Here is a brief, honest look back at 2025 — the kind of post we wish more studios wrote.
What we shipped
Three new apps: Receipt Scanner, Minutelore, and Tattoo AI. We also shipped 47 substantial updates across the existing portfolio. Total work-in-anger: more than we did in any previous year.
The numbers
We do not publish exact revenue, but here is the shape of it:
- Active users across the portfolio crossed 100,000 monthly.
- Subscription revenue roughly tripled year over year. Most of that came from the existing portfolio, not the new launches.
- Refund rate stayed below 4% across all apps.
- App Store rating average across the portfolio is 4.7.
Three lessons
1. Small categories are still the move. Every win in 2025 came from doubling down on a category where we had a thesis and the existing apps were weak. None of our wins came from chasing a trend.
2. The portfolio compounds in surprising ways. A user who downloads Lunara has a non-trivial chance of installing Receipt Scanner six weeks later. We did not engineer this. It happened because the apps share a quality bar, an aesthetic, and a developer name. Worth investing in the next stage of cross-promotion.
3. Hiring slower than the work feels reckless and is correct. We added two people in 2025. We declined to add three more. Every quarter we revisit, and every quarter the answer is "not yet." Speed of execution per person is more valuable than headcount.
What is on the workbench for 2026
- Two new apps in categories we have been quietly researching for ten months.
- A serious investment in The Forge — this blog — because we want our work to be searchable and citable.
- Possibly one client engagement in Q1 if the right one walks in.
- Selectively opening a few apps for acquisition.
Thank you to every person who used a Tappa app in 2025. We will keep tempering the steel. See you in February.