Ben Lebus, Founder and CEO of Mob, has been confirmed as keynote speaker for Business of Apps London 2026. He will take the stage on 23rd April at The Brewery in London to share the story of how Mob became the UK’s leading Food and Drink app on both the App Store and Google Play.
In a recent interview with Business of Apps, Ben revisited Mob’s evolution from student project to category-leading app and offered a sneak peek of the themes he plans to explore on stage.
Ben founded Mob nine and a half years ago while studying history at the University of Edinburgh. Having grown up in a foodie family that ran an Italian restaurant, he was passionate about cooking and wanted to build a platform to help students cook easy, affordable, high-quality meals. Early traction came through social media, where recipe videos helped Mob accumulated a large and engaged community.
For the first six to seven years, the business ran on brand partnerships, creating sponsored content for food and beverage companies across the UK. This model helped establish Mob as one of the country’s most recognisable food platforms, but the commercial relationship was with partners rather than users.
This all changed in 2023 with the launch of Mob Premium, the app’s subscription service. Introducing a direct subscription relationship with its audience meant a structural shift for Mob, moving the app beyond brand-led revenue and repositioning it as a user-first platform.
Over the two and a half years since, Mob has become a tech-first business, with product development now centred around a specific use case — the weekly cooking routine, Monday through Friday, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Meal planning tools and aisle-organised shopping lists, along with easy, affordable recipes developed by a team of Shoreditch-based chefs, are now the high point of Mob’s proposition.
How Mob grew from uni idea to subscription business
Source: Business of Apps vis YouTube
At Business of Apps London 2026, Ben will give an account of how this transition happened, from what worked well and what didn’t to the experiments and strategic bets that moved Mob from a social-first media brand to a subscription-led app business.
The event expects more than 1,000 app growth, product, and revenue leaders. Tickets are now available, and if you work for an app or brand, you may be eligible to apply for a subsidised ticket here.
