Texting-Powered App Store Jest Hits $1M Run-Rate and Launches Second Developer Fund

Texting-powered app store Jest has achieved a major financial milestone, reaching a $1 million gross billing run-rate just three months after successfully enabling in-app purchases on its innovative platform. This rapid acceleration in revenue highlights the growing appetite among both mobile developers and consumers for alternative distribution models outside of traditional, heavily saturated legacy app ecosystems. The milestone arrives concurrently with the announcement of the company’s second major funding initiative aimed at supporting mobile games and entertainment applications that embrace text messaging as a primary medium.

According to data released in the company’s State of Jest Q3 report, the platform has recorded a remarkable 15 percent payer conversion rate among active users in the United States. This figure stands out significantly within the broader mobile technology sector, representing a performance nearly five times higher than standard mobile app benchmarks. Industry analysts frequently point to monetization and user conversion as some of the most persistent hurdles for independent developers launching new titles, making Jest’s high conversion rate a compelling data point for the alternative app marketplace.

User engagement metrics on the platform have similarly experienced exponential growth over the course of the year. Average daily time spent on Jest has tripled since the second quarter, reaching 24 minutes per user daily. Furthermore, the platform reported an overall usage growth of 400 percent, surging from one million to more than four million total plays across its catalog of apps and games. This surge in daily engagement suggests that users are not merely discovering content through text-based prompts but are actively returning to spend sustained periods interacting with the software hosted within the ecosystem.

Building on this momentum, Jest has officially launched Fund II, making up to $1 million available to developers who utilize texting as their primary distribution channel. The newly established fund is structured to support creative projects across three distinct stages of development. The first stage, labeled Explore, is designed to assist creators with early validation and the development of functional prototypes. The second stage, Scale, focuses on nurturing promising titles that have shown initial traction. Finally, the Flagship stage is dedicated to supporting established or breakout games looking to maximize their reach and commercial viability within the messaging-based ecosystem.

This second funding iteration follows a highly competitive inaugural program. Jest’s first fund attracted more than 200 applications from independent studios and developers worldwide. The platform accepted fewer than 10 percent of those submissions, a selective process that successfully helped grow Jest’s active catalogue from 30 titles to 60 titles. By providing capital alongside structural support, the initiative aims to lower the barrier to entry for developers navigating the complexities of modern software distribution.

To further entice creators to the platform, Jest offers a developer-friendly revenue share model in which creators can retain up to 90 percent of their net revenue. Crucially, the platform covers all underlying messaging fees, a cost that can otherwise accumulate rapidly for applications dependent on SMS or text-based user interactions. Beyond financial incentives, Jest provides a comprehensive suite of backend infrastructure tools designed to handle essential services such as secure payments, user notifications, authentication, and regulatory compliance. By absorbing these technical and administrative burdens, the platform allows development teams to focus primarily on game design, content creation, and user experience.

The rapid rise of Jest underscores a broader frustration among software creators regarding the economics and discoverability challenges associated with mainstream mobile marketplaces. Deyan Vitanov, CEO and co-founder of Jest, emphasized the fundamental shift in the digital landscape that motivated the creation of the platform. Artificial intelligence has fundamentally transformed the software development lifecycle, making the creation of applications faster, cheaper, and more accessible than ever before. However, getting those applications in front of consumers remains a formidable obstacle for independent teams.

Traditional app stores are completely saturated with millions of competing titles, making organic discovery increasingly difficult and expensive for developers without massive marketing budgets. Vitanov noted that the decision to build Jest was driven by the necessity to unlock an entirely new distribution channel rooted in everyday text messaging habits. In his view, the platform’s rapid growth and the enthusiastic adoption by users and developers alike serve as definitive proof of how desperately the mobile ecosystem needs a viable, high-performing alternative to legacy app stores. As Jest deploys its newly announced Fund II and continues to scale its infrastructure, the platform is positioning itself as a pivotal player in the evolving landscape of mobile gaming and application distribution.