Morning! This is Above The Fold- my weekly email with 5 links that'll make you 🤔 or 🤯. Today, we've got ghost apples, fun facts, and some things I'm thinking about going into 2024. Let's get into it:

⚡️ The links

• ​Ghost apples​
• 52 things I learned in 2023​
• AI stuffed toys are here​
• Evergreen parenting advice​
• Making money from Linkedin groups​

🤯 of the week: It’s a Wonderful Life is a beloved xmas classic, but the reason it became one is pretty wild. The studio that owned it viewed the movie as worthless and let the copyright expire. This allowed TV stations to play it non-stop without having to pay royalties. Which in turn made the movie one of the most wildly consumed, and an eventual classic. [source].

🤔 of the week: 2023 was a big one for us @Hunch. We released the most games we ever have in a single year (4!). We incubated @tagsomeonewho from 0 to 70k followers in 2 months, and just started integrating promos for our game in the feed. We grew our daily game show, WANNA PLAY, from 30k to ~300k followers, and continue to use it as a testing playground for new game ideas.

In 2024, we want to make bigger, bolder bets. For one, we want to find a better way to monetize the audience around, and effort we put into, WANNA PLAY. Right now, it generates ~$3k-$4k/mo -- which is nice -- but doesn't cover the cost of producing the show. One idea we're exploring is a WANNA PLAY app. One game a day, give it a play, then locks up until the next day. Kinda like beReal for games. We could track stats, show people how they stack up vs friends, and eventually create everlasting games where you could open the app at any time and play unlimited rounds of your favorite games.

Another area we suck at is: developing deeper relationships with our customers. We thought WANNA PLAY could do this, but turns out - it's only useful for awareness. We can showcase our games, but if we ask viewers to buy, they have no reason to -- they don't know/care about us! In the new year, we'll try to get better at this with a new media project that follows Javi/I more closely- bringing viewers into our company HQ, filming behind the scenes, revealing how we bring ideas to life. More personality, less show.

The last third of the 2024 pie chart is [potentially] self-publishing a game. Since day 1, we've worked with big partners (eg. What Do You Meme) to help us bring our games to market. Overall, this has been both necessary and fruitful for us- our partners take on the inventory risk and help us sell into stores, while we handle all creative/product + some marketing. However, there are some cons to this approach - we leave [a lot] of upside on the table and we often have to make creative sacrifices to ensure all parties are happy. This would be, by far, our biggest leap, but it is a very clear and real way to ensure Hunch continues to grow up.

How about you? Any personal/professional ideas you're batting around and wanna try in 2024? Lmk - i'd love to be a soundboard and/or help think through if at all helpful!

Ok, that's all. Have a wonderful holidays!

~ Peter "hope you get the gifts you asked for" Levin

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