Gilad Bechar has been building brands for 14 years. I’ve learned how to best achieve growth from being a few years in senior roles on the brand side, agency side, consultancy side, media side and startups. I’ve also served as a mentor & mobile expert at Microsoft Accelerator, and leading the mobile marketing and social media courses at Tel-Aviv University.
In your own words, what’s your role in the app business right now?
I lead Moburst which is the fastest growing digital mobile-first agency. In the past 8 years, I’ve worked on the biggest category leaders of mobile apps including Google, YouTube, Uber, Discovery, Robinhood, Playtika, Dropbox, Samsung, and many others.
I’ve helped those companies from strategy to execution of their mobile funnel from creative to organic and paid, growth hacking and product optimization.
How did you end up working in apps?
In my second marketing role, I was in charge of promoting the brand’s apps back in 2010, and I saw how different it was from promoting any other web-based product. I saw that the best practices are very different, and most companies treat it exactly like other digital products which is the wrong way to go.
After I got 5,000% growth with those apps by testing many different directions, I knew I figured something that others haven’t yet, and I decided to grow my career in this direction.
What are you most excited about in apps right now?
I just love the pace of everything moving so quickly and changing all the time. This is a super dynamic industry and there is a lot of innovation everywhere pushing the limits of mobile, performance, transparency, and engagement to a whole new level.
What other companies in the app space do you rate/ inspire you and why?
I think TikTok is a brilliant app and by working with their team very closely as we are a TikTok key agency, we get an amazing level of support from super talented people who really read the map of mobile like very few companies out there.
What do you like most about working in apps?
I really like the diversity, I can find myself working on 15 different projects per week, each one belongs to different verticals and each of them solves a very different problem for their customers.
What one thing would you change about the app industry?
The one change that I would do is to better regulate both Apple and Google. I’ve witnessed so many cases of startups that are pulled off from the App Store or Google Play Store for technical reasons and losing millions of dollars without any heads up or any good reason. I saw companies missing one line in their terms of service or privacy guidelines, not getting any approval issues for months, and then without any previous notice being punished and getting three weeks “off” from the App Store which is crazy and there is no cure but waiting for Apple or Google to come back.
If you weren’t working in apps what would you be doing?
I would definitely be involved with people, I love connecting and understanding different perspectives of human psychology.
iOS or Android?
iOS
Any Netflix/ TV show recommendations?
Black Mirror
Do you know someone driving change and growth in the app industry?
Nominate an app leader here.
