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Post-mortems like this are always really enlightening. I'd really like to know more about some areas the author glossed over, though. What were the grey/black tactics they used to get past the initial chicken-and-egg problem? And what change did they introduce that caused a near-revolt of their userbase?

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My guess as to the grey / blackhat tactics they used to gain initial traction were: 1) Fake "sell-side" accounts to provide marketplace liquidity 2) Manipulating app store chart ranking through bot downloads or download services to acquire "buy-side" accounts

It sounds like the service basically stopped growing once they had to abandon the black hat techniques they were using (possibly because they grew large enough to attract scrutiny from the platform operators). If that's the case, there was never a business.

No, that's not it. I actually ended up talking about it my mixergy interview

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