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Chapter 1: Introduction
13
“We decided the only way you could get to a multi-billion dollar business is
through advertising. So given that, to build an advertising business, you’ve
got to have a lot of scale. You’ve got to build a consumer brand, acquire tens
of millions of users,” McCue told TechCrunch in spring 2011.
 is is the kind of language the app industry is beginning to use more and
more o en.  e CEOs themselves have begun to echo the standard VC
(venture capitalist) mantra to build it bigger and bigger, faster and faster.
 e VCs favorite word is scale, and although the tech industry has always
attracted a legion of the wealthy and bewildered, the App Store has
drummed up a mass of investment unseen since the dotcom boom.  e
Appillionaires have, through their success, spawned a climate where VCs
circle greedily. In meetings with them, you can almost see the dollar signs
spinning in their eyes. Armed with hedge-fund capital, and fresh from their
MBA, they are the pinstriped wildebeest hunting for  e Next Big  ing.
Max Slade from Johnny Two Shoes remembers the initial attack from VCs well.
A er the success of Plunderland, he had to take urgent action to fend them o .
“We actually unplugged our phone because we were getting so many calls
from VCs saying, “We want to give you some money; let’s give you some
money. Here, have some money. Money. Money!” Slade tells me. He then
mimes a grinning lunatic throwing out bundles of cash. Oddly, this is
possibly the most accurate depiction I’ve witnessed of how investors react to
an App Store success story. In the end, Slade declined to accept any VC cash.
 is book also serves as an exposé of the app VCs and the people they hunt,
desperate to invest their cash in the early stages of a your dream.  ey’re
eager to talk to young hopefuls like Andrew Lim who is, like me, a former
journalist turned app developer.
Lim is trying to get venture capitalists interested in his new app idea. When I
 rst asked him what his idea was he told me, “I’m making the next Face-
book. Facebook Two, basically.” He then burst into laughter. I told Lim it was
possibly the least-convincing pitch I’ve ever heard.
“I’ve been talking to investors and I haven’t been to a single pitch where I
haven’t burst out laughing or they haven’t burst out laughing,” Lim
explained. “It is madness, but there’s a small window of opportunity to make
an impact. You’ve got crazy people coming into the app scene, there’s
ridiculous money out there and there’ll be a crash. But there will also be a
second spike, where it’s all more re ned.”
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