Founders · 3 min · Nov 1, 2026

AppLovin leaders stay hands-on to keep work focused

Rafael Vivas · Founding Team Member, AppLovin

Rafael Vivas argues that leaders need to stay close to customers and the work, rather than delegate tasks that do not move the needle.

The episode’s best minutes

30:14 Lion Studios grew from a broken partnership into a $250 million businessPro pick 3 min
20:54AppLovin leaders stay hands-on to keep work focusedPro pick 3 min
44:01 A falling stock price drew Vivas back to AppLovin3 min
5 more moments in the full episode

“when you delegate and you hire all these people, you focus on a lot of things that are not important for your business, but you've hired these people.”

Rafael Vivasat 21:35 · Founders

Takeaways Pro pick

Staying in the weeds reveals what customers actually need.
Delegation can create work that does not move the business forward.
Small customer budgets still deserve attention.

About this segment

Rafael Vivas argues that leaders need to stay close to customers and the work, rather than delegate tasks that do not move the needle. AppLovin’s hands-on approach extends even to small customer budgets.

Rafael Vivas is a founding team member of AppLovin and cofounder of Lion Studios.

Co-founded Lion Studios, which generated over $250 million in revenue in two years, after joining AppLovin's founding team.

David Senra, Host · Host, Founders
Has read an entrepreneur's biography every week for Founders since 2016.

From “High School Dropout to Multi-Billionaire: The Relentless Drive of Rafael Vivas”, Nov 1, 2026. Watch the full episode

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

20:59
decision. So say more about this, like anti-delegation take that you have. Yeah. So like we talked about this before the show, like a lot of leaders, like, you know, and you hear about it in podcasts is like hire people, delegate, delegate. That's not a cloth we're cut from at Uploven. And the reason why is kind of like to be a great leader, you have to be in the weeds. If you think about like in a sports analogy, right? Like why did Michael Jordan always get the ball? You know, or why was he, you know, effectively like considered the captain of the team? It wasn't because he was like the oldest person there, the most senior there. It's because when they gave him the fucking ball, he made the shot, right? And so for us, we look at it as in like, if you're in the weeds, you understand what the customers want. You understand what the
21:36
customers need for them to succeed. And you understand what's also important. Like when you delegate and you hire all these people, you focus on a lot of things that are not important for your business, but you've hired these people. So they need something to do, right? So you just go and have them work on these tasks that don't really move the needle. Did you watch the Todd Graves interview that I did? I did. Where he says that he's a delegate. He's like, what does that word even mean he had like this this nasty look on his face it's like completely and there's a lot of great founders that are kind of like anti-delegation yeah i i also think it's like it's what makes the game fun right like going back to like video games it's like imagine like you play all these levels and then you get to like a boss like the final boss like you're gonna hand the control to your
22:15
friend fuck no you're gonna like go and do it yourself like that's a new challenge right um and that's what keeps the the job exciting for me personally what do you spend most of your time on because adam told me he thinks like you're one of the best deal guys in the world i focus on and doing the highest leverage deals that we can that's possible for the business, right? So, like, we have a very small team.
22:32
Luckily, we're a business that's very profitable and growing very quickly. And so we try to do deals with whether it's, you know, companies that are advertisers or doing partnerships with other companies that can bring us thousands of advertisers. That's my goal is to generate or to bring as many customers onto AppLovin as possible so we can build the best business possible and one of the biggest ad platforms in the world.
22:54
And then you try to expand the existing customers, too. Dude, Adam told this great story on this podcast where he's just like, yeah, Raph's like an animal. And he's just like, I get calls from customers all the time. He's like, what's up with this guy? This guy's a multi-billionaire and he's harassing me to spend an extra $5,000 a day. And he's like, this shouldn't matter to you. And he goes, it matters to us.
23:12
Everything matters. Everything fucking matters, right? It's like, if you can't do the small things, right? How can you be expected to do the big things, right? And like, you know, I've said this online before, but like, we're just getting started. Like, you know, Adam talked about this. We're on pace for $20 billion of advertiser spend. And when you look at, like, the two behemoths in the room combined, they do half a trillion dollars of ad spend on the platform, right, or across their ad platforms.
23:34
So, like, there is so much room for us to grow. And when you're able to get into the weeds, make sure that you're succeeding for your advertisers. And, by the way, a lot of times, like, we do deliver better results for advertisers, but they may not move budget in the beginning because, like, they're not focused on us or they're focused on other things. Like it's important that you get in there and you make them care about your business, right?
23:59
And that's actually one of the, I'd say one of the superpowers I have is that when I reach out to these customers, like what the hell is this billionaire reaching out to me for an extra $5,000? It's like, it goes to show like, we're very serious about your business. Like we really care about working with you.