CEO & Co-Founder at Waveful
Steven Motta
Hey, i'm Steven 👋 I started making money as developer when I was 9 years old, creating mods for Minecraft that got over 2M+ downloads. Even if i'm just 21 right now, I have over 10+ years of experience in the mobile consumer market, having launched and grown multiple games and apps. I love building products that millions and billions of people will use everyday to enjoy life.
Questions & Answers
Why are you excited about your company/product?
Creating a social network is one of the most difficult product to pull off at scale. At the same time, success means impacting the life of multiple millions of people deeply: no other type of product is used for multiple hours per day, everyday. Never I have ever, before Waveful, worked on something that has this much impact and probability to succeed at scale.
What sets you apart from others in your industry?
I have an obsession about understanding how the most successful social products work. That's why multiple of my angels and mentors come from platforms like Facebook, TikTok and Reddit. Thanks to their insights, I was able to distill exactly where those platforms are not winning, and create a product where it's a 10x. When I call users, they often says that they are not using Instagram, Facebook or even TikTok anymore: they are on Waveful, spending multiple hours everyday on the platform.
Can you share a distinctive achievement or highlight from your career?
To promote my mobile game, I created a Meta ad in the US with just a simple screenshot saying: "I paid for this ad. Please try my game so I can feed my family". I knew I had to promote the game there because in Italy not enough people were buying In-app purchases. I only had 50 euros to spend since I was like 14 years old, but it went so viral and was so much shared on Facebook that I got enough revenue to continue paying my Apple developer account and release more stuff.
