Heroes in Business - Steven Cravotta, Creator Wordle 8M Downloads, Number 1 app store

Episode Date: April 11, 2022

Do Not Wait. The 1 Thing You Must Do For Your Business NOW. Steven Cravotta, Creator Wordle 8M Downloads, Number 1 app store is interviewed by David Cogan famous celebrity host of The Heroes Show and founder Eliances entrepreneur community. @stevencravotta (TikTok)  

Up in the sky, look, it's captivating, it's energizing, it's Alliances Heroes. Alliances is the destination for entrepreneurs, investors, CEOs, inventors, leaders, celebrities, and startups, where our heroes in business align. Now, here's your host flying in, David Kogan, founder of Eliance's. That's right. I'm flying right in and I couldn't be more happier than ever because I have the honor to be able to interview some of the most amazing people that we always, always, always learn something from. These are doers. These are ones that are creating jobs, creating opportunities, entertaining others like no other. So make sure again, you go to alliances. That's E-L-I-A-N

C-E-S.com. And you all know why, because it's the only place where entrepreneurs align. And thank you for the feedback. Keep it coming. When I just recently had on the former CEO of Atari and also the chairman of CNBC. So again, make sure that you go to alliances.com. All right. I got to talk about our next guest today. First of all, what does 8 million downloads have to do with our next guest? The number one word game in the app store. In fact, welcome to the show, Stephen Carvata. Such a pleasure to hear and see you today. Why don't you steal

the thunder? What did you create that's got 8 million downloads? Hi, David. Thank you so much for having me, first of all, it's an honor to be on the show. Really appreciate it. Yeah, I created an app six years ago called Wordle. And yeah, like you said, it's amassed 8 million downloads. And it's just been an absolute whirlwind these past 8 million downloads in the past two months. And it's been an absolute whirlwind. I never expected this to happen. All right. So when you create a Wordle, I mean, did you ever think like that it would get past a hundred downloads, 10 downloads? Yeah, no, absolutely. So I created Wordle when I was 17 and I already had a bit of experience building mobile apps. And, you know, my first, the game I had

before Wordle called Grid had close to half a million downloads. So, you know, my first, the game I had before, Wordle, called Grid, had close to half a million downloads. So, you know, I had a little bit of experience here and I knew going into it that I would promote this. I just had no idea it would get to this scale. So what are the secrets to be able to build something and be so successful as you've been to get past, quite honestly, what's the average? Most people don't get past maybe 300 or 500 downloads. Right. It's a lot of trial and error. And I think, you know, personally, I'm a marketing focused. I first focus on marketing before I even

start building the product. So that's huge for me. I love to understand like how I'm going to promote a product before I even start building it. That's kind of like the first thing I think about. All right. So you built this when you were in high school? Correct. And now are you done with college? I'm done with college. All right. That's got to be a good feeling. So then what's, what's, what's next for you? What are you going to be doing next? Yeah, absolutely. Um, I have a day job. I work at a advertising agency here in Santa Monica, California. And you know, my side houses are, I still do apps um my my latest project project is called puff count um it's an app that helps people quit vaping helps people quit nicotine um i started that in college um when you know vaping really took over it's it's really an epidemic um even to this day

i think um so you know i saw that kind of taking place and all my friends and myself included were getting addicted. And I saw an opportunity to build a product and use my skill set that would help people. So that's what Puff Count is. That's amazing. And you do good things. Talk to me about $50,000 and what you did with that. Yeah, absolutely. So Wordle kind of you know took the world by storm um and it i didn't really expect that to happen so um the reason well another another developer built another game called called wordle um but his his game was only on browser not on the app store and my world was on the app store right so you know uh the game started blowing up and you know we were kind of feeding each other downloads and stuff like that so i connected with the other word developer uh called jock his name is josh i reached out to him on twitter and i was like hey josh like um these

games are blowing up and i see that you're not really capitalizing on this like you're not making any revenue here so um let's connect and find a way to donate the proceeds that I've been receiving from my world. And we can donate this to a literacy nonprofit. So we connected, we went back and forth. And his partner actually had a connection with a charity called Boost West Oakland. And they're located in Oakland. So, you know, I took the opportunity to go out there and meet the great people at Boost and donate $50,000, which is great because they're an afterschool tutoring program focused on, you know, teaching kids reading and writing skills. So it falls perfectly in line with word games.

That's incredible. You've got a lot going on here. That's great. Again, we've got with us Steve Carvata, creator of Worldly app. You can reach him by going to his social media at Stephen Carvata. We're talking now 8 million downloads, the number one word game in the app store. Stephen, share with us some of the secrets. How do you win on it? What's some of the inside secrets of the app? A lot of practice. That's the best part about the game. You don't really win. You just take yourself as far as you can. It's really about learning. It's a great way to warm your brain up in the morning. It's a great game to give your kids even to teach them more about putting words together, enhance their reading and writing skills.

So I would just say have fun with it. There's a there's there's a leaderboard CFR. You can get up the leaderboard, but have fun with it and challenge yourself. That's awesome. So no secret hacks. No. None that you're going to share right now. Maybe we'll share it off screen. We'll be between you and down the line, but.

