently, just a year ago here. So been traveling a lot, uh, but never leave for that, uh, extended period of time at any, anywhere outside of Ukraine. But for the last 20 plus years, I’ve been traveling a lot in Europe, Middle East.
06:15 – 06:34 Greg Posner How would you say, and this is me just being naive here, right? But what is the technology world like in the Ukraine over the past bunch of years, right? Is it more technology than people would normally think of? Do you have to do a lot of your own digging because things didn’t really exist?
06:34 – 08:47 Artem Dogtiev Well, if we’re talking about the, like, I think it depends. If we’re talking about the mobile industry, I think the expertise in software that was really forged in mid-90s, early 2000s, when a lot of small startups… To be perfectly honest, back then, the copyright for software was something weird for everybody. People knew that there’s such a thing as a copyright, but nobody respected it back then. So the upshot of that was that people had a lot of experience with a different kind of software. It could be hands-on and later become their profession. Obviously, that’s not the case anymore, but it was a wild west period in early 2000. But that led to a lot of companies that Right now, if you pick up the App Store app, you can see a lot of games and apps, which easily were developed by teams of developers from Ukraine at some point. Or you can see people on the teams of those apps or games that originally were raised in Ukraine, got their education, got their first work experience back then, and later moved to other countries. So there are things that are different for an average live snapshot here in North America. But in many respects, it’s really the same thing. People have the same worries like my kids, their education, the health of my parents, planning of my life in general. There are small wrinkles that are different culturally, but in many respects, it’s pretty much so familiar here in North America.
08:47 – 09:07 Greg Posner I think, I guess one of the things about technology that’s beautiful is that with remote work, with the tools that are available to everyone, you kind of have the same level playing field across, across no matter where you are, right? As long as you can understand the languages that are being spoken and translation and localization is probably the most important part of that, but it’s a fairly level playing field now, no matter where you are.
09:09 – 09:13 Artem Dogtiev Internet, laptop, coffee, and you’re good to go.
09:13 – 09:34 Greg Posner Coffee is the most important part or else nothing’s working for that day. Sure. Um, so with business of apps, right, your guys are taking a look at the entire app ecosystem. I love how on your site you kind of have a ranking of the apps, demographic of apps. I’m looking at different app data that you have there. Um, I guess for in general about how many people are typically working on the site at this point or contributing information to it.
09:34 – 12:54 Artem Dogtiev So we have a team, like a core team and a freelancers. So if I remember correctly, the core team, I’m just counting the spots on the Zoom screen, the nine folks on the core team, and five, seven people on top of that. There are freelancers who participate from time to time, not members of the core team. But yeah, we have people who are responsible for creating articles for data section, where we provide this holistic view on what specific popular app you can think of, like Uber, Tinder, Airbnb, in numbers. How does this app look like in numbers? Its trajectory of growth, where it’s at this point, snapshot, the portrait of the app. We have the inside section where we have people who are… Actually, this is the section for contribution. People can share their expertise and publish something related to a few specific areas like app marketing, app store optimization, influencer marketing. And we have news where we cover quickly but insightfully, giving a few nuggets about the specific piece of news that is happening right now. trying to strike the balance between keeping people informed and not overwhelm them with a lot of stuff, because they’ve been overwhelmed without our help. We don’t want to help in this process any more than it’s happening without our help. And obviously, there is a podcast where I’m the host, actually. And we’re trying to cover this core set of topics related to observationalization, marketing, influencer marketing, engagement analytics around across the publications, podcast. And the second part of the company is actually a promotion summit that is taking place a few times in a year. And to be perfectly honest, the closest promotion summit is coming up this Thursday in San Francisco. So it’s just literally happening this week. And we welcome marketers from around the globe on these events to share their experience in the topics I’ve just listed. And we are going back and forth between providing the offline exposure for these topics for people to discuss on the event, and then going online, kind of the extra collateral for the event with the publication of the podcast, and the rest. And this is how we hold this app industry ecosystem together, giving people a chance to either interact offline in real life on the event, or share their expertise online. Yeah, this is how it goes.
