Apple

`3:51:14`

or you can't be in the app store. And first I thought like, well it got approved already. We're running on the same model. We've run Basecamp on in the app store for a decade. If you're not signing up through the app and we're signing up our own customers on our own website and they're just going to the app store to download their companion app, we're gonna be fine. That was the truth, right? That was why I never got so fired up about the app store. Even as Apple started tightening the screws was like my business was okay. Now suddenly my business wasn't okay. Apple was willing to destroy HEY if we did not agree to give them 30% of all the signups that came through the iOS app. And it wasn't just about the 30%. It was also about splitting and not longer having a direct relationship with our customers. When you sell an app in the app store, you're not selling an app to a customer. You're selling an app to inventory at Apple, and then Apple sells an app to that customer. That customer has a purchasing relationship with Apple.

`3:52:16`

So if you wanna give discounts or refunds or whatever, it's complete hell. If you want to easily support multi-platform that's complete hell if someone signs up for HEY on their iPhone and they wanna switch to Android. But that billing relationship, it's tied to Apple, it's complete hell. For a million reasons, I did not want to hand my business over to Apple. I did not want to hand 30% of our revenue over to Apple. So we decided to do something that seemingly Apple had never heard before. We said no, we're not gonna add the in-app payment. I don't care if you're threatening us. this is not fair, this is not reasonable, please approve. And of course they didn't and it escalated. And after a couple of days we realized, you know what? This isn't a mistake. This isn't going away. We're gonna be dead if they go through with this. If we're not gonna yield and give them the 30%, they're gonna kick us off unless we make such a racket

`3:53:21`

such noise that they will regret it. And that's exactly what then happened. We were blessed by the fact that we launched HEY one week before the WWDC, their Worldwide Developer Conference. Where Apple loves to get up on stage and harp on how much they do for developers, how much they love them and why you should bill for their new devices and so on and so forth. And then we also just happened to have a platform on the internet, which is very convenient when you need to go to war with a $3 trillion company. So I started kicking and screaming — Oh boy. — And essentially turning it up to 11 in terms of the fight and going public with our or denial to be in the app store. And that turned into a prolonged two week battle with Apple that essentially ended in the best possible outcome we could have gotten as David fighting Goliath, which was a bit of a truce. We wouldn't hand 30% over to Apple. They do wouldn't kick us out of the app store,

`3:54:21`

but we had to build some bullshit dummy account such that the app did something when you downloaded it. That was a rule that Phil Schiller seemingly made up on the fly when pressed for the fifth time by the media about why we couldn't be in the app store when a million other companion apps could. But we just happened to be able to create so much pain and noise for Apple that it was easier for them to just let us be than to keep on fighting. — What do you think about Tim Sweeney's victory with Epic over Apple? — I think it is incredible and the entire developer ecosystem. Not just on iOS but on Android as well, owe Epic, Tim Sweeney and Mark Rein, an enormous debt of gratitude for taking on the only battle that has ever inflicted a series wound on Apple in this entire sorted campaign of monopoly enforcement. And that is Epic's fight versus them.