Brian Donohue
CEO & Co-owner, Instapaper. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
executivefounderengineer@bthdonohue ↗LinkedIn ↗bthdonohue.com ↗
Brian Donohue joined Instapaper in 2013 as an iOS engineer, rose to CEO, and guided the read-it-later service through its acquisition by Pinterest in 2016. He later orchestrated Instapaper's spinout as an independent company in 2018 and, following engineering leadership roles at Pinterest and DoorDash, returned to leading Instapaper full-time.
1shows
1appearances
13statements
0resolved
0supported
0contradicted
Everything Brian Donohue said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Donohue: Instapaper recouped lost revenue within eight months of going free
“We took a pretty big hit, I think, which was expected on the revenue side for a couple months. But within six to eight months, we had re recouped what we had lost on the monthly revenue. And we were actually back into a growth trajectory, which was awesome to …”
Donohue: Capital invested in Pinterest yielded better returns than funding Instapaper
“The reason being is that treating it as a business unit, I just felt that every dollar put into Instapaper could maybe return 70 cents a dollar. Like, it would be pretty challenging to, like, have it kind of be an investment that had a solid return. But I felt…”
Donohue: Instapaper preserves simplicity by hiding power-user features
“Our strategy for simplicity with new feature development, and it's not a great strategy, is we just hide all the features. We put them kind of in hidden places. And I think our idea and our philosophy behind it is the people who want those features are gonna g…”
Donohue: Read-later apps became a limited niche without massive growth
“Both Pocket and Instapaper wound up landing at larger companies back in 2016, and Readability wound up shutting down, because actually I think the market appeal for that product is fairly limited, and it's not one that's, like, massively growing over time.”
Donohue: Users will always choose the free competitor between two strong services
“You have this dynamic where you have this service that's really strong, but there's a free competitor that's also really strong, and people will always seek the free competitor.”
Instapaper became cash-flow positive within three months of spinout
“We are now cash flow positive, which is great. Like a couple thousand dollars. A lot of that was around significantly reducing our server costs.”
Donohue: Instapaper downloads tanked after Pocket launched for free in 2012
“In relaunching Pocket in 2012, I think, you know, I've looked at the downloads for Instapaper, and they just start tanking after April 2012.”
Donohue: App downloads drove 40% to 50% of Instapaper's revenue
“Because the app downloads were 40 to 50% of the revenue from Instapaper, there was a lot of hesitation around just eliminating it.”
Donohue: Apple's Free App promo beat Instapaper's prior two-year downloads
“In that one week period, we had more app downloads than we had an aggregate over the past two years. And we increased our subscriptions by like 10 to 15%.”
Donohue: Instapaper received an eight-figure acquisition LOI in 2015
“One of the large New York media companies sent us a letter of intent for a large sum. Very large sum. It was In the eight figure range. Yeah, it was big.”
Donohue handled all Instapaper back-end and iOS engineering since 2014
“Basically from late 2014 through now, I've been the person doing all the back-end engineering, all the iPhone engineering.”
Instapaper raised $80,000 from friends and family for spinout
“So we raised 80,000 dollars from friends and family. Very ragtag, like six people. So to kind of give you the average size, I think the largest check was from me, which was 13,000. And then most of the people had 10, some people put in five.”
Donohue: Only 16% of Instapaper URLs appeared on Pinterest on day one
“And what I found is that on day, on the first day that we saw those links, only 16% of those links were in Pinterest. So we actually see like a much different set of URLs on a given day. And then over time, I think within seven or eight days, Pinterest gets to…”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Brian's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Y COMBINATORLEDGER | CEO & Co-owner, Instapaper | 1 | 13 | — | full record on the Y Combinator Startup Podcast → |