App Store
also referred to as: the app store
22 statements across 18 episodes · 6 bullish · 7 bearish · 9 people on the record · first statement Jul 16, 2017 by Alex Rampell · said 108 times in 48 episodes since 2017 · across every show →
Mentions by year
brought up most by Benedict Evans (22), Olivia Moore (12), Steph Smith (8), Eugenia Kuyda (7), Steven Sinofsky (5), Michael Copeland (4), Anish Acharya (4), Andrew McAfee (Andy) (4)
tap a year for its mentions
2026 7 mentions in 4 episodes 2 per episode
2025 20 mentions in 8 episodes 3 per episode
- Seeing The Future from AI Companions to Personal Software
- Robinhood CEO: Making Everyone An Owner
- Why Creativity Will Matter More Than Code | Kevin Rose and Anish Acharya
- The Top 100 GenAI Products, Ranked and Explained
- Building the Next Generation of Conversational AI
- Where does consumer AI stand at the end of 2025?
- What DeepSeek Means For The Future Of AI | Tech Veterans Weigh In
- How AI is Reshaping Labor Markets: A $Trillion-Dollar Opportunity Explained
- every mention in 2025, scene by scene →
2024 7 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode
2023 20 mentions in 6 episodes 3 per episode
- The State of Apps with Olivia Moore
- Growth vs Efficiency: Can You Have Both?
- Big Ideas 2024: The Consumer AI Battleground Moves from Model to UX with Alex Immerman
- AI Copilots and the Future of Knowledge Work with Microsoft's Kevin Scott
- The Rise of the Exponential Organization with Peter Diamandis and Salim Ismail
- The Challenge of Replicating Reality with Steve Zhao from SandboxVR
- every mention in 2023, scene by scene →
2022 2 mentions in 1 episode
2019 49 mentions in 24 episodes 2 per episode
- a16z Podcast | How Many Taps in the Apple (Plus) Tree?
- a16z Podcast | The Micro and Macro of Mobile
- a16z Podcast | Bots and Beyond
- a16z Podcast | Companies, Networks, Crowds
- a16z Podcast | The Topic That's Lasted the Entire History of Computing -- Bundling and Unbundling
- Founding Stories: Synapse
- a16z Podcast | We Gotta Talk Pokémon Go
- a16z Podcast | Fintech Revolution or Evolution?
- 16 more episodes that year, every mention in 2019 →
2018 1 mention in 1 episode
2017 2 mentions in 1 episode
Everything said about App Store, oldest first
Jul 16, 2017 bullish
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Benedict Evans: Modern mobile app stores are like Yahoo in 1995
“When you look at an app store today, it's like looking at Yahoo in 95. You know, you can browse a million apps. You could browse a 100,000 websites, but it doesn't scale. And there's no way for you to find the right things that you want to use on that device.”
Jan 2, 2019 bullish
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Evans: Creating an app store inside Messenger just shifts discovery problems
“It's like, problem, the app store has two million things in it. Solution, create an app store inside Messenger. Problem, the Messenger app store has two million things inside it. Like, if you haven't actually done something, you have to do some other thing. Al…”
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Evans: App Store subscriptions unlock sustainable economics for productivity software
“The introduction of new subscription pricing options last week, potentially changes the economics for a developer, because now if you're going to make a really interesting productivity app, instead of having to charge 50 dollars for it, or give it away for fre…”
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Alex Rampell: Apple threatens Amazon with App Store removal over in-app purchases
“And Apple is saying, hey, you want to go buy this streaming video from Amazon? Uh-uh. Can't do it on an Apple phone. The Amazon app will not let you buy certain types of things because otherwise Apple would remove it from the app store.”
Jan 2, 2019
McAfee: Steve Jobs fought opening the App Store to developers for a year
“The compliments are so tricky that they actually tripped up Steve Jobs really badly. This is not lore. This is fact. He did not want to open up the app store to any outside developers. He thought he had to maintain super tight control over that digital environ…”
Jan 2, 2019 neutral
Evans: Apple's App Store exists to drive high-margin iPhone sales
“The classic thing that drives me crazy, people talking about Apple, thinking that the app store is like a primary revenue driver for Apple, when the whole purpose of the app store is to drive sales of a 700 dollar iPhone every two years at a 50% gross margin.”
Apr 1, 2019 positive
Sinofsky: Apple has roughly 360 million worldwide subscribers
“And so one thing that's super interesting, just out of the gate, is Apple has three hundred and sixty million or so subscribers worldwide. That's a sort of a vanity number because it includes subscriptions to apps in the App Store, but because Apple gets a cut…”
Apr 1, 2019 neutral
Feb 9, 2023
Moore: 7-Eleven app consistently tops App Store on Free Slurpee Day
“Another one that I think a lot of people were surprised to see hit number one this year was the seven-eleven app for the convenience store chain, but that almost always hits number one on free Slurpee day, July, every year, because you have to have the app to …”
Feb 9, 2023
Jun 4, 2024 negative
Jun 4, 2024 neutral
Multiple top mobile AI apps are copycat wrappers arbitraging OpenAI's models
“So there are quite a few apps on our mobile app list that are essentially copycat products and using OpenAI's own model, but are named slightly differently, and are just kind of playing this, like, maybe short to medium term arbitrage on App Store optimization…”
Jun 20, 2024 positive
Mar 26, 2025 negative
Oct 22, 2025
Nov 5, 2025 positive
Nov 5, 2025 negative
Dec 29, 2025 neutral
Aug 26, 2026 neutral
Acharya: Consumer AI resembles Web 2.0 distribution, not mobile app stores
“There's no app store for AI. So this actual product cycle for consumer looks more like Web two point O, where you have to kind of build the channel alongside the product and less like mobile, where you actually have the central point of distribution for the en…”