DelightHub: Why Did DelightRoom Create Its Third Business Division?
Why DelightRoom Started Acquiring and Expanding into Multiple Apps
Over 10 Years of Alarmy's Growth, and the Question We Faced
DelightRoom has grown with a single product for over a decade.
Alarmy started with the concept of "an alarm app that definitely wakes you up" and has steadily increased its users and revenue in the global market. On the surface, it looks like a stable business that has continued a steady upward trend every year.
(Reference: 🔗 You've been making an alarm app for 10 years? What about the future?)
However, there was another underlying sense of anxiety on the flip side.
"Is this growth truly a healthy, sustainable structure?"
A structure where success is concentrated in a single app looks solid when things are going well, but it can shake at any moment depending on changes in the external environment, platform policies, or market trends. We kept pondering what we needed to prepare in advance to create a structure that can sustainably grow under any circumstances, even while maintaining stable growth based on Alarmy.
And that thought eventually led to several crucial choices.
Business Expansion: A Series of Choices, Not Coincidence
Looking back now, DelightRoom's steady growth is more like the result of a series of accumulated choices rather than a single giant leap.
For instance, in terms of business expansion, there were two major choices like the ones below.
Expanding Alarmy's ad-centric revenue structure to include a subscription model
(🔗 The Story of Launching Alarmy's Subscription Model)Expanding the ad monetization know-how and modules accumulated inside Alarmy to the outside
(🔗 Unveiling Alarmy's Ad Monetization Know-how)
These choices actually served as a "shock absorber" for our growth.
During periods when ad revenue slowed down, subscription revenue backed up our growth
When Alarmy's own growth pace decelerated, DARO stepped in as a new growth pillar
Thanks to this, DelightRoom could continue relatively stable growth every year without relying heavily on a specific channel or a single product.
While the revenue graph looks like a smooth upward curve on the outside, behind the scenes, there's always an accumulation of time spent thinking about and preparing the structure first.
Alarmy → DARO: We Built It Because We Needed It, and So It Worked Better
Over 95% of Alarmy's total users were free users, and how to monetize these users was the core of our business. That's why, over the past 10 years, we continuously improved our ad exposure methods, user experience, and revenue optimization logic within Alarmy, building the necessary parts ourselves.
In that process, an 'internal ad monetization platform' was naturally formed. And as time went by, it was confirmed that this platform went beyond being a simple internal tool and actually played a role in structurally driving up our revenue.
Then this thought occurred to us.
"Isn't this too good for just us to use?"
So we started applying it to external apps, and this expanded into a B2B business called DARO.
Looking at the flow, it's similar to how Amazon exposed its internal infrastructure to the outside to expand into Amazon Web Services.
The Pattern Discovered During DARO's Expansion
As we improved ad revenue for various apps through DARO, we repeatedly confirmed more consistent results than expected.
For many apps, ad revenue grew by 1.5x to 3x
A virtuous cycle was formed: ‘Improved ad revenue → Higher LTV → Expanded marketing reinvestment’
In fact, cases started emerging where invested companies saw their monthly ad revenue jump by over 10 times from tens of millions of won, or where a company that had been in the red for 7 years turned profitable in just 10 months.
Through this experience, one thing became increasingly clear. Just as much as building a good product, how you monetize and operate it is a crucial variable for growth.
And naturally, it led to the next question.
"If we can grow them this much, wouldn't we create an even bigger impact if we acquired and ran them directly?"
DARO → DelightHub: Setting a Hypothesis and Verifying It Ourselves
We set up a hypothesis.
"Can we acquire an app with monetization improvement potential and generate profit exceeding the acquisition cost within a certain period?"
And we've been testing this hypothesis through actual acquisitions over the past few years. In most cases, we were able to create the level of revenue improvement we expected, and generated profit exceeding the acquisition cost within our target timeframe.
In this process, it also became clearer what kinds of products and acquisition structures fit us well.
By investing in, acquiring, and directly operating multiple services, it became even clearer where our strengths lie.
For example, it looks like this.