12:55 – 14:01 Greg Posner Yeah, it’s great. I know I went to the at promotion summit a few years ago in New York City. I think it was right after kind of COVID started to slow down and weird. It was it was a great, great event. Just weird seeing people again in person. But it was a fun event and lots of great companies there to be able to meet and mingle with them. I think you’re in this fascinating position where you’re basically providing information or helping these apps, right? Everyone has an app these days. Everyone has this idea these days and they want to go make a million dollars and they’re thinking, hey, I’ll just create this new dating app or this new retail app and do this. You know you build the app that’s one thing and it’s not like feel the dreams where if you build it they will come right this already have. App store optimization you have influencer marketing you want to be able to measure your engagement and your attention and if you are going to go build an app today right. Where forget the app building of the app, right? Where are you going to focus your time? Are you gonna look at apps or optimization? Are you gonna look at marketing? Is there a strategy that you work with customers or potential companies with on how to kind of do this?
14:01 – 19:57 Artem Dogtiev Well, um, the tricky thing is just like you said, um, on one side, like in one hand, uh, if you look at the both app stores with so many apps, you get a feeling and it’s pretty justified and feeling that A lot of ideas are being covered so extensively and it feels like there is no room for you to squeeze into this market with your idea, with your concept, with your app. And this is your challenge. So to not be in a position when you’re going to be wasting your money and what is worth not your money, but your investors money. You need to test the market before you start developing your app. The research is so essential to check the temperature in the room, what’s going on with your competitors, with which you will be competing pretty soon once your app is on the App Store, how they’re doing, what the reception their apps are getting. What are the channels which will be helpful for you to talk to people, to the users of your app once it’s live, or those people are hanging online, so to speak? There is a toolbox of tools that is available for everybody. It’s just your job to pick up the tools from the toolbox and see do they fit to your plan. Social media marketing either is the paid advertising on TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, etc. Or working with influencers if that will be relevant for you. App store optimization. I think it’s just the t-box that should be ticked off for every app It doesn’t matter if it’s a simple calculator or the next Amazon Giant if you’re that lucky So making sure that people can find your app on the App Store once they’re looking for something specific And that specific will be your app Paid advertising on the YouTube was very on Google and meta Facebook ads It’s in many cases. It’s relevant. It depends like What’s going on was funding you for your app? Are you? Are you in a position to allocate this money because ideally? finding folks for your application the native search and paid advertising it’s like a two pillars of the same strategy and It just depends on how much money you will be able to allocate to paid advertising. But it’s always helpful because it helps to fit your discoverability on the App Store and Google Play. Without going into much of the details, there is a connection between your paid advertising, the keywords you’re being there, and the keywords people will find in your app via just native search from the pull up the app, the app store or something. So influencers, app service optimization. Of course, content marketing is a big part, but content marketing always implies there’s got to be something who can write a relatively good, when I say good, meaning people will be interested to read that stuff. You can deliver like The problem is that if you’re a developer, you have good skills for coding, probably for designing, probably both. But writing, it’s kind of the ante. If you’re good at STEM, it doesn’t mean you’re good in the literature and writing. So obviously, when it comes to your education, you either made a choice to become to pick up your job that will be more on the math side, so to speak. Or if writing was your thing, I’m not sure if you would be creating your next step. So you need to find somebody who will be a good content marketer for you. You may find a freelancer or you may realize that you just didn’t try before yourself. You actually have this talent. You can put the information about your app, your company, the problem you’re solving by releasing your app with blog posts that people will be reading. And you’ll be telling the story of your app. You’ll be able to pitch your ideas to press. This is the hardest part. If somebody remembers this slogan, there’s an app for that. It feels like it was ages ago. Nobody cares if there’s an app for that in that sense. Apps are vehicles. We’re saying you’re building an app business, but on a rare occasion, it’s about the app. It’s about the business you’re building. An app is the vehicle, the channel for you to connect with your customers or people who are just a consumer, something not commercial. influencer marketing, paid advertising, content marketing. This is kind of a big four in my book.
19:57 – 20:20 Greg Posner There’s a lot to unpack there. And I want to ask some questions. But usually around the 20 minute mark, I like to kind of do this fire round where I’m just going to ask some quick questions. Don’t put much thought into it, if you don’t mind just giving me an answer. And then I want to build up on that. So I just have five quick questions for you. One, I know you are a family man based on what I’ve read online. What’s your ideal family vacation?
