How Founders Can Reduce Platform Risk Before It Threatens Growth
Founders should treat dependence on app stores as infrastructure risk, since a sudden removal can disrupt customer access, subscriptions and revenue with no reliable path to reinstatement. Sharing his experience, Yakov Filippenko, founder and CEO of Intch, suggests that building and testing alternative access and payment channels before a crisis can help keep the business…
By Yakov Filippenko
One morning, I discovered that our app had been abruptly taken down from Apple’s App Store. For weeks, we desperately searched for answers, even contacting internal company connections, only to be told that offering assistance could jeopardize their jobs. Nothing we tried worked.
For a long time, the apparent agreement with the App Store seemed straightforward: adhere to the guidelines, and your marketplace presence remains intact. Then a takedown notice arrives, leaving you questioning the very survival of your enterprise.
During 2025, Apple removed 166,899 applications and approved just 423 appeals. As our team experienced firsthand, being caught in that statistic feels like watching your company disintegrate with zero assurance of bouncing back.
Fortunately, the story isn’t entirely bleak. We managed to pull through, and the ordeal taught me that platform reliance essentially equals infrastructure vulnerability. Founders routinely plan for server outages and payment gateway failures, yet losing access to your primary customer acquisition channel demands the exact same level of preparation. Luckily, we were ready, and here is how you can achieve the same resilience.
Understand what a removal can take away
First, new prospective users lose the ability to download your software. Soon after, paying subscribers flood your support channels with an even more alarming concern: “The app is gone. Are you running a scam?” The damage compounds when existing users upgrade their phones and find they cannot reinstall the application, slowly bleeding your customer base dry.
On the monetary front, Apple promptly freezes earnings from the preceding three months and halts all recurring billing. For any subscription-based venture, this can instantly drive monthly recurring revenue down to zero.
Before allocating another dollar toward customer acquisition, evaluate what would happen to those users if your product vanished tomorrow. Would they still be able to access the service and continue payments?
If the reply is negative, every new user you acquire simply increases your reliance on a platform decision completely outside your command.
Don’t make an appeal your contingency plan
Cal AI, which reportedly brought in $100,000 daily, was pulled without warning before eventually returning. Yet, its eventual reinstatement offers little insight into how long your specific enterprise might be left waiting.
In the case of Intch, the justification provided was so vague it offered zero clarity. We were given a 30-day window to file an appeal, which ultimately resulted in a standard automated rejection.
Your appeal might eventually succeed, but your business still has to function in the interim. Planning ahead allows operations to continue regardless of the final ruling.
Build the alternative before you need it
Our ordeal was grueling, but fortuitously, two years prior we had already decoupled from the App Store by developing a web version and establishing it as our core payment channel.
This setup also allowed us to deploy updates ten times daily while avoiding Apple’s steep commissions. We were far from alone in this approach; Telegram founder Pavel Durov has similarly advocated for web-based access to circumvent store restrictions and potential censorship.
The core takeaway is simple: customers require a functioning fallback before access is suddenly revoked. Developing an alternative only after a removal leaves the organization highly vulnerable while staff scrambles to patch together a new storefront.
Initially, we worried that the user experience would suffer, but those fears proved entirely groundless. Following the removal, all of our vital performance metrics fully rebounded.
If you have similar misgivings, test the concept while your app remains active to confirm whether users can successfully navigate and pay via the web interface before they are forced to depend on it.
Include platform exposure in growth decisions
Most founders view the App Store purely as a distribution channel, failing to recognize the immense control it grants Apple over their operations.
Prior to increasing your marketing spend, analyze exactly how much income relies on uninterrupted access and what portions of the enterprise would survive a sudden ban. Determine precisely how long the firm could stay afloat while awaiting a pending appeal.
Investors should also pose these critical questions, because a growing subscription model warrants deeper scrutiny when a single corporate policy shift can instantly sever revenue streams. That specific risk factor belongs directly inside funding and valuation discussions.
Monopolies invariably act in their own best interests, and if your model falls outside their strategic vision, you may have little voice in a decision capable of ruining your enterprise.
While you cannot control their actions, you can decide whether they hold the power to shut down your business. By establishing a viable alternative while your app is still active, you make the most prudent choice available.
Frequently Asked Questions
01What is platform risk for mobile apps?
Platform risk refers to the danger a business faces when its operations, distribution, and revenue depend heavily on a single third-party platform (such as the Apple App Store or Google Play Store), leaving it vulnerable to sudden bans, rule changes, or policy updates.
02How can startups prepare for sudden app removals?
Founders can mitigate this risk by diversifying their distribution channels, building a functional web-based version of their application, establishing independent payment processing, and testing alternative access points before any crisis occurs.
03Does losing App Store access freeze company revenue?
Yes. When an app is removed, platforms often freeze earnings from recent months and immediately halt recurring subscription billing, which can instantly reduce a subscription-based company’s monthly recurring revenue to zero.
Yakov Filippenko is a seasoned entrepreneur with more than 10 years of experience in IT and technologies, as well as scaling businesses internationally. As a product manager at Yandex, he led a team that grew the product’s user base from 500,000 to 1.2 million and secured its entry into the international market. Subsequently, he co-founded SailPlay, which he scaled to 45 countries and eventually exited, after it was acquired by Retail Rocket in 2018. In 2021, Filippenko launched Intch, an AI-powered platform connecting part-time professionals with flexible roles.
Illustration: Dom Guzman
