Parisian mobile apps publisher Lumos Apps raises €1.6 million

Paris-based mobile apps publisher Lumos Apps has raised €1.6 million in a new funding round. Borrowing a page from the gaming industry playbook, the startup replicates the proven publishing model and applies it to all non-gaming categories, ultimately propelling developers’ titles further and further up the app store charts. The new funds will be used to continue the development of the firms’ proprietary prediction and automation technologies as well as bolster the team size.

Founded in 2020 by Vincent Hart de Keating and Damien Soulard, Lumos Apps builds upon Hart de Keating’s impressive CV that includes the title of co-founder and managing director at Homa Games, a firm, “specialised in the publishing, user acquisition and monetisation of mobile games,” and a stint as head of performance marketing with Berlin’s HitFox, what would eventually become the HitFox Group, and then Ioniq Likewise, Soulard’s technical expertise extends a decade prior.

With Lumos Apps, the duo is leveraging their previous publishing experiences in the gaming industry and extrapolating the methodology across all non-gaming sectors. The startup uses predictive and AI-based technologies to help clients up their game in all critical aspects of an app’s performance in the associated Apple and Google marketplaces, including User Experience, User Acquisition, App Store Optimization, and perhaps most critically, monetization. Armed with this information, Lumos Apps’ clients can expect smaller teams to be able to focus on working on a larger number of apps when compared to industry benchmarks.

When developers publish via Lumos Apps, the company’s Lumos Forecast product can provide an 85% accurate prediction of the future lifetime value of an installed app within just 4 days.

With the data gleaned from this prediction, the Lumos Bidder can then analyse the cost per install and future lifetime value of the user, and automatically configure, or reconfigure, the bids and budgets of all campaigns in all countries and networks, thereby maximising ROI.

And if that weren’t enough, Lumos Apps also provides developers with a 4-day cycle of AB testing that reports the most successful interation that has the highest lifetime value potential.

“There are so many companies and content creators who develop Apps that do not succeed. They are not mobile App experts and do not master the ins and outs of publishing an App,” explains Hart de Keating. “That’s what we do: we take care of all the production aspects of the App, while the company or the creator can focus on what they do best: producing great content”

And so it would seem that the proof is in the pudding, as Lumos Apps has already landed some 20 publishing contracts, with fitness application for women, Weburn, entering the Top 50 of most downloaded apps in the Health & Fitness category in the US, with phone customisation app Plaw climbing into the top 20 in the Lifestyle category in the US.

Lumos Apps’ €1.6 million in funding was provided by founder-founder VC firm Breega, alongside the ubiquitous Bpifrance.