Having directly operated a global B2C app, we have the experience of growing DAU and driving monetization in a global environment.
With the data and experience accumulated through Alarmy and DARO, we can draw relatively realistic simulations for post-acquisition revenue and growth.
Since we move with operating profit we generated rather than external investment money, our decision-making and deal execution speed is fast. (Sometimes wrapped up within 2 weeks after the first meeting)
Based on the relationships built through DARO, we also have a structure where some good deals are pitched to us first.
Ultimately, our real weapon isn't the 'global alarm app' itself, but rather our experience in monetizing and growing global services.
Alarmy-DARO-DelightHub: DelightRoom's Flywheel
DelightHub looks like an independent business division, but in reality, it holds much more meaning when running together with Alarmy and DARO. We call this our internal flywheel.
These three businesses don't just exist side-by-side; they are connected in a way that gives a little push to each other's growth.
1️⃣ Alarmy → Judgment and Playbook
Alarmy is more than a single app; it is a collection of experiments and data accumulated over 10 years.
It contains the accumulated experience of actually operating everything from how to acquire and retain global users to how to convert traffic into revenue.
This experience naturally leads to two things.
A criteria to judge which apps can grow
A playbook on how to actually grow those apps
In the end, Alarmy is the starting point of DelightHub and
the foundation where our judgment and execution methods are constantly updated.
2️⃣ DARO → Monetization Engine and Rapid Execution
DARO is the monetization engine that actually implements and expands the playbook accumulated in Alarmy.
Because it was created in the process of improving Alarmy's ad monetization, it naturally reflects methods of increasing revenue without harming the user experience.
As DARO becomes more sophisticated, this engine operates in two directions.
Continuously improving Alarmy's ad revenue, and
Not only increasing ad revenue for client apps but also accumulating diverse cases and data in this process
The data and experience accumulated like this flow back to DelightHub.
We can more quickly judge where to increase revenue post-acquisition, and
The speed of actually applying the monetization structure gets faster, too
As a result, even for the same product, the start speed and outcomes of monetization are different.
3️⃣ DelightHub → Expansion, Learning, and Cash Flow
DelightHub plays the role of actually expanding this structure. By directly acquiring and operating various apps, we quickly encounter cases that were hard to experience with just Alarmy.
The insights gained in this process return back into the system.
For Alarmy, they lead to new experiments and improvements, and
For DARO, they accumulate as more diverse monetization cases
There is also another role.
DelightHub is also a structure that converts the surplus operating profit generated by Alarmy and DARO into new cash flows.
In other words, it's not just about simply increasing the number of apps; it's closer to an expansion axis connecting product, data, and finance.
4️⃣ This Structure Repeats Itself.
Alarmy → DARO → DelightHub → Back to Alarmy
As this process repeats,
Judgments become more refined
Execution gets faster
And growth gets bigger
For example, if a highly profitable ad structure or logic is verified in Alarmy, that method gets reflected in DARO and leads to revenue improvements for our clients.
In DelightHub, based on this experience, we get better at selecting apps with high growth potential, and even after acquisition, we can use the playbook accumulated in Alarmy and DARO to generate growth faster.
Also, the data and lessons built up from acquisition review to actual operation loop back to Alarmy and DARO to take our monetization methods and product experience to the next level.
In this way, the flow of spreading a once-verified method, and looping it back to become more refined, keeps repeating.
Eventually, as time passes, it gets closer to a flywheel structure where we can only get better and better.
Wrapping Up
Many people wonder why a company that focused on just 'Alarmy' for over 10 years expanded into B2B and even created an M&A division. Some even ask if our direction of 'selection and focus' has changed.
But looking from the inside, it's actually closer to doing the same work but on a slightly broader scale.
In the end, it's about solving user problems, building products, and growing them.
The method just extended from Alarmy to DARO, and then again to DelightHub. And along the way, one thing became relatively clear.
DelightRoom's competitive edge doesn't lie in a single app, but rather
in our method of creating growth
This direction likely won't change much going forward.
However, this structure will continue to get more refined.