Selecting a UA financing partner

Martin Macmillan
2 min readDec 16, 2022

--

Paid user acquisition for mobile apps and games is the most important way for developers to achieve success at scale on the app stores. Facebook, Google and other leading ad networks are critical channels for acquiring users for apps and games.

Traditionally, most user acquisition was funded by equity investment; however, a number of new debt-based financing models have emerged specifically for funding ROI positive user acquisition. These have become increasingly popular and are now accepted as the market norm.

When the specific unit economics of mobile advertising — user acquisition (UA) costs and lifetime value (LTV) — are clearly understood and the ad spend is ROI positive, debt financing offers a non-dilutive path for founders looking to finance this scaling expenditure.

As the capital markets tighten, more founders are looking for smarter solutions to finance their growth. Debt solutions are not only non-dilutive, but can also be put in place much more quickly than venture capital rounds, and enable founders to achieve capital efficiency in their business whilst retaining more control.

But not all debt solutions are created equal, and it’s important to understand the pros and cons of each in order to get the right fit for your business. So, we created the definitive guide to funding mobile user acquisition to help developers make informed UA financing decisions.

In the guide we explore:

  • What is UA funding?
  • Is UA funding right for your business?
  • Comparison of UA funding products
  • Calculating cost vs return
  • Security
  • Making the right choice

Our comparisons of UA funding options takes into account revenue based loans, revolving credit facilities, bank accounts receivable (AR) facilities, factoring/invoice finance, and publishers funding UA.

We break down each of the models and provide calculators to uncover a simple rate of interest that enables a comparison on a level playing field.

Download the guide to put yourself and your studio in the best position to make a choice about UA financing and scaling your app or game.

This article was originally posted on pollen.vc/blog.

--

--

Martin Macmillan

CEO & Founder at Pollen VC - London, we provide devs early access to revenues earned from the app stores so they can rapidly reinvest https://pollen.vc