Last night, I learned that PAH!, a new iPhone application built by Israel Roth, Eyal Shahar, and Yosi Taguri, had cracked the top five apps on the AppStore. The game allows users to control a stylized spacecraft by yelling loudly into their iPhone. It’s a brilliant bit of execution – and a brilliant joke in which the user is a willing participant. Yes, it’s fun to play an iPhone game in the privacy of your own private iBubble, but wouldn’t it be more fun to play a game that shatters the walls of that bubble and forces everyone within earshot to be a part of your game? It’s comic genius.
More impressively, however, I learned that people have yelled “PAH!” into the game well over a million times. The game does not have a million users yet – and not even 100,000, but the users that it does have seem to really love it.
It is, of course, too early to tell if – at $0.99 per download – PAH! will generate multiple millions for its founders (possible), if PAH! will be the first step in building a valuable mobile game development shop (no way to know), or if from now on, more and more mobile games will involve people yelling into their phones at full volume (highly unlikely).
What is clear is that Israel, Eyal, and Yosi have caused people to do something a million times. That’s a very meaningful milestone in the life of any company. It almost doesn’t matter if you’ve gotten a million people to do something once or ten thousand people to do something a hundred times – as long as that something is not trivial (and yelling is not really trivial, is it?) it’s an impressive milestone that should cause angels, VCs, acquirers, and others to prick up their ears.
If you are building a digitally delivered business – direct to consumers, prosumers, SaaS, whatever – ask yourself – what is the company going to look like when people do what I want them to do one million times? And how long will it take me to get there?
In the meantime, check out the app at http://ahhhpah.com.
