JATAPP on Growth: What Actually Scales in Multi-Product Companies

In the newest episode of the Retention Podcast, we talk with Ivanna Horobets, CMO at JATAPP – a Ukrainian-born tech company quietly building a global footprint. JATAPP has launched 20+ mobile products across utilities, business, lifestyle, cybersecurity, education, and more, reaching millions of monthly users worldwide.

This isn’t your usual marketing checklist episode. Ivanna shares what it’s really like to drive growth across a multi-product portfolio, how to balance retention and acquisition without burning cash, and why clear strategy tends to beat shiny trends in the long run.

Below are the key takeaways from our conversation.

Ukraine Has Become a Global App Hub

Looking at the industry from the outside, Ukraine has quietly built one of the strongest app ecosystems in the world. Over the past five to seven years, Ukrainian teams have gone from competing locally to leading entire global niches, especially in Health & Fitness. 

Even amid the full-scale Russian invasion, power outages, and constant uncertainty, the pace hasn’t slowed. If anything, it has sharpened focus. There’s a strong sense that building, testing, and shipping great products is not just possible, but necessary.

That momentum shows up in how founders and teams think. Apps are treated as long-term craft, not quick experiments, and there’s a real appetite for pushing ideas further instead of playing it safe.

Where Health Apps Have Less Room to Experiment

Health-related apps don’t get the same creative freedom as most other products. From ads to onboarding to push notifications, everything has to be handled with care. You can’t exaggerate problems, invent fears, or push users into believing they have issues they may not actually have. The product has to be clear about what it does, what it doesn’t do, and why it can be trusted. That restraint starts at the creative level and carries through the entire user journey.

Utility apps operate under very different conditions. If a scanner or helper app feels playful or experimental, the risk is low. Users try it, solve a quick problem, and move on if it doesn’t click. That difference shapes funnels too. 

Health & Fitness products often benefit from longer, more explanatory paths that build confidence, while utilities win by showing immediate value and letting users act before their intent fades.

When Long Onboarding Actually Works

In Health & Fitness, long onboarding flows can be an advantage, not a blocker. Apps in this category often guide users through dozens of questions and screens because people expect deep personalization. They’re willing to share data, talk about their habits or pain points, and invest time upfront if they believe it will lead to a tailored plan or meaningful result. That expectation creates engagement. The length of the flow signals care, depth, and customization – even if the output isn’t always as personalized as users hope.

That logic breaks down in utility apps. Here, speed matters more than storytelling. Asking users to answer quizzes or go through lengthy onboarding just to scan a document or toggle a setting feels unnecessary, even awkward. Utilities win by helping users do one thing fast, right when they need it. 

The core skills still transfer across niches, but the execution changes. The key difference isn’t the frameworks or tools, it’s understanding user intent and respecting how much effort a person is willing to invest in that moment.

What a CMO Actually Does Day to Day

At JATAPP, the CMO role isn’t a clean break from hands-on work. It’s more of a gradual shift.

Some operational responsibilities carry over from earlier roles, but the focus moves toward building the right structure around key growth directions. That often means hiring for new initiatives, but just as importantly, growing people who are already performing well and helping them take ownership of bigger areas.

As those teams mature, the job becomes less about tracking today’s numbers and more about shaping what comes next. The focus turns to exploring new growth opportunities, evaluating potential products, and deciding which directions are worth long-term investment. At that level, the real impact comes from creating space for strategic thinking while trusting the team to keep execution strong.

"No-Meeting" Days: Making Space to Think on Purpose

When most of the job is meetings, thinking doesn’t happen by accident. It has to be scheduled. Setting aside specific “no-meeting” days creates room to step out of constant calls, close small tasks, and actually think about bigger questions. It’s the difference between reacting all week and having at least one moment to zoom out.

Daily thinking time sounds great in theory, but it rarely survives reality. Blocking out one or two days a week works better. Those days become a reset – a chance to reflect, connect the dots, and focus on longer-term direction instead of just keeping the calendar moving. Over time, that habit matters as much as any metric on the dashboard.

Subscriptions, Transactions, or Both

Subscriptions may be the default, but they’re not the only way to monetize. Even in utility apps, there’s room to test hybrids that mix subscriptions with one-off purchases or light ad-based access. The key question isn’t the model itself, it’s whether there’s a clear moment where users are willing to pay for something extra without committing long term. If a feature is useful occasionally but not every day, a transaction can feel natural rather than forced.

That flexibility opens space for creativity. A core subscription can cover everyday use, while specific actions unlock one-time payments or ads when the need arises. The real constraint isn’t the playbook, it’s resources. Testing multiple models takes time, focus, and discipline. When teams have that capacity, mixing monetization approaches often reveals value that a pure subscription model would leave on the table.

