App Growth Summit Founder Louis Tanguay’s Blueprint for Building a Global Event Brand

Disclaimer: The opinions represented here are those of the individual and do not necessarily represent those of their current or former employer.

Louis Tanguay isn’t your typical founder. A self-taught creative who walked away from college after one semester to launch a music magazine, Tanguay has spent the past two decades bootstrapping his way across industries, from the film world to digital marketing, and finally to the global mobile app scene. Today, as the founder of App Growth Summit (AGS), he’s redefined what an industry event can be: intimate, curated, no-badge-scanning allowed.

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But his ascent wasn’t a straight line. Launching AGS in 2017, Tanguay has since built a global brand respected for its substance. "Events are where you meet people. It's not where you close the deal," he says, a mantra that powers AGS’s invite-only events, meticulously sized for depth over scale.

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Watch the full interview below, or read on for a selection of key takeaways.
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From College Dropout to First-Time Founder

Louis Tanguay’s entrepreneurial journey began not in a boardroom, but in a college classroom in Providence, Rhode Island. As a freshman, he drafted a business plan for a music magazine and caught the attention of his instructor. “Why don’t you just do this?” the professor challenged him. Tanguay hesitated, wondering how he’d land interviews for the magazine, until his mentor gave a piece of advice that would become a lifelong mantra: “You’d be surprised who you can get on the phone if you just try.” With that bold nudge, Tanguay dropped out after one semester and went all-in on his idea. Back home in Rhode Island, he taught himself graphic design and photography, every skill needed to publish the magazine on a shoestring budget. For the next eight years, he hustled to turn that DIY publication into a real business, cultivating an early taste for risk-taking and creative problem-solving.

That first venture led Tanguay on a winding path through the entertainment and marketing industries. He spent a stint in the film business in Los Angeles, serving as a Director of Creative for a film studio. When the 2008 recession hit, he pivoted again, founding a boutique marketing agency called Circle Marketing in LA. By 2017, Tanguay had amassed nearly two decades of digital marketing experience across media, tech, and entertainment. But he still had the itch to build something of his own from the ground up.

Launching App Growth Summit

In late 2017, Louis Tanguay took the biggest leap of his professional life: founding App Growth Summit. The timing and circumstances were less than ideal. He was stepping into a saturated event landscape dominated by large-scale conferences. In the mobile apps world, one conference loomed especially large: MAU, the annual Las Vegas mega-event drawing over 2,000 attendees. “MAU is a monster… the biggest event of the industry,” Tanguay says, “but a lot of people kept telling me, I miss MAU when it was small.”

Sensing an opportunity, he set out to give the industry “a smaller alternative.” The vision for App Growth Summit flipped the typical conference script: invite-only, curated events capped at just a few hundred people, focused on quality content and genuine connections. “Find out what the people want and give it to them,” Tanguay recalls of his strategy in those early days. By keeping AGS events invite-only, he could vet the attendee list to ensure a balanced mix of app growth professionals, rather than opening the floodgates to anyone with a ticket. A tighter guest list meant attendees enjoyed a community feel, where conversations could go deeper. And sponsors, in turn, didn’t have to compete with hundreds of random walk-ins angling for free swag or quick sales leads.

Pivoting Through the Pandemic

Two years in, just as App Growth Summit was poised for a breakout year, the COVID-19 pandemic brought live events to a standstill. For Tanguay, whose entire business revolved around in-person gatherings, it was an existential crisis. “Doing live events during a pandemic doesn’t really work out,” he says. Many event organizers threw in the towel or shifted to cookie-cutter webinar platforms, but Tanguay’s instinct was to innovate rather than quit. He also wasn’t satisfied with the virtual event tools available at the time: “It just doesn’t feel community-based… everything should be on one screen,” he observed.

So Tanguay built his own solution. He phoned up an old developer friend from his marketing agency days and said, let’s create an online platform that actually feels like an AGS event. “He’s like, alright, got nothing else to do,” Tanguay recalls with a laugh. Over the next few months, they coded a custom virtual event platform from scratch – a single screen for talks, chats, and networking all in one. That bespoke platform kept the AGS community alive during the lockdowns and, critically, preserved the brand’s trademark interactive vibe.

Another turning point came a bit later, as the business emerged from the pandemic. By 2021, App Growth Summit was back to hosting in-person events (often in outdoor or hybrid formats as needed) and demand was growing quickly. Yet the company itself was still running extremely lean, with just a handful of full-time staff. Tanguay realized AGS was at a crossroads: to scale up the events and content, he needed to scale up the team and operations. At the same time, on a personal level, he was considering putting down roots in Austin, Texas, where he had relocated from California. “I was gonna buy a house here in Austin... it’s the dream, come from California, go to Austin, it’s cheaper, get a house,” he remembers. But as he crunched the numbers, the prospect of a mortgage started to look like a ball and chain. “I realized how much the house was actually gonna cost me,” he says. Tanguay foresaw himself overworking just to pay the bills, potentially starving his young company of attention and cash.

