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- WORDLE’s Lucky Twin: Steven Cravotta’s App That Hit 1 Million Downloads through Pure Luck
WORDLE’s Lucky Twin: Steven Cravotta’s App That Hit 1 Million Downloads through Pure Luck
PLUS: My favourite rules & razors
Startup Spells 🪄
September 24, 2025
WORDLE’s Lucky Twin: Steven Cravotta’s App That Hit 1 Million Downloads through Pure Luck
Steven Cravotta built WORDLE when he was 18. Not the famous one—his own iOS puzzle game with the exact same name. He promoted it briefly, watched it tank to 1-2 downloads per day, then forgot about it completely. The app sat dormant in the App Store for six years like a forgotten lottery ticket in an old jacket.
Late December, he's at his parents' house scrolling through his App Store Connect dashboard when something impossible appears: 300,000 downloads in five days. His first thought? Bots. Someone's screwing with him.
Then he googled "WORDLE" and everything clicked.
A New York Times article popped up: "WORDLE is a love story." Josh Wardle had created a browser-based word game that was going absolutely viral. Millions of people were searching "WORDLE" on their phones, but Josh's game only existed on the web. Steven's dormant app—same exact spelling—was ranking first in the App Store.
By the time he flew back to LA, downloads hit 1.5 million. The peak was one million downloads in a single day.
The Four Types of Luck
Naval Ravikant breaks down luck into 4 categories:
Blind luck – The kind that falls from the sky with no effort or control. Pure chance, sheer fortune.
Luck through persistence and hustle – By constantly moving, creating, and experimenting, you stir the pot and increase the odds of colliding with opportunity.
Luck from preparation and awareness – With expertise and experience, you become skilled at spotting breaks others would overlook. You're sensitive to signals that others miss.
Luck through unique character – The rarest form of luck, where your reputation, integrity, and unique identity draw opportunities toward you. People seek you out precisely because you're the only one who can deliver.
Naval puts it simply: hope luck finds you, hustle until it does, prepare your mind to see it, or build your character so opportunity inevitably comes your way. Over time, luck stops looking like randomness—it starts to look like destiny.
How Steven Got Lucky
Steven's WORDLE moment combined #1 & #2. Blind luck that Josh Wardle chose the same name years later. Hustle because Steven had been building since 15—shipping Grid, learning Swift, hiring freelancers, and putting artifacts into the world.
And after the storm passed, he proved it wasn't a one-off. He went on to build Puff Count, a $4-per-month quit-vaping app that grew to hundreds of thousands of downloads through smart, organic TikTok marketing.
The million-download miracle may have started with luck, but Steven's story shows how volume turns luck into fortune.
Top Tweets of the day
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3:00 PM • Sep 23, 2025
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— Austen Allred (@Austen)
12:54 AM • Sep 24, 2025
Everyone is a TikToker now, whether you like it or not. Everyone and their mom is doing ridiculous stunts on video now.
Rabbit Holes
The smart and leveraged are getting richer by Naval Ravikant
Increasing Qualified Traffic by 194% with Great Content (Case Study) by Matt Kenyon
My favourite rules & razors by George Mack
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