20:20 – 20:48 Artem Dogtiev Oh, it’s when we’re three of us, um, are, um, flying on the plane somewhere where we never been before. And, uh, there’s a lot of things to, um, check out, um, sites and the place that will, uh, show us some stories, something that we didn’t know before we went on that journey. And a lot of laughs, fun and good recollections later.
20:48 – 20:55 Greg Posner All right. Sounds like you like history and you like kind of the reasoning behind things. What is the last book you read?
20:55 – 21:39 Artem Dogtiev Oh, the last book I read. So. I’m currently reading the book about what it takes for us to actually leave this planet and live on the other planets. A bunch of questions that nobody’s asking except how we’re going to build the rockets. The book deals with a lot of questions about psychology, history, politics, all those questions when you’re on your way to live on Mars, what it’s going to look like in reality. Not just about rockets and getting there. There are many other questions. So the book covers all these things. It’s very entertaining reading.
21:39 – 21:47 Greg Posner Still living with that sci-fi, huh? You still love that stuff. My favorite question is, what did you have for breakfast?
21:47 – 21:54 Artem Dogtiev Oh, that’s cotton cheese with a bunch of berries. OK.
21:54 – 21:58 Greg Posner Do you play games? I guess, what’s your favorite game?
21:58 – 22:16 Artem Dogtiev Oh, that’s easy. I never passed Tetris. Tetris was my game of choice, you know, years and years ago, and I never ventured farther than Tetris. It’s the game I really like to play. I am not a game guy.
22:18 – 22:34 Greg Posner It’s a shame if you ever want to get into it, you should try Starfield. There’s just a great whole exploration aspect of it where you can look up the different types of resources. And last question, if you were going to go to a bar and order a cocktail, what type of cocktail would you order?
22:34 – 22:41 Artem Dogtiev Oh, cocktail. Gosh, that’s an interesting question because I prefer wine all the time.
22:41 – 22:44 Greg Posner I love it. I love wine. What’s your wine of choice if you’re not getting a cocktail?
22:46 – 22:59 Artem Dogtiev That’s funny, because my favorite wine is the wine that my dad does. He’s kind of an amateur brewer, and it doesn’t have a name. It’s just the taste that I really love.
22:59 – 24:20 Greg Posner Love it. It’s great. Okay, so let’s go back. You said a lot of things about kind of building an app, and not only what you said is just building an app, but it’s also really building a business, right? I mean, no matter what you’re building, the channels that you’re advertising are going to be important, because Some channels are great for LinkedIn is great for business promotion. Instagram is great for selling stuff and kind of promote like knowing what your business is and understand the channels you’re going to market it on. It’s super important to try selling stuff on to try selling retail goods on LinkedIn. You’re not going to make it too far. Typically. The one that I found was really interesting is content marketing. I think people struggle with creating. unique content, I think, even if you look at businesses, creating blog posts, creating videos, creating all this stuff’s like, time consuming. But now we have this little tool called chat GPT, or mid journey, or all these other AI tools that you could type in like six keywords, and they’ll write a thesaurus worth of information for you. And it’s interesting and great when you know what you’re doing with it, and how you’re tweaking it and prompting it, but you’re also getting a lot of for lack of better words, crap that’s being put out there. And then do you, and this is probably more of a personal decision, but do you think the rise of AI is good for the content creation marketplace? Is it saturating it? Is it both?
24:20 – 27:07 Artem Dogtiev Well, that’s a good question. As people say, when the answer is not clear, um, you know, uh, There’s so much things to say under the umbrella, it depends. I think if we’re talking about the app marketing, so the app industry specifically, I think Chat TPT or BART from Google can both be helpful as a kind of inspiration. Like usually, what do you do when you try to do something that you have no idea how it should be done? You’re looking for examples, right? You’re looking for how this should be done by looking at somebody else’s work. And with ChatGPT, you can get on the fly, on the spot, the example of what needs to be done, but I’m not encouraging people, not at this point, not later, just blindly copying and pasting and just publishing this stuff. The thing is that ChatDbc and BART are great in processing what was done before by somebody else. They’re doing this so really well that we cannot see that that line between if that piece was written by me or by machine because it’s really great in putting together the pieces for so many pieces of information it was using for putting this blog post or post up for social media together but it’s always Like, from a psychological perspective, to me personally, I don’t want to give away the work specifically to the machine entirely. Not at this point. I think generally, it’s a great way of like, you wouldn’t pick up a pen and paper to calculate something, you would pick it up on a calculator, but you will not be using calculator to solve more complex problems. So ChatGPT for me, it’s a kind of a calculator for content marketing. So it’s great to create something that’s like 8% good and then see if I can just finish this portrait, kind of a few strokes for me personally. This is my recipe.