So he made a bold decision: postpone home ownership and double down on the business. “You know what, let me go all in again to this company,” Tanguay decided. The money saved for a down payment was reallocated to hire much-needed team members. “I’m going to take this chunk of money and hire more people to get this business to the next level,” he resolved. Over a matter of months, AGS’s headcount more than doubled—from a scrappy crew of 4 up to 9—bringing on new talent in content, marketing, and operations. Those hires, as Tanguay tells it, “have been instrumental to get us to the level we’re at now.” He has no regrets about sacrificing the house for the company’s growth.

Inside AGS’s Unique Approach

Eight years since its founding, App Growth Summit has grown from a risky idea into a globally respected brand in the mobile app industry. Tanguay’s bet on intimacy and curation is paying off. 2025 was a record year for AGS by every measure – attendance, revenue, and impact – “by far [our] record year,” he notes proudly. In fact, the company nearly doubled its revenue compared to the previous few years, a direct result of the investments in talent and the return of in-person events. But even as AGS grows, Tanguay remains adamant about keeping a human scale. “We just keep growing and, you know, hopefully we’ll keep going and going,” he says, quickly adding that bigger is not always better. 

So what exactly makes an App Growth Summit event different? It starts with the guest list. AGS events are private, invite-only gatherings. You can’t just buy a ticket online without an invite or approval. This allows Tanguay’s team to maintain a careful balance of attendees (mostly senior app growth marketers, product leaders, and a limited number of solution providers). The goal is to avoid the “sea of salespeople” that plagues many large conferences. “People do not want heavy sales,” Tanguay says. At one giant event, he recalls, a speaker stepped off stage only to find “a line of people waiting to just hit them up about their product.” That doesn’t happen at AGS. By curating who’s in the room, Tanguay ensures that if you’re an attendee, you won’t be swarmed by ten vendors trying to scan your badge after every session.

Another pillar of AGS’s approach is premium content. Tanguay is almost fanatical about keeping the conference agendas fresh, relevant, and substantive. “If people are giving up a day at work or time with family to attend, they’d better learn something new,” he insists. “What people want as far as content goes is something that’s not generated by AI… not generic. They want substance,” he says. At AGS, you won’t see the same old “Top 10 Growth Hacks” talk that’s been making the rounds. Tanguay pushes his speakers (many of whom are hands-on experts from leading brands) to share real data, real strategies – even if that means being a bit vulnerable about what hasn’t worked.

Educate, Don’t Sell

Louis Tanguay’s philosophy on industry events can be distilled into a simple mantra: help people, don’t hustle them. As someone who has been on both sides – event organizer and former marketing agency guy – he is quick to empathize with attendees tired of being sold to. “Events are where you meet people. It’s not where you close the deal,” Tanguay says. In his view, a conference is the start of a relationship, not the finish line. He advises sponsors and sales teams to ditch the hard sell tactics on the conference floor. Running around “spamming people and name-tag hunting” is not only tacky, it’s ineffective. Instead, he encourages a focus on conversations and listening. “Just be a normal human and say, ‘Hey, I just want to chat,’ and don’t be like, ‘Let me tell you about my product’,” he suggests.

For companies sponsoring or speaking at AGS (or any conference), Tanguay’s advice is to bring value to the stage rather than a sales pitch. “The best way to sell your service is to educate the attendees,” he says. In practice, that means sharing insights, teaching something new, or even giving away a bit of your secret sauce in your talk. By educating, you demonstrate expertise and build trust. “If you can teach them something they didn’t know or get them to think in a different way, you’ve already proven your abilities,” Tanguay explains. The moment an attendee learns from you, they’re far more likely to seek you out afterwards to continue the conversation (now as a potential client, not just a lead on a list). This approach requires a mindset shift for some old-school sales folks, but Tanguay insists it’s how modern event marketing works best.

A Global Nomad with an Austin Anchor

In the past year alone, Louis has crisscrossed from Berlin to Istanbul to Mexico City, often extending his trips to soak in the local culture and visit friends made through the industry. After so many repeat visits, some of these cities have begun to feel like home. “I feel like I have ten homes,” he says, reflecting on the global network of friends and communities he’s built. He’ll stroll through Berlin or São Paulo with an insider’s confidence – knowing the neighborhoods, speaking bits of the language. “I was just hanging out with friends in Berlin… they asked, ‘Did you used to live here?’ I said, ‘No, I’ve just been coming here for seven, eight years’,” Tanguay laughs.

As Louis Tanguay looks ahead, the focus is on sustainable growth, both for his business and himself. App Growth Summit is gearing up for new cities (Paris and Singapore are on the 2026 wishlist) and more creative event formats, all while keeping the intimate feel that got them here. “We have a lot of great stuff coming,” Tanguay hints, from new content series to community initiatives. Personally, he’s excited to continue his digital nomad journey, anchored by that Austin home base and supported by a loyal team that he calls family. The journey from college dropout with a dream to industry leader was anything but smooth, but Tanguay wouldn’t have it any other way.

Whether you're scaling UA or leveling up retention, the best growth happens in good company. At Bidease, we believe in the same principles Louis Tanguay built App Growth Summit on: clarity, transparency, and results without the gimmicks. Visit bidease.com or find us at the next AGS event. We’ll bring the insights and swag that doesn’t suck.