Who is Adam Foroughi?

Adam Foroughi on cutting off investor meetings after a 92% drawdown and becoming the company's own best investor.

“I turned in internal to the team and said, I'm not going to talk to investors at all anymore. They're not buying our stock. It's a waste of time. But guess what? We generated a ton of cash. Let's start buying our own stock. Let's become our best investor. So we kicked off a super aggressive buyback program.”

AppLovin cut staff by 40 to 50 percent across most departments in 2024, citing anticipated automation of those roles.

“We ended up cutting the team's staff by 40 50% in most departments and the reason I did that then is a belief that if the role was going to get automated or that AI was not being adopted fast enough in those departments it's time to let those people go.”

AppLovin's stock doubled from $80 to $150 (market cap from roughly $28B to $55B) in a single week when the CEO resumed investor meetings, with no change in underlying fundamentals.

“In that week, the stock went from 80 to 150. And I think it was like 28 billion to 55 billion from you being in New York.”

AppLovin limits equity grants to the top 10 to 15 percent of employees. All others are paid in cash, with an optional ESPP discount.

“Instead, we went to a place where we said the top 10 to 15% of the company will get equity and to buy equity and there's ESP programs that let employees buy equity at a discount if they so choose. Otherwise, they'll just be paid on cash.”

AppLovin's 2024 mass layoffs were driven by forward-looking automation bets, not by current efficiency metrics. Foroughi cut roles he believed AI would eliminate, before the automation actually arrived.

“We ended up cutting the team's staff by 40 50% in most departments and the reason I did that then is a belief that if the role was going to get automated or that AI was not being adopted fast enough in those departments it's time to let those people go.”

AppLovin runs as a large public company with no CRO, COO, CMO, or Chief People Officer, challenging the assumption that scale requires a full C-suite.

“We don't have a CRO, we don't have a COO. go down the list of other C levels that people might have. We don't have a CMO. We don't have a chief people officer.”

Adam Foroughi admits he watches the stock price, directly contradicting the common public-company CEO talking point.

“When you talk to some exacts who are at public companies they'll say they don't look at the stock price. It is I can say I 100% look at the stock price.”

Foroughi explains his no-review management style: negative feedback is delivered in real time via chat, positive feedback is withheld because strong performers already know they are respected. The premise is that high performers do not need structured validation.

“I never do one-on ones. I don't do reviews. There, if I go to if I don't like something they're doing, they know about in real time via chat. If I like what they're doing, they don't need to know. They know that I respect them and they're good to go. Good people don't need that type of handholding usually.”

Foroughi frames 'founder mode' as a symptom of the extreme organizational bloat Silicon Valley built over the last decade.

“The whole notion of founder mode is an extreme reaction to extreme bloat that got created in most Silicon Valley companies over the last decade.”

Foroughi on fixing a mediocre culture: only a near-total rebuild works, partial cuts do not.

“The only way to fix a culture like that is to go and fire 99% of people and just rebuild it from the ground up.”