Those YC founders pivoted 5 occasions prior to construction a social app that nabbed 300K customers and over $1M ARR in 6 months by way of NewsFlicks

A few months in the past, the founders at the back of YC-backed social app Candle had been in “pivot hell,” biking thru greater than a dozen concepts after becoming a member of Y Combinator’s Fall 2024 batch, whilst the clock on their seed cash ticked down.

Alex Ruber, prior to now an engineer at Apple, and Parth Chopra, previously an engineer at Asana and Twitter, had constructed a couple of initiatives in combination, together with Encore, a conversational AI buying groceries device that were given them into YC and with which they raised $2 million.

Alternatively, whilst the tech labored, the unit economics didn’t, consistent with Ruber.

“The secondhand buying groceries house is a difficult marketplace initially,” Ruber informed TechCrunch in an interview. “To win, you both turn out to be like Google Buying groceries or construct a truly robust market like Whatnot or eBay. That wasn’t a goal we would have liked to pursue.”

What adopted had been months of speedy experiments between remaining December and April, with pivots round concepts in spaces like type and sports activities, none of which caught. “We attempted greater than 10 other concepts within the span of 4 or 5 months,” Ruber stated.

The power started to pressure their very own relationships with buddies and companions, a well-known tale for lots of early-stage founders. Satirically, that pressure sparked the concept would in the end click on.

The primary model used to be easy: a swipeable deck of questions designed to spark conversations with their companions. Then an intern, now advertising lead on the startup, shared a TikTok concerning the app that went viral, swiftly gaining traction in Europe.

Downloads surged, comments poured in, and the staff leaned into the momentum. That early prototype has since advanced into Candle, a light-weight, gamified app that is helping {couples} and shut buddies keep hooked up.

Six months after release, Candle has grown to 300,000 customers, together with 150,000 {couples}. The corporate says greater than 250,000 are lively every month, with a DAU/MAU ratio of round 50%, a powerful sign of engagement for a client social app and an early signal of day-to-day addiction possible. Candle has additionally ranked in Apple’s App Retailer most sensible 25 a couple of occasions.

Candle’s wedge is maintaining current relationships with small, day-to-day activates and video games moderately than serving to other people in finding new ones. Customers solution fast questions, examine effects, proportion footage, and stay a “streak” that presentations how persistently they’ve checked in. The mechanics are textbook cell engagement aimed toward Gen Z and younger millennials.

In some other ordinary transfer for a client social app—however yet one more commonplace amongst more recent AI-native merchandise—monetization has come early. Candle’s per month earnings lately crossed $150,000, implying an annual run fee above $1 million.

The app runs on a freemium style: the loose tier provides day-to-day activates, picture updates, and core video games, whilst top class unlocks additional content material and lines.

Whilst expansion stays a concern for the startup, monetizing early is a robust sign of product-market have compatibility. “On the finish of the day, this app is helping other people enhance their connections. Maximum of it’s loose, but if customers pay for added content material and lines, it presentations actual product-market have compatibility,” the CEO stated.

The months-old platform is among the few apps within the house, along Paired and Couple Pleasure, designed to make relationships extra amusing. Those apps are tapping right into a cultural undertow the place post-pandemic paintings conduct, solo foods, and unending social feeds have hollowed out daily connections and left other people within the U.S. lonelier than ever.

For Candle, the wager is that the following wave of social at scale might be much less about broadcasting to strangers and extra about making it more uncomplicated to turn up day-to-day for a couple of shut other people. That perception, mixed with its founder and creator-led distribution engine throughout TikTok and Instagram, is how the staff hopes to keep away from the destiny of many client social apps that surge temporarily simplest to stall months later.

Nonetheless, the massive questions stay: sturdiness and intensity. Can a day-to-day photo-and-game app maintain 12-, 24-, or 36-month retention curves? Can Candle enlarge from light-weight activates right into a broader suite of “connection sorts” with out bloating the revel in? Ruber and CTO Chopra say that’s the roadmap: including extra techniques to earn “sparks,” the app’s level gadget, for a much wider vary of interactions, and introducing richer options that advertise consistency.

The seed cash raised for the staff’s previous buying groceries app will now give Candle the assets to carry on extra engineers, accelerate experimentation, and scale sooner. Present backers, together with Goodwater Capital, Pioneer Fund, Development Fund, and Y Combinator, are absolutely at the back of the brand new course, Ruber stated.