Maple Media is the preferred exit partner for mobile app founders.

Thinking about selling your mobile app business? Over 30 mobile app founders have completed successful exits with Maple Media, where their original work still thrives today.

We are a team of Los Angeles based mobile app engineers, product managers, designers, marketers, monetization, QA and customer support experts; who love building mobile app businesses. Maple Media is led by Jam City, Google, Electronic Arts & Scopely veterans.

Maple Media provides founder-friendly exit opportunities for founders and creators of mobile apps and games. We acquire successful apps and combine the original developer’s roadmap and technology with our extensive development, product and marketing resources to improve the user experience and ensure the long term viability of the product. We’ve assessed thousands of app businesses and construct fair and accurate valuations and move quickly to protect your time. When you are ready to exit, our process is quick, transparent, provides you liquidity and peace of mind. Plus, we do business nearly everywhere in the world.
We understand what it takes to launch - and sustain - a product users love. However, without adequate resources and active management, great apps often languish and decline. At Maple Media, your app and users are in the capable hands of our world-class app operations team. Our team of experts has seen it all, and are ready to seamlessly take on all of the daily challenges you face in your app business to keep users happy long into the future.
Starting the process of selling a business is intimidating, and there are plenty of buyers in the market that will kick tires and waste your time. We respect you, and your time. If your business performance aligns with our acquisition strategy, we’ll own the process and move quickly to agree to terms, complete due diligence and deliver payment to you. We handle every aspect of the operating transition we can. Typical transition times are as short as 3-5 business days, depending on the complexity of the business.
Exiting your business, which represents years of your work, is a major personal decision. We are not focused on short term tactics like “flipping” apps or deploying exploitative tactics that upset users. Instead, we operate our businesses with a long term outlook, and expect to grow and support all businesses we operate for years to come. We only invest in products we believe are inherently valuable and useful. User retention is our #1 priority. We will work with you to understand what you most value and aim to protect and advance the legacy of each founder, while maintaining the spirit of your product as the market evolves.

Seller Stories: Hear directly from founders about their experience.

Each founder’s story and product are unique, but they often reach similar crossroads.

Long hours, endless app updates, complex app store policies, and time away from the people you love all take a toll. Things change.

New ventures, family, and changing life circumstances are all motivators to restore your independence and enjoy your success. We have acquired over 30 businesses from founders like you. Here are a few of their stories.

“I had been wanting to move back to Australia and was shifting gears in terms of projects I was pursuing. Of all potential buyers, Maple Media understood the product best, and had an action plan to continue to build out Player FM even further.”

-Michael Mahemoff, founder of Player FM
Player FM - Podcast App

Founding Story: In 2011, podcasting was rapidly gaining popularity, but no podcast app existed that worked well on mobile, desktop, at home, and in the car; all the places you want to listen to podcasts. London-based Michael Mahemoff founded Player FM to address this need and created a podcast platform with a unique emphasis on cross-platform listening and podcast discoverability. Over the coming years, Michael, a technical founder, along with a small and talented team, successfully scaled Player FM to become a top-ten podcast app globally, reaching millions of listeners per month.
The Challenge: After more than 9 years of independent operations, Michael was planning a move from London back home to Australia, and wanted to take on new projects as well. Complexities managing international business entities, scaling server operations to handle an increasing user base, as well as keeping up with the rapidly changing podcast ecosystem were becoming difficult to manage without scaling the team up further. Michael engaged Maple Media to explore a transition out of the business.

Player FM & Maple Media: Following the acquisition of Player FM in 2020 (including four Player FM team members who remain full-time employees), Maple Media has invested in Player FM product, content partnerships, design, and app operations. Player FM is now available on new platforms, including Apple Watch, iPad, and Apple Carplay. Maple Media also partnered with leading podcast hosting providers, including Libsyn and Buzzsprout, to expand the Player FM library. A Player FM brand update and UI/UX redesign launched in 2021 to modernize the platform. Player FM continues to be one of the most-downloaded podcast apps worldwide and celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2021.

