Chad Fowler
General Partner & CTO, BlueYard Capital. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
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Chad Fowler is a General Partner and CTO at BlueYard Capital. He previously served as the CTO of 6Wunderkinder, creators of Wunderlist, and authored The Passionate Programmer.
1shows
1appearances
12statements
6resolved
5supported
0contradicted
83%fully supported
Everything Chad Fowler said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Enterprise software bloat is driven by buyers negotiating on missing features
“And it's all about the historical war between customers and suppliers of enterprise business software, where it's like this self-defeating fight for features and complexity. It's all driven on fear and it's driven on, you know, fear based negotiation tactics. …”
Wunderlist CTO Chad Fowler wants to never add another feature
“No, no, I don't want to add any features and that's not to say we won't, but personally, I would like to never add another feature to this piece of software. I think it's done.”
Wunderlist will become Microsoft's core task layer and spread its startup culture
“Ah, so for me and Wunderlist, it is integrate deeply into, to Microsoft, be the layer that connects things in terms of tasks, things you need to get done, and continue to both learn from one of the largest, most important technology organizations ever, but als…”
Berlin is significantly cheaper to operate in than comparable US cities
“And compared to most of the cities, or in contrast to most of the cities in the US that have the same sort of international footprint, it is incredibly cheap to live and operate in. That's not a Europe wide advantage, but that is something very special about B…”
Wunderlist easily recruited US West Coast talent to Berlin
“So with that in mind, it has been very easy for us at Wunderlist, for example, to attract international talent from Almost all over the world, and certainly even the west coast of the United States, because it's a nice destination for people and a place where …”
Avoiding complexity is the key to building habit-forming products
“And that's the core of how you can make something habit forming. You know, if you have a product that is complicated to work with and not a joy to work with, Then it's going to be harder to get yourself into a habit of using it, even if you want to use it.”
Human user testing yields greater insights than purely data-driven metrics
“We have recently made quite an investment of time and energy into user testing of features sometimes even before we develop them so that we can get features into the hands of real people who aren't inside our heads and see what makes sense to them. And that's …”
Wunderlist maintained complete operational autonomy in Berlin after Microsoft acquisition
“Really nothing has changed. We're operating in Berlin. We're a solid team making decisions the same way we did before. Like I said, we, you know, we have freedom to do things exactly as we did in the past, but we have more help when we need it.”
Founders should evaluate potential acquirers like interviewing a prospective employer
“I guess I can say that what we did was we evaluated whether there would be a fit in the same way that you would evaluate an employer when you're being interviewed and essentially interviewing them for a job. At least that's the way I looked at it, and I think …”
Wunderkinder killed Wunderkit due to excessive complexity before refocusing on Wunderlist
“With Wunderlist, for example, you know, we, the team before I joined had created something called Wunderkit, and the DNA of the company was very much exactly what I'm talking about, this simple consumer-first approach, but Wunderkit was their experience of Goi…”
Wunderlist delayed adding folders for four and a half years
“Ultimately, we decided that folders really were an essential part of the experience for power users. And we added, added it later this year, but I think it had been on the request list since the initial launch, like four and a half years ago.”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Chad's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 20VCLEDGER | General Partner & CTO, BlueYard Capital | 1 | 12 | 83% 5/6 | full record on 20VC → |