27:07 – 27:23 Greg Posner So you’re saying you can’t let ChatGPT or whatever, BARD or whatever do all the work for you. If you feed it the material and you maybe ask for it to improve it or to make it sound better to do this, like use it as a vehicle to help you get moving rather than do the whole work for you.
27:23 – 28:03 Artem Dogtiev Yeah, because remember the stories that have been kind of a really good news grabbers recently, then people come to their library with a list of books that did not exist. No authors, no titles, no books, they don’t exist. JetDbg just came up with those great titles and authors’ names just on the spot. So things like a hallucination, I don’t think both platforms are in a position at least right now to solve. It remains to be seen what’s going to happen next year or later. But as of right now, just don’t give away the wheel drive. the wheel to drive for chat GPT.
28:03 – 28:56 Greg Posner It does very funny things. Usually when I’m done with my podcast, this tool that we’re using Zencaster will kind of give me a summary of like a thousand words. Here’s what you guys spoke about. And I’ll usually put that into chat GPT and I’ll say, come up with 160 characters for SEO purposes. And it will send me like a 500 word response. And it’s like, Hey, here’s 160 characters. I’m just like, that’s more than 160. It’s like, Oh, I’m sorry, here we go again. Just like, this is really common sense. And it’s a great tool. It’s really smart tool. But these hallucinations, and there’s some other words for that, like, if you’re not checking yourself, if you’re not checking what it spits out, right, I’m sure a lot of people are copying and pasting. And you can see it on LinkedIn, you can see it on Reddit, where things are really obviously written by chat GPT, or something people don’t even hide it. And I think like, You’ve got to put some of your own work in there. You’ve got to make it yours. You’ve got to try.
28:56 – 30:18 Artem Dogtiev Exactly. I saw the recent study a couple of months ago, like 8,500 individuals were asked, how did you use ChetDPT? What was the purpose? What was the topic you were asking for help? One third was marketing, one third was software development, and the rest was one third. So software developers, I think, would be, if you ask the same question to them, they would be praising the software for doing all heavy duty stuff for them. But marketing, yeah, that’s a calculator. Just be cautious with the ultimate result, because it Try to do the best job. So if you’re putting together five, 10 articles yourself, what would look like the result if you’re doing it yourself, just trying to make it really cool? It’s not necessarily what the result you need. There are more nuance, which is hard to program, at least right now, at least to the current level of how much information and the algorithm in the chat DPC at this point. So, yeah, just be mindful of hallucination of chat DBT.
30:18 – 30:35 Greg Posner I always check your sources and let’s kind of let’s kind of pivot where this conversation is going and talk through this. For my own curiosity, do you download a ton of apps? I mean, in the business you are, do you test these apps ever or do you like how many apps would you say you go through a week?
30:35 – 32:21 Artem Dogtiev Well, so from the top of my head on my phone, I think I’m in this average statistic number, like 120, 130 apps on my phone. I think, well, definitely not on a weekly basis. Definitely, unless there’s something interesting, like, you know, on the magnitude of interest, like chat DVD or something, I would grab this to quickly and see, like, make my own impression. Threats was the latest example. OK, what is it going to look like? Why are people so crazy about it? But it always starts with a specific necessity. OK, I’m going to, let’s say, on a hiking trail. I don’t know the place. There’s an app. OK, cool. The app has certain maps that you can download on my phone. When the reception is dead, I’m still good to go. Well, that’s a good app. I can grab it. and use it, but, um, I think I’ve stopped venturing to the app store for the sake of curiosity and see what’s cool there. Uh, a while ago, um, just no time for this thing. I, I, I try, I use the app store, uh, for my iPhone just as a source of apps that are on the spot. There is a specific case. There was a specific need and I need an app for that. That generally, I think just reading analysis from data AI, what are apps on the top and having a holistic picture of the app store, that’s enough for me.
