I went to MAU Vegas so you don’t have to: GTM lessons for mobile app builders

Just got back from MAU Vegas 2025, where I spent a few days nerding out on GTM tech stacks with folks from consumer apps, gaming, fintech, and lifecycle platforms. If you're building or scaling a mobile-first app, here’s the distilled version of what top-performing teams are actually doing right now — minus the vendor hype.

🧱 What’s essential in 2025

The consensus was pretty clear: besides AI everything, the modern GTM tech stack for mobile apps boils down to five key components:

• Your app

• Backend for data storage (DB or DWH)

• Product analytics (Firebase, PostHog, Amplitude, Mixpanel)

• Mobile Measurement Platform (MMP) – e.g. AppsFlyer or Adjust

• Emailing tool/ Customer Engagement Platform (CEP) – Mailchimp, Launchlist, Airship, Braze, MoEngage, etc., depending on where you're at in relation to launch.

This stack gives you full-funnel visibility, cross-channel orchestration, and user-level performance attribution — all without overcomplicating things.

🚫 What’s not essential: CDPs, social tools.

CDPs came up a lot — but mostly in the context of why teams aren’t using them. The takeaway: unless you're monetizing across multiple platforms, channels, or business units, a CDP is not necessary.

Similarly, until you're Brawlstars big you don't need to invest in a paid social management tool.

Some real talk from large teams:

• Spoke with the marketing team of a multi-billion dollar corp and their mobile growth org does not use their CDP for GTM.

• Even multi-million user apps are thriving with just a CEP + MMP setup.

• Most CDP benefits (data unification, real-time ingestion, audience sync) are irrelevant if your product and revenue model are still evolving.

🎯 Strategic takeaways

Some of the most actionable advice came from stage talks and workshops:

Scopely (Monopoly GO)

• Skip soft launches if you have conviction.

• Localize culture, not just language.

• Use Facebook groups + TikTok for high-ROI organic lift.

• Creative iteration speed is everything.

• Spend time creating community around shared product value (discord, FB, etc.)

• Even minor changes to paywalls, subscription models, and page design can have huge uplift in retention and subscription volume.

• Growth now spans product, brand, creative, and lifecycle. There are no clear borders now, and the overall perception of your service is comprised of the user's experience across all of these spheres

• “Renaissance marketers” use AI tools and internal feedback loops — absolutely essential in 2025.

Lifecycle orchestration is critical. Most users drop in the first 3 days; manual comms will become a block eventually

🧠 TL;DR for new mobile teams

If you’re building a consumer app right now, here’s a lean, proven GTM stack that’ll take you pretty far. Most, but not all free but you can make a free version of the below if you need to be scrappy:

AppsFlyer (MMP) for attribution

Brevo/ Mailchimp/ ConstantContact/ or Airship / Braze / MoEngage for communication/journey automation

PostHog or Amplitude for product analytics

Deliver product value first, then worry about data optimization

There's more, let me know if anyone wants to discuss or has further questions and I'll do my best or point to additional resources.

Thanks for reading!