These YC founders pivoted five times before building a social app that earned 300k users and over $1 million arr in six months

A few months ago, the founder behind the social app candle that was backed by YC was in “Pivot Hell.” After participating in the Y Combinator fall 2024 batch, I cycled over dozens of ideas, but I chopped my seed money clock.

Alex Ruber, a former Apple engineer, and Parth Chopra, a former Asana and Twitter engineer, had built multiple projects, including Encore, a conversational AI shopping tool that reached YC and raised $2 million.

However, Ruber said that while the technology was working, the economics of the unit was not.

“Used shopping spaces are a difficult market to begin with,” Louver told TechCrunch in an interview. “To win, you’ll be like Google Shopping or build a very strong market like whatnot or eBay. That wasn’t the target we wanted to pursue.”

Then there were months of rapid experiments between December and April last year, pivots on ideas in areas like fashion and sports, but none of them got stuck. “We tried over 10 different ideas over four or five months,” Louver said.

The pressure began to strain their own relationships with friends and partners, a familiar story to many early-stage founders. Ironically, the tension ultimately sparked the idea of ​​clicking.

The first version was simple. A deck of swipeable questions designed to trigger conversations with your partner. The startup’s marketing lead, intern, shared Tiktok about an app that unexpectedly gained traction in Europe.

Downloads surged, feedback was poured in, and the team leaned against momentum. Its early prototype evolved into Candle, a lightweight, gaming app that helps couples and close friends stay connected.

Six months after its launch, Candle has grown to 300,000 users, including 150,000 couples. According to the company, there are over 250,000 people active each month, with a DAU/MAU ratio of about 50%, a strong signal of engagement with consumer social apps, and an early indication of the possibility of daily habits. Candles are ranked multiple times in Apple’s App Store Top 25.

Candle wedges do not help people find new things, but maintain their existing relationship with the game with small daily prompts. Users will answer quick questions, compare results, share photos, and maintain a “streak” indicating that they “consistently checked in.” Mechanics is textbook mobile engagement aimed at Z and young millennials.

Another atypical movement in consumer social apps was the other common among new AI-Native products, and monetization took place early. Candle’s monthly revenues have recently exceeded $150,000, meaning annual occupancy rates of over $1 million.

This app runs on a freemium model. Free Tiers offer daily prompts, photo updates, and core games, while Premium unlocks additional content and features.

Growth is a priority for startups, but early monetization is a strong signal to fit the product market. “After all, this app helps people to enhance connectivity. Most of it is free, but when users pay for additional content and features, it shows the actual fit of the product market,” the CEO said.

The platform from a few months ago is one of the few apps in this space, designed to make the relationship more enjoyable, along with the joys of the pair Joy and the couple. These apps harness the cultural undertows that post-pandemic work habits, solomeals and endless social feeds hollow out daily connections, leaving people in America’s solitary more than ever before.

In the case of candles, the next wave of massive social is about broadcasting to strangers, making it easier for a few close friends to appear each day. That insight, combined with Tiktok and Instagram’s founder- and creator-led distribution engine, is a way that teams hope to avoid the fate of many consumer social apps that are rapidly surged after only stalling in a few months.

Still, the big questions remain: durability and depth. Can the daily photo and gaming app maintain a retention curve for 12, 24- or 36 months? Candles can be expanded from lightweight prompts to a wider “connection type” suite without inflating the experience? Ruber and CTO Chopra say that’s the roadmap. Add a way to earn Sparks, the app’s point system, to introduce richer features that gain broader interactions and promote consistency.

Seed money collected for the team’s previous shopping apps provides resources to the candle, triggering more engineers, speeding up experiments, and gaining scale faster. Existing supporters, including Goodwater Capital, Pioneer Fund, Progressive Fund and Y Combinator, are completely behind the new direction, Louver said.