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The following is an edited transcript of my conversation with Marc and Los of Danger Testing. A conversation about metaphors, software as content, and building a Warhol Factory for “app stars.”
Since the first “vibe coding” tools hit the market, “software as content” became the next big idea in consumer technology. The thinking goes: if Instagram made everyone a photographer, Replit and Lovable will make everyone an app creator. People will create apps for their friends, apps for their vacations, apps for their hobbies. Software will become as disposable and malleable as any other form of digital media.
As we discussed here, though, it’s much easier to intellectualize a new wave of media than it is to execute, especially in the early days. What does it really mean to be an “app star”? Why would you want to be one? And what’s so special about those that are pioneering the movement?
Today I’m talking with Marc and Los from Danger Testing, the OGs of software as content. They drop apps every week the way musicians drop singles, and they’re quickly amassing a following around their work that sits at a strange intersection: part art project, part startup, part performance. We get into how they think about metaphors, why they rejected client work, and what it means to build a factory for app stars.
These guys are proof that the best way to define a new category is to stop explaining it and start performing it.
I’ve been thinking about how much the words we use to describe new practices shape how people understand them. Danger Testing plays with a lot of different frames: “app-letes,” app stars, “appers”… I wanted to understand how deliberate this is.
Jihad
You guys are always playing with different analogies—appletes, app stars, bands, sports teams. Walk me through how you’re using words and phrases to bring legibility to what you’re doing. Is there a distinction between these metaphors in your mind?
Los
It started with this thing Jackson Dahl coined “Phonestar.” We were like, should we just rip this? No one in tech is precious about ideas—being precious about ideas is a poverty mindset.
But as we started doing it, Phone Star felt more aligned to TikTokers. What we were doing was more app-centric. “What are apps as a medium? What would make it feel the same way every other creative medium does?”
Los
I was observing other fields—like seeing a photo of an athlete with an On Running sponsorship. Marc and I had talked about this before we even started Danger Testing: the same way an athlete gets signed, maybe someone who makes apps full-time gets signed by a crypto coin or OpenAI. You’re the front-facer, you’re on the team.
So we started coming up with app star, app-lete, apper—which is a lot of people’s favorite. I’ve had people in New York come up to me like, “yoooo, it’s the apper, not a rapper.”
The honest answer to which metaphor fits when? We don’t know. We’re such a public-facing group that all of these words are just a representation of our brains at any given moment. “Every time I post about it, every time you post about it, we’re both trying to figure it out” together.
Marc
“It’s also about holding ambiguity and the tension of ambiguity.” When Los and I started Danger Testing, we didn’t set out with a shape in mind. The only thing we knew was the motion of dropping an app every week and dropping apps as songs. We might end up being a boy band or a company or an art project or an empire… we didn’t know.
The applete metaphor goes deeper than sponsorships. Danger Testing has structured their entire week around the rhythm of performance.
Marc
“The first thing that comes to mind is Thursday is game day.” No matter what, we have to perform on Wednesday, Thursday. Our whole week ramps up to this point.
I’m not sure we have a competition, but we’re very competitive in what we want to do. We want to be the best at this. And there’s this thing in sports about different play styles—beautiful play versus winning play. “We like to think we play beautifully on the knife edge, on the psychotic edge.”
Los
We have a high level of intensity. There’s a really high bar for effort. And there’s a level of honesty between Marc and me that doesn’t even feel like “oh, he’s being really honest right now,” it’s just our status of being.
“Our team composition is almost like a roster. Everyone has to be ready to potentially be activated for an app that week.” My thing is I don’t work with anyone who can’t do something last minute. If you’re too obsessed with planning, that’s your fear, that’s not my problem.
One of Danger Testing’s implicit arguments is that the commentary around technology helps shape technology itself.
Jihad
Up until this point, software hasn’t been a sport because there was no nature of participation from the fan base. I couldn’t do what Steve Jobs did. But today I can. Do you draw a through-line between the sports metaphor and the participatory nature of what you’re doing?
Los
What does it look like if there’s a game every Thursday? Every 30 seconds of American football, there’s something to commentate on. But you have to wait four days for a launch video to commentate on in tech.
If you reduce that cadence to something unbelievable—if we do 24/7 Kardashian-style content of us building an app this week, and it flops—that’s probably the best thing for technology in 20 years.
I think of creating a world where everybody wants to be an app star. You could be a bartender with a story to tell, and your medium of expressing that story has strictly been movies. But through software—software that makes someone else the main character—you can completely change your life. It’s an art form.
