About this episode
Brian Donohue is President of Instapaper and a Product Engineering Manager at Pinterest . You can find him on Twitter @bthdonohue . The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon . *** Topics 00:19 - The history of Instapaper 8:19 - Free competitors enter the market 10:19 - How Brian joined Instapaper 14:34 - Transitioning from paid to freemium 19:19 - Pinterest's acquisition of Instapaper 26:34 - Moving to California 29:04 - Working on Instapaper within Pinterest 32:19 - Spinning Instapaper out of Pinterest 42:34 - Jareau Wadé asks - What types of product integrations could Pinterest have done with Instapaper? 50:04 - Ryan Hoover asks - I’m curious how he and the team balance simplicity with new feature development/product expansion. 54:19 - Raymond Durk asks - I love the rapid reading mode but would also love a voice enabled mode where the Google Assistant or Siri reads it. Speaking of I'd use it on my Google Home to listen to news if that was a skill. 57:39 - Brian Kim asks - Any growth hacks that worked well? 1:00:04 - Gustaf Alströmer asks - How does it make time for focused time to catch up on everything he saves? What are his best productivity hacks related to this? 1:03:44 - Backpacking