32:21 – 32:32 Greg Posner So a little bit building on that, and I’ll let you choose the direction of how to answer this question. Are there trends or new things you’re seeing apps do that you either love or hate?
32:34 – 35:19 Artem Dogtiev Well, I think the hate part will be easier for me. I hate gapification of apps for trading and investing. People, obviously Robinhood comes to mind. I don’t mean I hate the company or people, the idea of presenting the like invest in your money. It’s not like when you present this process as a game, it’s a bad thing for your awareness, how serious it is for your financial future. It lowers the bar of kind of threshold for new people to join. It may be great for the app growth. That’s awesome. OK, but from a perspective of the customer of myself, I don’t see it as a good thing, especially when people in their 20s may invest a lot of money without the second thought, because it felt like a game, it felt funny, it felt cool, as everybody else is doing. I don’t think it’s a good thing. So gamification, I’m not a fan of that. On the positive side and the flip side, I love that some of the apps manage to too kind of impossible. I’ll give you an example of what I mean. There’s an app for planning your to-dos, things. It’s a Germany company that has been pushing this app for a number of years on the App Store. And the app is getting new features. It’s obviously became more complex, but it doesn’t became bulky. It’s not bulky. I’m still picking up the app, and I can figure out what it does. I’m not lost. So you can actually increase the complexity, add new features. But still, you can absolutely feel easier using that app. And it still makes sense. It still does what it does for you. There’s a very fine line between improving your app, adding more features as new ideas come along, as your hardware allows you, you know, give you more freedom. But at the same time, you’re not getting in the direction of the Microsoft Office years and years ago when so many icons on the screen, you could just lost in that interface. So yeah, this is the positive and negative trends in my book.
35:20 – 37:14 Greg Posner Yeah, both of those are great, right? Gamification of apps is interesting, right? I mean, you have the Robinhood crew that with the retail apps like GameStop and all that, right? Kids see this weird transition between the Robinhood group and also sports betting as well, right? It’s all becoming so much more accessible. And I think it’s This is my own personal feeling is that it’s teaching kids at a young age should be reckless with money. And yes, you’re going to see people on Reddit who are like, I made a million dollars. Great for every one person that looks out and makes a million dollars. Do you know how many people are losing a significant amount of money? I love investing, right? And I think Robin Hood is a great app. I think it’s a great app because kind of almost what you said about the love thing. I think Robin Hood adds some great features without sprawling too much and becoming confusing to use. The problem is it’s also making it so easy that. Maybe I don’t know. But and I love the love thing that you mentioned as well as like, how do you continue to add on to this app without confusing it? There’s a lot of games I play on my phone, and they keep adding features to it and features to it. And this feature has nothing to do with the rest of the game. And why do I have to do this now? It’s just like, I hate this now, because I have to come in here and spend 45 minutes doing things I don’t want to do in order to do what I want to do. So it’s fascinating to be able to see how you create a roadmap on how do you improve that core feature that people love to come and do I know, I just got the new the fold five, right. And I’m just trying to find these cool apps that actually utilize the fold. And it’s hard to find this stuff. And I’m curious. And because I feel like that’s kind of I love planning to write and then try to find good apps that can utilize both sides of the screen. And this kind of goes into the next question I had is like, How do you research these new apps that are coming out? How do you stay current in the industry? And I know you said data.ai, right, is great for showing you what are those top apps that are performing across the different categories, but how do you stay, other than reading your own website, how do you stay current in the industry?
