Scaling Smart: How Opal Built a $10M ARR Business in Just 2 Years

Are you reading this off a screen right now? Thought so.

It’s okay, reading Speedinvest’s excellent founder interviews is actually a very productive use of your time. But you’d like to cut down on the meaningless scrolling, the mental clutter, or the dopamine drip of social media, right? That mountain of emails isn’t going to answer itself. 

Productivity is exactly the problem Kenneth Schlenker set out to solve when he launched Opal, now the world’s #1 screen time and focus app. Built on the insight that attention is our most valuable currency, and that most tech isn’t designed to protect it, Opal is redefining a whole category in consumer tech: attention management.

The company, backed by Speedinvest since 2020 and launched publicly in late 2022, has since grown to $10 million in ARR with just 11 people. That’s not just scaling fast, it’s scaling smart.

From Mountains to Mission

Opal's origin story began in a sleepy village in the French Alps. “I come from a very small mountain village, surrounded by nature and calm,” Kenneth says. That early experience with balance, between the serenity of the outdoors and the intensity of digital life, would come to define Opal’s mission.

After an early career at Google, Kenneth saw both sides of the digital coin: opportunity and overexposure. “I got a very early kind of glimpse into what happens when a company has a lot of data and how much power it has to influence, manipulate people; there's also a side of technology that isn't the brightest.”

That realization hit harder as the world became increasingly screen-bound, something that accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“There is a productivity crisis; we see people struggling to process information, learn new things, concentrate on tasks, and that comes from an understanding that the tools we’re using are built by companies that build tools for distraction and not focus.”

Opal was founded during COVID, but it wasn’t launched with a product. “Initially, I didn’t really know what product to build, so the first two years we were really experimenting.” Kenneth and his team tried multiple different approaches. 

One initial challenge was that when Opal started out, there was no Screen Time API or ability to access user statistics and block specific apps at specific times on Apple products. Kenneth and his team had to spend a long time building relations with Apple to make a case. They were the first app to get access to and launch using the Screen Time API in late 2022. 

Despite not having a fully fleshed-out product, Opal needed to pay the bills. So Kenneth made the decision early on to charge users immediately as they built out the business. 

Strategically, Kenneth was clear about charging users early. “I wanted to have a sustainable business, and you need a business model that supports this mission. It's also an excellent engine to discover your product-market fit. ”

Discovering Product-Market Fit

Through rapid iteration, Kenneth’s team discovered what worked and what didn’t. Contrary to Kenneth’s initial expectations, early testing showed that a mental health angle for Gen Z users didn’t convert, but productivity for professionals did. “It was people who were actually working, early professionals, who were wasting time, not having enough energy, being distracted all the time – they were looking for a solution.”

“We discovered that we needed to make the experience feel fun and rewarding. We also discovered how to onboard people. When people join Opal, they are motivated and want to change, so they start with very high intent. We built it almost like a going-cold-turkey approach.”

The key learning is that it’s hard for people to remember to open an app. But when they first install Opal, they’re highly committed. So users are immediately asked to schedule time to block their most distracting apps during work or study hours, every day of the week. That way, the next day, it just happens—they don’t have to remember. It’s automatic.

That onboarding philosophy helps retention and builds product stickiness. 

Opal’s lean scale-up is grounded in a clear framework: monetization, experimentation, and performance marketing.

Monetization: “From the very first day we were charging people… and that allows us to figure out who the people are that are willing to pay.”

Experimentation: “Every week we release a new version of the app, we run A/B tests, for example, we found that setting up work hours, ‘I work 9 to 5, I don’t want TikTok or YouTube’, was much more effective than, say, evening disconnection.”

Performance marketing: “We try different ways to explain the product, talk about pain points, figure out what resonates best.”

Together, these pillars form an engine that drives fast, data-led growth with minimal guesswork and maximum user insight.

Focus Over Everything

Though headquartered in Paris, Opal launched outside of Europe initially. “We decided to start and launch only in the US. I think because I made it very clear that this was our focus from the beginning, we were pretty successful.”

That meant saying no to international growth, at least temporarily. “We obviously got lots of people asking for the app in other markets, but we did not do that for a long time.”

Hiring also benefited from this focus. One of Opal’s best engineers came on board after testing the early version on TestFlight. “Being able to hire people who really cared about our mission was very, very important,” Kenneth adds.

Kenneth attributes this discipline partly to resource constraints: “We were operating with not a lot of capital, that means we had to be even more selective in the battles we picked.”

Opal’s revenue journey was quietly explosive: $0 to $5M ARR with six people, then $5M to $10M with just 11.

But in 2024, Kenneth began a personal and strategic shift, going from being 100% growth-focused to building out a long-term business. “I had to do a big mindset shift, a switch from efficiency to company building.” That meant hiring more broadly, introducing structure, and thinking on a longer time horizon. “I became confident enough to start investing, even without needing immediate payback.”

Lessons and What’s Next

Asked what advice he’d offer other founders, Kenneth is practical:

“Charge early. People are more willing to pay right now, experiment, invest in having the right kind of experimentation tooling, and have a very strong iteration culture where you force one app release per week, no matter what.”

That discipline helps attract the right people, too. “It also helps you hire the people that will maintain this culture.”

Finally, he recommends writing a manifesto. “The first thing I ever did… was write a manifesto. Still, today it’s on our website. It’s something I still stand behind… even though the product has changed.”

After an initial focus on young professionals, Opal has expanded to helping university students regain control of their attention, as they look to focus during long library sessions. This shift has happened organically, as students become more aware of their screen time usage problems. 

The company now has a growing user base among students and even early school partnerships. “We just signed our first deal with a high school in the US… and we have partnerships with Harvard and UCLA.”

What’s next? Expanding to families and launching on Android for the first time. But even now, focus remains central.

“We’re tackling the defining issue of our era: reclaiming time and attention. Our goal is a billion users, and we’re getting there step by step — starting with professionals, then students, and now expanding to the next wave.”

Just as Opal empowers users to eliminate distractions and concentrate, Kenneth has built his company with that same laser focus, prioritizing mission-driven growth and avoiding distractions. 

With that type of mindset, the sky is the limit for Kenneth and his company.