Yeah. Maybe just between me and you. Absolutely. They'll be wondering who's this David guy around getting to the top. So tell me about though, you know, you mentioned about how, you know, the next app and future apps and stuff, how you actually are doing, you're actually doing marketing in that before you even develop it yeah well i think well yeah it's i think it's important to think you know marketing first when you're building a product and when you expand on that expand on that yeah absolutely so i just like that's just how I think like naturally I was grown up,

like growing up, my dad was a salesman. So, you know, I always had sales on my mind. I was always thinking about selling stuff. Um, and that kind of evolved into me going on social media and, you know, building social media accounts and marketing and selling stuff that way. So I think just the way I was brought up and the way that my mind works is marketing first. And if I see something like vaping, for example, and I see that that's a massive problem and there are millions of people addicted to it, I know that's already a marketable product. And it's something that's going to help people. And the message of quitting vaping is going to reach millions of people. So I knew that would be a successful product, and it has been. this that the message of like quitting vaping is going to reach millions of people um so i knew

that would be you know a successful product and it has been you know pub count has been downloaded close to 200 250 000 times and um we're helping people quit vaping every day um so that's just kind of like the way the way i think about stuff is is it's important to know your audience before you start building a product and like have a have a deep understanding of the way your audience thinks before you build that product but with all the apps that are in the store i mean every time you go there and there's ones that have the you know the paid part on top i mean there's millions so many to even find the app that you want to download um how did you start where was the traction then on puff count like yes people know that it's an issue but how would they even know that it even exists in an app store great question um and that was something

i struggled with you know i knew this was a marketable product but you know it was really the the question was like where do i market this um margins are very slim on mobile apps so um i started puffount two years ago, and that was kind of right at the beginning of the massive TikTok wave. And coming from other social media like Twitter and Instagram, like I understood that TikTok was the next thing. So I really went full force on TikTok, made videos just myself for the past two years,

and kind of blew up the PuffCount product and profile on TikTok. It now has 90,000 followers, I think 5 million likes across all of its videos and probably closing in on 50 million media views on its TikTok account. So to any entrepreneur or any business owner out there, you 100% need to be on TikTok starting today. Do not wait. This opportunity will go away soon. It's like the early days of Facebook right now on TikTok. It's insane.

Right. Amazing. And you said now that you're working and doing digital work for another company and stuff, is this company then rolling out different things too? Or tell maybe a little bit more about your role. Yeah, absolutely. So I joined, it's a company called Advertise Purple. too or like we'll tell maybe a little bit more about your role yeah absolutely so um i joined it's it's it's a company called advertised purple i worked there as a marketing coordinator i joined

uh right out of college and um that's my professional day job uh aside from the side hustles but you know i really enjoy it it's um it's a it's a chance to uh you know enhance my career professionally and learn something and um uh yeah it's a big company that i work at now what about people that have an idea for an app they have a concept of it they're going to start working as you mentioned of kind of doing the promo first kind of the instead of they build it they will come it's now show them where to come and build it right right um what what how how does someone even go you know if they don't have the technical skills of that of what you have where do they even start yeah that's a great question um i think it really helps if you have

a personal understanding of the product like for for vaping, I was addicted to vaping, which is one of the main reasons that I built the product. So I understood what the product would look like before that. And I understood that there was a community there and I asked my friends and I was like, hey, what do you think about this idea? And they kind of gave me great feedback on that. But I think it's important to find that community.

And you can do that in multiple different ways, right? You can go on Reddit, subreddits and see what the community is talking about you can build a social media and build the community that way um and you can build an audience there and kind of get feedback on your initial ideas which is helpful but also too the way i started puff cam was i built a wireframe so like get a visual of the idea, a visual of the product. And then once you show people the visual, even if it's not like real, like they'll get a much better understanding of what your product is. And there'll be much more like inclined to, to give you feedback. And it becomes more real if you, if you have a wireframe first,

and it's cost effective to do that. Awesome. Well, Stephen, this is a hero show. And certainly what you've built is Awesome. Well, Steven, this is a hero show and certainly what you've built is huge. Again, 8 million downloads, like that is a huge accomplishment. Who's your hero? Gotta say my, it's cliche, but definitely my dad. I grew up, like I said, he was a salesman. So I grew up in this kind of environment where, you know, he was hustling and, you know, always told me to do my own thing. And, you know, the thing he always told me was be your own boss, like eventually like work for yourself and whatever it takes to get there, you know, do it. So that was, that was kind of where I got this

side hustle and the motivation to kind of do my own thing. I'm glad that he told me that for sure. No, that's huge. Huge. Words of advice and stuff. And now what advice would you give to high school students to be able to, you know, get something launched, get up, you know, get on the platform. Heck, even getting an app on the store, right,

is walking through, going through a ton of hoops. Yeah. If you're passionate about something, take a bet. Take a bet on yourself. Whether that's time or a little bit of savings you do have, just take that bet on yourself. I took a bet on myself when I was 16 years old.

I built Wordle. It took a lot of my time away. It took some of my weekends away and took a little bit of investment. My savings at the time when I was in high school, I put those all into this game. of my time away took some of my weekends away and took a little bit of investment you know my my savings at the time when i was in high school like i put those all into this to this game and you never know what can happen so you know take a bet on yourself i think i have a painting down here yeah let's see it let's see the painting look at that did you do that no i one of my uh one of my good friends made that for me it It says bet on yourself, though. That's my motto.

That's awesome. Well, I'm sure your father must be very proud of you. Thank you. Well, Stephen, you created an addictive word game and also helping others break their habits all while giving back. You know what, Stephen? That's a hero. Stephen Cravata, creator of creator of worldly app 8 million downloads number one word game make sure you go to the app store make sure you follow now at stephen

cravata we'll also have the link below you'll see the name below make sure again you reach out to him stephen cravata thank you so much for being on the alliances hero show for being on the Alliance's Hero Show. David, it was a pleasure. Honored to be here. Thank you again so much. That's right, you got the brief. All right.