SwiftScan

Founding Story: As smartphone camera quality has increased, mobile document scanning has become a fast, easy, and secure substitute for physical document management. Christoph Wagner and his team at Scanbot (doo GmbH) recognized this opportunity and built a world-class, privacy-first document scanning platform. Based in Germany, the Scanbot team built an SDK that could be licensed by other developers, and launched a consumer app on the App Store and Google Play. The Scanbot app quickly grew, reaching millions of users and earning Editor’s Choice and App of the Day accolades.
“We put our hearts into this project and wanted it to have a good home. In addition to moving quickly, Maple Media proved they had the technical competency and the infrastructure to give our app a new life. Shout out to Michael [CEO of Maple Media] specifically, who established trust and built a multi-year relationship with us.”

- Christoph Wagner, CEO
The Challenge: Just as the Scanbot app grew, the Scanbot SDK also found success. The Scanbot Scanner SDK is now used by over 200 businesses, including Aflac, to power scanning in their apps. After taking the helm as CEO in 2016, Christoph found himself managing both a B2B and B2C business, both of which required different core competencies. By 2019, it was clear that executing on both businesses with the same team would hold back the firm, so Christoph engaged Maple Media to explore an exit strategy for the Scanbot app.

SwiftScan & Maple Media: Maple Media has sought to stay true to the privacy-focused, ecosystem-agnostic approach that fueled Scanbot’s success. Maple Media launched a rebranding campaign and Scanbot is now known as SwiftScan, tactically managing user expectations separating the B2B Scanbot brand from the consumer app, which was important to Christoph. Maple Media has also grown SwiftScan’s subscription offering by launching new features and a new subscription management backend. Maple Media’s marketing team has achieved greater recognition for the product as well, securing coverage from The New York Times, PC Mag, and other top publications that recognize SwiftScan as the leading, privacy-safe document scanning, editing, text extraction, and fax app on the market.

Pulse SMS

Founding Story: Pulse SMS, a leading Android messaging app, was launched in 2016 by Luke Klinker while he attended the University of Iowa. Pulse SMS created a way for Android users to send and receive SMS messages across multiple platforms - including Android, Mac, PC, and web. The app quickly scaled to millions of users and became the highest-rated messaging app on Google Play; users loved the ability to send and manage messages across devices.
“Owning your own business comes with major benefits, but it consumes your life. I love what I built and I’m super proud of it, but managing user support as a one-man operation can be an immense challenge during a period of rapid growth.”

- Luke Klinker, founder of Klinker Apps and creator of Pulse SMS
The Challenge: As Pulse SMS grew, Luke faced the challenges of a technical solopreneur head on, managing everything from design and development, to customer support. However, the stress and constant pressure to deliver for users was a difficult burden to constantly carry. Reducing stress and not feeling constant pressure to work on the app became more and more appealing to Luke, so he engaged Maple Media to explore an exit.

Pulse SMS & Maple Media: Following the acquisition by Maple Media, Pulse SMS is now supported by a larger team, including our product group, marketing team, and 24/7 global customer support. Users have been excited by more frequent updates, launch of many top requested features, and faster turnaround times for fixes and optimizations. Pulse SMS also has undergone a full backend update, allowing for greater scale and cost management to modernize the infrastructure, led by Maple’s services team.

Maple Media uniquely offers fair market mobile app valuations, technical and product operating experience, and private equity financing with a track record of successful transactions.

We know mobile. Mobile businesses are different from other platforms, and we know the SDKs, tech, analytics, monetization, and publishing tools inside and out. We quickly evaluate your businesses and provide you a fair valuation based on our analysis of thousands of app businesses.

We have the expertise to operate your app. Most firms don’t have the capability or capacity to immediately operate your business. Our world-class engineering, product, and marketing teams are ready to ramp up and manage your app for years to come, starting today.

We have the capital. Our private equity structure provides the capital needed to immediately fund our acquisitions. Maple Media is backed by Shamrock Capital Advisors, an LA-based investment firm with over $3.5 billion in assets under management whose portfolio includes leading media brands, such as Adweek, Wpromote, Ad Results Media, and FanDuel.

We have the track record. Dozens of founders have successfully exited to us, and our portfolio of high quality apps has continued to grow each year. We won’t waste your time and only engage founders with intent to close. We believe in building and growing great products, and can complete transactions nearly anywhere in the world.

Maple Media is the preferred exit partner for mobile app founders.

Seller Stories: Hear directly from founders about their experience.

Player FM - Podcast App

SwiftScan

Pulse SMS

Maple Media uniquely offers fair market mobile app valuations, technical and product operating experience, and private equity financing with a track record of successful transactions.

Get in touch with our valuation team.