37:14 – 40:44 Artem Dogtiev Well, my three pillar approach will be number one, finding good newsletters. Unfortunately, as much as you would try to kind of creating this digest of what’s cool in the certain area of business or anything yourself, you just don’t have time for it. If you can find a newsletter like my gold standard, Bennett Evans, a newsletter where he put together kind of a meta both meta picture on what’s going on in the IT, in the, um, on the, on the internet on the biggest scale. And at the same time, uh, covering smaller updates from big platforms when it’s relevant. And, um, I’m not saying that you’ll be able to read that newsletter on a daily or weekly basis. It depends on how much you’re busy on a daily basis, but at least a couple of times a month. you can get a really good holistic picture of what’s going on on the big scale. The second pillar will be podcasts. I’m biased. In this case, I host a podcast where I invite people from many businesses to talk so I can have a direct access. But you can find the podcast on the, like, it may be iTunes directory, the podcast directory from Apple or Spotify or Stitcher. There are many platforms where you can find podcasts for you to listen. It doesn’t matter if you’re on Android or iOS, both sides are covered. And this will be a good way for you to stay on top of things because It’s a matter of how much free time you have in your hands on a daily basis to be on top of things. And you can listen to podcasts when you’re doing something else. This is great. Unless you’re driving, please just listen to podcasts and drive. It’s not a good combination. You have to be mindful of what’s going on on the road. But when you’re at home and doing some stuff and you can listen and There are video podcasts, if you’d like to see something visually. But for that matter, you could just go on YouTube and subscribe to a channel. Which would be my third pillar, YouTube, as the way of staying on top of things. YouTube has grown to kind of a… the TV for you because of the production quality. You can find people who are really, really good in creating content, even though they never, they did not represent any big company, any media company, but still they’re really great in creating content that is useful, fun, and kind of hitting the golden line between being informative, but not too long. Yeah. YouTube channels, podcasts, and good newsletters.
40:44 – 41:31 Greg Posner Love it. And I think the one thing just to be wary of as well as with YouTube kind of like AI having hallucinogens, if you’re not following the right type of influencers on YouTube, or same with podcasts, right? You might get news that that’s not so favorable, which I think is a negative side of the whole social media side of things on how any type of news can become news. But I think those are all great sources. I know my wife and I, we spend a lot of time on YouTube now, because At the end of the day, I mean, we can flip through channels or we can find a channel that’s interesting and learn something or do something that’s a little more insightful. And I think there’s some great things out there that can help people learn this type of information. You mentioned all this media that you’re consuming, right? Whether it be podcast newsletters, you are also an avid reader, right? Are you still reading as much as you want or you find that your time is being taken up by these other channels as well?
41:31 – 42:57 Artem Dogtiev Well, my bookshelf on a Kindle app is pretty heavy. A lot of titles are sitting there that have nothing to do with the stuff we’re talking about right now. Behave, the book from Robert Sapolsky about psychology, is really great when it comes to what’s going on in our brain on a daily basis. How do we operate? The books like Biography of Steve Jobs, some books about physics, anthropology, and it’s, I’m not like, I don’t think I have a goal to read a book within a month or something, but I find it really convenient to read the book and switching between my iPhone and iPad. And just when the time permits, like usually it happens on the weekend or when I’m somewhere on a long commute. But yeah, I still manage to find a few hours a week to read something that I really love.
42:58 – 43:21 Greg Posner I’m envious. It’s funny, I’m thinking back to your vacation comment on being able to take a vacation with your family. I had two kids, I have a five-year-old and three-year-old and every chance I have to read a book is now completely gone. I miss the days of being able to sit on the beach or something and just read a book in quietness and then I’m looking forward to 18-ish years when I can send them out of my house and I can start doing that again.
43:22 – 43:29 Artem Dogtiev Yeah, my daughter is 18 years old, so I passed that moment a long time ago, but I do remember those years.
43:29 – 43:46 Greg Posner Yeah. Well, Art, I appreciate you coming on today. We learned a lot about app development. We learned about the business of apps. App Promotion Summit is also coming up in two days in San Francisco, so make sure you check that out. Is there anything else that you would like to just share or talk about, Art, before we end today?
43:46 – 44:27 Artem Dogtiev Yeah. Just one quick thing remember if you’re in your 20s right now and you’re beginning your own business When you will be in your 40s you’ll still have this feeling like you’re 20s inside of you and this is great But time is ticking try to Be more more mindful about your time the this balance between how much time you spend for work or for your family Something’s really hard to catch up later when you’re 40 plus trying to recall what would be great if I can go back in my 20s and do that thing instead of that thing. So be mindful of your time on what you’re spending it.
44:28 – 44:50 Greg Posner Love it. Thank you for that art and everyone. Time is precious. It’s the most valuable asset we have. So, so make sure you use it wisely and we’ll have all of art as long as, as well as business of apps information on our player engaged website. I really did appreciate you coming on today art. This is a insightful look at the kind of business of apps itself and I appreciate it. So thank you very much. I hope you have a great rest of the day.
44:50 – 44:52 Artem Dogtiev Thank you so much, Greg. Thank you for having me.
