AppTweak Raises $22 Million to Grow ASO Platform Worldwide

Today is a big day. We are beyond excited to officially announce that AppTweak has raised $22 million in Series B funding from one of our early investors, Media Group Rossel. Ready to launch the second stage rocket?

From Startup to Scaleup

You may have seen the $22 million fundraise news article published exclusively on Tech.eu on April 1st (and no, this was not an April Fools’ prank). After an impressive revenue growth of 957% over the past four years, it is time for us to move on to the next chapter.

When we launched in 2014, App Store Optimization (ASO) was still an obscure acronym for many companies. We never thought that we would be standing where we are today.

AppTweak started as a side project called “The ASO Toolbox” in which we would invest some time (and a lot of fun) after regular working hours. The core feature generated an instant ASO report with actionable recommendations for any app or game on the App Store.

With the impressive growth of the mobile market, it didn’t take too long for us to realize that this project could become much more than a side project. This is when we started to look for our first investors.

Back in 2014, we closed a seed round of a total of $1 million led by Media Group Rossel, Brustart, Be Angels, Xavier Huerre and Cindy Naegel. The round was split into two years. The first investment allowed us to hire our very first employees (Laurie and Cedric, happy 7th anniversary!) and helped us to develop new features, including the foundation of our keyword tool.

The second round in November 2015 allowed us not only to accelerate the pace of development, but also to pioneer the implementation of new unique data, such as Apple Search Popularity, and increase our marketing efforts.

After these two key moments, AppTweak continued to grow organically and impressively. By 2017, we were profitable.

From then on, every year we would break our all-time revenue record. Every year, our product would offer between 30 and 50 new innovative features. Every year, the number of our customers would keep increasing.

In just a few years, our team grew from 4 to 50 full-time employees spread across 4 continents and supporting more than 1,500 customers in over 70 countries, including mobile leaders such as Yelp, Amazon Music, Jam City, SoundCloud, Adobe and many more.

Powered by Media Group Rossel

A few months ago, we realized that growing organically was probably not going to be enough to sustain our high ambitions.

The increasing demand for our products, customer support and managed services highlighted the need for us to hire quicker and expand to new locations sooner.

We started to look for investors but quickly realized the best partner we could have hoped for was already on board: Media Group Rossel.

Rossel is a leading family-owned media group with its main activities based in Belgium and France. The group has supported and trusted AppTweak since our early startup stages back in 2015.

Given the strong relationship and the immense business opportunity, a stronger alliance made sense for both companies.

Additionally, Rossel owns 70 brands and has a workforce of over 3,000 employees. Investing in AppTweak is clearly aligned with the group’s strategic vision of digitization.

Global Expansion, Innovation, Diversification

We have a solid roadmap coming ahead and we’re very excited to share our vision for the next few years with you.

Firstly, the investment will help us expand AppTweak’s global presence. Our current offices in San Francisco, Brussels, Tokyo and Bengaluru will continue to grow and we will also launch several new locations in the APAC and EMEA regions over the next three years.

Secondly, we will continue to grow our ASO platform with more innovation and more unique features. As you know, our mission is to build the most transparent, accurate and easy-to-use ASO tool. We will invest a lot of effort to maintain our leadership in the industry. We have many unique new features that I can’t wait to share with you. Stay tuned!

Lastly, we will expand our team of ASO Experts and diversify our managed services for Enterprise clients to support the growing demand for tailored recommendations.

We’re Hiring!

As you have probably guessed, we will hire many talents in the next few months and years. Are you interested in joining our team? Or maybe you know someone who would fit our culture?

Either way, please feel free to regularly check our job opportunities – we will be frequently updating this page with new openings!

I also want to take a moment to thank every single AppTweak team member. Each of you. Your commitment to always go the extra mile is what makes AppTweak so successful today. We have built an amazing team with a strong culture. I am very proud to be part of such a talented team.

Let me also thank Sébastien Dellis, my co-founder. I remember exactly when and where we discussed the potential of developing an ASO tool for the first time.

Lastly, a massive thank you to all our amazing customers and partners. Thank you for your support throughout the years and for helping us build a fantastic company. We look forward to working with you for many more years to come.

Now, let’s launch the second stage rocket!

Olivier