Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Instapaper is much bigger today than I could have predicted in 2008, and it has simply grown far beyond what one person can do. To really shine, it needs a full-time staff of at least a few people.
As long as I manage investments properly and don't spend recklessly, Tumblr has given my family a strong safety net and given me the freedom to work on whatever I want. And that's exactly what I plan to do.
I don't need every customer. I'm primarily in the business of selling a product for money. How much effort do I really want to devote to satisfying people who are unable or extremely unlikely to pay for anything?
Today there are millions of people making stuff and putting it into the world: that's become part of our identity and it shouldn't be limited to people who fancy themselves writers, or who are particularly witty or talented.
I started out from a pretty modest background, so I always had a pretty good sense of money. I always had to work for my money, save my own money, I always bought my own stuff with my money... trying not to waste money unnecessarily.
I've done everything from stocking shelves at a natural food co-op, to baking bagels at Brueggers and bussing tables. Then I realized that jobs suck, but if you could get up at 6 A.M. and bake your own breakfast, that is very satisfying.
Instapaper does support paywall sites. I have a list of them, that when someone saves something it sends a copy of the page as they are viewing it only to them. If you subscribe to a paid site, you can save the content. I'm not really touching the money.
People love information. Right now in our society, we have an obesity epidemic. Because for the first time in history, we have access to food whenever we want, we don't know how to control ourselves. I think we have the exact same problem with information.
For every new feature we add, we take an old one out. A lot of big sites don’t do that, and it’s a problem. Twitter started as a beautifully simple product, but it’s now going the same route as Facebook. The drive to innovate can overencumber and destroy a product.
Rituals, even unhappy ones, provide a measure of comfort. Like a superstitious ballplayer who will only use certain bats, my depression rituals have become a fixed, normal part of my life. ... I need rituals to prevent unnecessarily rocking my already shaky emotional boat.
Apple already had everyone's billing information from iTunes... you could buy things just by typing in your password... That, for the first time, brought very, very easy payment to the modern software world. That, more than anything, is why there is a business for paid apps.
People want to download publications quickly and read them without cruft. Publications that started in print carry too much baggage and usually have awful apps. 'The Magazine' was designed from the start to be streamlined, natively digital, and respectful of readers' time and attention.
It’s right to say that people fall in love. We don’t glide, slip, or stumble into it. Instead we tumble head first from the moment we decide to step off the edge of a cliff with someone and see whether we’ll fly together. Love might be irrational, but we make the choice to risk everything.
Writing your own blog platform is like roasting your own coffee: it's impractical and you probably shouldn't do it, but for people who really, truly care about it, it's worthwhile to them for their own personal priorities that sound crazy to everyone else. Well, I write my own blog platform and I roast my own coffee.