What-if
Amazon could not build a successful social product due to commerce-first culture
“But no, I mean, it turns out Amazon could not have built a successful social product because they are wired for commerce. This is my impression. You know, they shared with us a bunch of thinking they had in the social space, and it was just clear that they, wh…”
Insight
You have to be a founder to make life-changing money in tech
“I realized that, yeah, you have to be a founder to make life changing money.”
Disclosure
Amazon refused Kindle integration without acquiring an equity stake in Goodreads
“And so we had this strong vision, and we met with Amazon, like I said, four or five times over the years, kind of talking about, would we do this? And they were always into it. The issue was, it required deep integration to pull off, and they weren't comfortab…”
Insight
Social networks work best when built around shared 'social objects'
“Social objects, objects that people like to talk about that therefore can be the basis for sharing on a social network. Photos are super strong for that. Articles, cooking, like anything that people could kind of experience together or separately, but like hav…”
Disclosure
Otis Chandler: Amazon promised to run Goodreads as an independent brand
“Amazon made it a little easy in that they told us they would want to run us as an independent subsidiary and an independent brand, just like they run Audible and IMDB and Zappos and now Twitch, and they have a long list of track record of doing this.”
Opinion
Otis Chandler: Amazon Is Not a Place to Cruise Post-Acquisition
“Amazon was not a place where you go to cruise.”
Disclosure
Otis Chandler: Tinkering on a new project to fix algorithmic news feeds
“So I'm actually starting to tinker, for the last six months, I've been starting to tinker on a new project, which has been exciting. I don't have anything to announce, but it's in the space of trying to Address the problem that I think that the new, how people…”
What-if
Otis Chandler: Goodreads would not have flourished without the 2007 Kindle launch
“But if Kindle hadn't launched in 2007 and moved, you know, started the digital reading revolution, I don't think Goodreads would have flourished. Industry trends have to align. And if that hadn't happened, you know, my old CEO would have been right. It would h…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
LA Times publisher grandfather advised Chandler to skip newspapers for the internet
“I think I was in high school, and I went and asked my grandfather, you know, do you think I should go into the family business? Because, you know, it's, it had been a business handed down generation to generation four times, and he said, nope, stay away. I rec…”
Disclosure
Chandler bought Goodreads.com for $5,000 after goodread.com was priced at $50,000
“And then I tried to go buy good read, singular, and it was like 50,000 dollars, and I was like, okay, forget that. And then I tried the plural, good reads, and it was not available. So I just bought goodreads with a z dot com for, you know, just to use while I…”
Assertion Partly supported
Chandler: Shelfari had three employees and $1M seed from Amazon
“And then literally two weeks before we were going to launch, we discovered Shelfari, which had two co-founders, three employees, and a million dollars in seed from Amazon.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Mashable coverage accelerated Goodreads' signup rate tenfold to 100 daily users
“Mashable wrote, wrote a story saying that we had just launched, and our growth went from 10 users a day to a hundred users a day.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Goodreads' first growth wave came from blog-based book reviewers joining in droves
“But actually that the first growth wave really didn't come from that. It came from discovering that there was a huge community of book reviewers who were existing on kind of the blogging platforms of 2000, you know, six, seven. And what they were looking to do…”
Assertion Supported
Goodreads reached 100,000 registered users by 2007 without hiring any employees
“We got it up to a 100,000 users.
I think registered users by the end of 2007 with no other employees, no other help.
It just the two of us.”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Otis Chandler: 40,000 volunteer librarians made tens of thousands of daily edits
“And I think by the end of Goodreads, we had maybe 40,000 of them were making tens of thousands of edits a day, which is why Goodreads has one of the best catalogs out there.
In the world.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Otis Chandler: Goodreads raised its first angel round without a pitch deck
“I went Talked to those people and showed them the product. I had no deck, and they all liked it and said yes, and so then after that, we were able to finally go and hire some employees.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Chandler: Random House booked an initial $10,000 ad campaign on Goodreads
“Someone at Random House, the very nice woman named Julie Sills pinged us and said, hey, I love your site. And you know, I'm at Random House. I'm in charge of marketing books. Is there any way we can work with you? And so she Set me up with the guy at Random Ho…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Chandler: Goodreads held most Series A capital when seeking Series B
“And I remember when we were looking at the Series B, we still had most of the Series A in the bank.”
Assertion Partly supported
Goodreads earned an 8% affiliate cut referring book buyers to Amazon
“So affiliate was, we get, you know, an eight percent cut of a book when we refer a customer to Amazon or Barnes and Noble or somewhere where they buy a book.”
Disclosure
Chandler capped his Goodreads salary at his highest-paid employee's rate
“I think for the first year of Goodreads, I had no salary. Then I had like maybe 30,000 a year. And then I just, once we had enough money where we were hiring some people, I just kept my salary at the top person's level. I never paid myself more than the top pe…”
Disclosure
Chandler: Goodreads sought $10M to $15M round before selling to Amazon
“I don't think that was ever disclosed, so Guy Raz has the exclusive. I think it was 10 or fifteen million, I actually don't remember, but one of those.”
Assertion Supported
Otis Chandler: Goodreads was a top-100 US website when Amazon acquired it
“Yeah, but we owned most of a website that was one of the top hundred websites in the U.S. By traffic.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Otis Chandler: Amazon Allowed Goodreads to Run Unprofitably and Triple Headcount
“Amazon wanted to invest in social, and I finally had permission to Go unprofitable. So we grew from 35 employees to over a hundred, I think in two or three years.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Tickle.com's first viral hit was a 'What breed of dog are you?' quiz
“Serious tests weren't that popular, and what was popular were fun tests. So our first viral test was, what breed or dog are you? We built this test, and it went instantly viral all over the internet.”