Marc
“We want as many people as possible seeing technology in a different way.” A lot of people hate digital tools and cannot discover what delights within them. If we demonstrate this optimism to those in creative fields—that they can build remarkable things—that represents one of our greatest opportunities.
Before Danger Testing existed as a company, it existed as a years-long dialogue about what was missing.
Marc
We started by talking about how we see the vision of software moving forward, really becoming this new media format. We were convinced—we are convinced—it’s going to be more weird and creative than anybody expects.
We were reading all these articles about content as software. People were building platforms for it. “But we didn’t see anyone actually doing content as software. Everyone was intellectualizing about it” and creating tools. Nobody executed on the actual practice.
So we said: it starts with doing the thing versus building the tool to build a platform to get all the VC money.
Jihad
This was a problem with every crypto company. “We’re the protocol on which apps will be built”—but nobody was building the apps. “We’re the blockchain where culture will be made”—but nobody was producing culture.
Marc
When we started working in New York, people asked: “How are you going to make money? What are you going to tell investors?” There are all these forces slowly trickling away at your conviction, trying to move you into a scalable place.
“You really need delusion to escape it.” You’re sitting in this room and 20 people are pitching something scalable. “And you’re like, ‘No, we’re dropping apps like songs.’”
Danger Testing has a vision for what comes next: a place that compounds attention, technology, and taste under one roof.
Los
What’s funny is we didn’t seek out to start a company. Marc and I were just speaking about the same ideas over and over for almost a year—like a talking stage. We finally said, let’s just drop one app. Then we got offered 50K. We decided we’re not taking a traditional job—we’re going to see what we can do with this.
“The fact that you’re doing something every single week means you can make the same mistake four weeks” in succession and still learn faster than someone who errs once across a half-year span. You’re accelerating repetitions and intervals.
Marc
The basis we built our organization on is Andy Warhol’s Factory. We want to compound attention, technology, and taste in this one house. AI gives creatives so much leverage—20 weird creatives can each build their own little empire. “There are just very few people who can hold these tensions:” I need visibility, I need distinction, I maintain standards, I explore emerging tech.
We want to find those people, elevate them, support them, and make them do their greatest work.
I like the idea of taking people who are really, really good at the work but shameful about putting it into the world and saying: Los will take all the shame in the world, ship those things, protect you from all of that. “You just do your greatest work. And when you learn how to tank that feeling of shipping something,” we elevate you to prominence.
When the money came calling—from VCs, from companies wanting them to build branded apps—they had to figure out what they actually wanted.
Marc
“The client work would have restricted our freedom so much.” Even just sitting down and having these conversations with people who want us to build apps was so un-fun. It’s not where we want to spend our days. And it felt like the less ambitious thing to do.
We’re in the water surfing and there’s this huge wave coming. We have a good chance of taking the wave and really riding it while keeping all our freedom and ambiguity and experimentation alive.
Marc
We love the game we’re playing so much. We’ve been doing it since before there was any money involved. So: build a company for you and for nobody else.
And for my past self: allow things to suck in public. Go through the motion. Ship the unfinished thing. See what happens. Ship the next thing. Truly just get in motion. The manifesto you can figure out in motion. The branding you can figure out in motion. You can figure all that stuff out when you’re actually doing the thing. But don’t perform doing the thing.
Los
Protect your delusion.
I remember speaking about what I was trying to do, and someone said, “Yeah, you should find ideas for your startup through Reddit.” And I stood my ground and said, “What if I want to market like Druski?” No response. It gave me so much confidence in what I wanted to do. I did not care if the world I wanted to exist in actually existed. And then as we kept going, we created it around us.
“The authenticity is found from continuing to do it over and over again.” My first tweet is not as authentic as whatever I tweeted today. If you’re an app star, a lot of the things you’re doing are going to be vulnerable—you’re telling a story about your life. I’m not built different. I’m just building different. Keep shipping and you’re gonna achieve it.
—
I’ve been thinking a lot about storytelling and world-building. And I’ve realized that the reason good storytelling doesn’t exist in tech, or is scarce, is because in order to tell a good story, you need to be a good person, and you need to be authentic. The industry has a way of pulling that authenticity out of you.
We’re only now starting to see scenes built around things like Danger Testing and raw creative practice in tech. I’m happy Marc and Los are some of the main characters of that story.
Technology and the business of technology is the single most important way people can shape the world. We’re on our computers every day, using the internet—technology has become omnipresent. If you’re not shaping technology, you’re being shaped. The world is very malleable. Software makes it so every single person can shape it in one way or another.
What’s interesting about Danger Testing is it’s almost performance art for others to see: these guys are doing whatever the hell they want and making the world better or more fun or more entertaining or more silly in their own way. I could do that too.