Brian Donohue, president of Instapaper, responds to Product Hunt founder Ryan Hoover about how a lean team balances product expansion with interface simplicity.
“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 go out of their way to go find them. And we don't care about moving metrics on specific features or whatever. What we care about is the overall product and keeping it simple.”
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More from Brian Donohue
AssertionNot checkable as stated
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 …”
Brian DonohueNov 14, 2018▶ 18:06Brian Donohue on Operating Instapaper Through an Acquisition · Y Combinator
Opinion
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…”
Brian DonohueNov 14, 2018▶ 30:45Brian Donohue on Operating Instapaper Through an Acquisition · Y Combinator
Insight
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.”
Brian DonohueNov 14, 2018▶ 4:58Brian Donohue on Operating Instapaper Through an Acquisition · Y Combinator
Insight
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.”
Brian DonohueNov 14, 2018▶ 8:17Brian Donohue on Operating Instapaper Through an Acquisition · Y Combinator
AssertionNot checkable as stated
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.”
Brian DonohueNov 14, 2018▶ 40:39Brian Donohue on Operating Instapaper Through an Acquisition · Y Combinator
AssertionNot checkable as stated
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.”
Brian DonohueNov 14, 2018▶ 8:07Brian Donohue on Operating Instapaper Through an Acquisition · Y Combinator
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