Pokemon Go Chat App’s Success Drives Idiot into Poverty

This is typical.

Someone who was given access to the beta version of the Pokemon Go app came up with the great idea to build a Pokemon Go chat app, dubbed GO Chat. The result was wanton success. People have been downloading the app in droves. The only problem: he didn’t have funding or a way to monetize the app. As such, his broke ass is living on a strict, impoverished, diet of crackers and water–Victorian era jailhouse style.

GoChat, which is available for iOS and Android, was released on July 4th — a day before Pokémon Go became available. Zarra posted about GoChat on Reddit, and the app was installed 10,000 times on its first day. As Pokémon Go grew into a global phenomenon, people began downloading GoChat at much higher rates. For the past two days, it’s been a top 10 search in the App Store. As of this writing, it’s the eighth-most-downloaded iOS social networking app. “The amount of traffic that we are currently getting has been the most insane thing ever, man,” says Zarra, who lives in San Diego. “People are just blowing it the fuck up.”

Also blowing up: GoChat’s servers. It was impossible to register a new account for most of the morning. And even if you did manage to log in, the app frequently crashes when you try to load a message. App analytics firm Sensor Tower estimates that 7.5 million people have downloaded Pokémon Go as of Monday, which would suggest that around 10 percent of all users downloaded a third-party chat app to go along with it.

GoChat is a hit, but it isn’t generating any revenue. Zarra resisted adding advertising to the app — “I hate ads,” he says — and worries that attempting to monetize the app could draw unwanted legal attention from the Pokémon Company. He said he is currently having discussions with investors to keep the app solvent. Zarra declined to say how much he has spent on GoChat to date — “I don’t want people to know how stupid I am,” he says.

Aside from a few experiments, Zarra says, he had never built a mobile app before GoChat. He says he’s happy with the results — one user messaged him to say he had met a girl using the app and had made plans to take her on a date. And Zarra will figure out a way to stay afloat — eventually. “I’m going to be able to pay my rent,” he says. “First and foremost, we really need to get our servers back online.”

Hopefully, this entrepreneurial moron can figure out a way to capitalize on his great idea.