Where Monetization Ideas Get Interesting

The strongest monetization ideas tend to appear at the edges, not inside rigid models. Sticking to a single approach, like subscriptions only, can quietly limit growth. Often it’s not that other models don’t work – they simply haven’t been tested yet. Mixing subscriptions, one-time purchases, or alternative access points creates space to find value that a single playbook would miss. That flexibility matters, especially when different users are willing to engage with the same product in very different ways.

Testing, though, needs patience and perspective. One experiment isn’t enough, and a statistically “winning” result doesn’t always hold up long term. Some tests succeed by chance, others look good short-term but hurt revenue later. 

If something doesn’t hold, teams should feel comfortable rolling back and rethinking. In marketing, this all moves faster than in product, but the principle stays the same: don’t lock yourself into conclusions too early, and don’t be afraid to look beyond the obvious models.

How Teams Really Think About Lifetime Deals

Lifetime purchases sit in a tricky spot. In most cases, they’re not a first-choice monetization strategy. They can make sense when a user clearly isn’t going to convert to a subscription and is close to leaving. In that moment, a one-time payment can be a way to keep the user around, capture some value, and prevent churn to a competitor.

If there’s still a chance a user might pay later, that’s usually the better path. Subscriptions leave more room for long-term value. Lifetime or heavily discounted options tend to work best as targeted offers: during cancellation flows, for price-sensitive users, or as a last attempt to retain someone who still finds the product useful but doesn’t want an ongoing commitment.

It’s also not just about revenue. Keeping people actively using the product matters too. A user who stays – even on a non-ideal plan – still adds value through engagement, feedback, and long-term loyalty.

How LTV Is Built (or Broken)

LTV drops fast when a product overpromises. Strong ads and screenshots don’t help if the core feature doesn’t solve the user’s problem once they’re inside the app. Users notice that gap immediately and leave.

Small technical issues matter more than teams expect. Bugs, inaccurate results, or unstable features often show up first in App Store reviews – and those reviews are one of the clearest signals of where LTV is leaking.

What helps most is alignment. When the user is taken straight to the feature they came for – from ad to onboarding to the in-app flow – engagement increases. The more consistent that path is, the higher the chance the user stays and pays.

Re-Buying Users Might Become an Expensive Mistake

One of the easiest ways to burn a budget is paying twice for the same user. Re-acquiring someone who already installed, churned, and then came back through paid traffic is far more expensive than working with the audience you already have. Even in utility apps, where brand attachment is weaker, repeat purchase still adds unnecessary cost and friction.

That’s why retention, re-activation, and re-engagement matter so much. Existing users already have the app installed, which removes the biggest barriers: no download, no waiting, no onboarding fatigue. With the right pushes, retargeting, and deep links that land users exactly where they need to be, teams can convert, re-activate, and grow LTV without constantly starting from zero.

It’s Not About Frequency – It’s About Timing

Not every app needs instant activation, and not every user moment is equal. Fun, AI-driven apps like image generators can win users back later, when they’re relaxed, bored, or just scrolling on a weekend. Here, reminders work best when they feel like entertainment, not urgency.

Utilities are different, but timing still matters. Many have clear seasonality, by day of the week or even time of day. A scanner app, for example, is far more relevant on weekdays during work hours than on a Sunday afternoon. Smart teams lean into those patterns: fewer nudges when the use case is weak, more when the need is naturally there.

Why AI Products Are Easy to Launch – and Hard to Win

AI products change the game mainly because they rely on someone else’s technology under the hood. Most apps labeled “AI” today are built on third-party APIs, which lowers the barrier to entry but creates real dependency. That makes launches faster, cheaper, and more accessible – but also means teams don’t fully control costs, performance, or long-term differentiation. Building everything in-house is possible, but for most teams it’s simply too expensive.

On the marketing side, that low entry barrier fuels brutal competition. Traffic is there, interest is there, but standing out and converting users is much harder than it looks. AI creates hype and opportunity at the same time – yet demand isn’t infinite. The teams that win aren’t just shipping “AI features,” they’re figuring out how to clearly explain value, cut through noise, and turn curiosity into real usage.

In a Nutshell

Not all apps can afford the same level of freedom. Health & Fitness products need trust, careful messaging, and longer user journeys. Utilities have to deliver value fast, with minimal friction. AI apps attract attention easily, but turning curiosity into payment is still hard work. 

Across categories, the real wins come from practical choices: testing monetization models instead of defaulting to subscriptions, converting existing users before buying them again, aligning onboarding with what the user came for, and judging experiments by long-term impact, not quick spikes. 

Growth isn’t about clever tricks. It’s about knowing when to move carefully, when to move fast, and when to keep testing even if the answer isn’t obvious yet. And accepting that sometimes the best insight comes after the third “well… that didn’t work.”

If this one was useful, you can find more marketing conversations, ideas, and takeaways here.