Donohue: Capital invested in Pinterest yielded better returns than funding Instapaper
Brian Donohue · Brian Donohue on Operating Instapaper Through an Acquisition · Y Combinator · Nov 14, 2018 · at 30:45
Brian Donohue discusses advising Pinterest leadership on options for Instapaper following its acquisition in 2016.
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“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 pretty strongly that every dollar into Pinterest would yield a dollar 10, a dollar 25, a dollar 30. And so it didn't seem to make a lot of sense to put tons of resourcing Instapaper when there's so much work to do on Pinterest, and that there was much more reliability for getting value out of the work done in Pinterest.”
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