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Founder Stories: Leah Culver of Breaker (YC W17)

52 points by craigcannon 10y ago

rglover 10y ago
Woah! Cool to see Leah Culver is still around building stuff. Remember her from the Pownce days.
- rubberbandage 10y ago
  A fellow Pownce user in the wild! Incredible to think that was 10 years ago. I feel like that app was years ahead of its time — the casual immediacy of Twitter without the character limits, the ease of sharing media like an internet-wide HipChat or Slack, topics like Reddit. Selfishly, I always hoped Leah would stop working at Dropbox and start another company :-)
  - granda 10y ago
    Pownce WAS ahead of its time. Revision3 built a solid product and I still can't believe that was 10 years ago. God I miss TechTV.
- mmalone 10y ago
  Pownce, represent.
- throwaway2016a 10y ago
  That was my first reaction as well. I really liked Pownce and I think she did great work on it. It was sad to see it shut down. The embedding stuff (oEmbed?) was pretty great too. I wish it was used by more people.
- cscharenberg 10y ago
  Also a group chat site call Convore. It didn't last very long from what I remember but was pretty interesting. https://techcrunch.com/2011/02/09/convore-wants-to-be-the-easiest-group-communication-app-yet/ https://techcrunch.com/2011/02/09/convore-wants-to-be-the-ea...
boomzilla 10y ago
how would `an iOS app for listening to podcasts focused on social discovery` make money? I couldn't find that question in the interview.
- ctvo 10y ago
  If only they told you their exact business model in every interview. Maybe this will help though: Our initial direction wasn’t the direction we ended up going in. I was interested in building tools for podcasters. Then when we started to talking to podcasters we realized that podcasters just want listeners and data about those listeners. Just providing good tools didn’t really solve that problem. So we shifted focus to work on the user app first.
  - DenisM 10y ago
    Did you have to be snarky about it?
    - sebleon 10y ago
      Probably didn't have to, but chose to for any one of many reasons.
hangonhn 10y ago
IIRC, she also wrote quite a bit on using Django. I learned quite a bit about the ins-and-outs of Django because of her writings. Glad she has had a good career.
jchiu1106 10y ago
Cool. Remembered her from the oauth 1.0 days (She's the author of the oauth python library IIRC)
- nailer 10y ago
  Culver also wrote the oauth spec itself. Also oembed.
taylorwc 10y ago
I've been using their beta app for the past week and love it. I have already added several podcasts that hadn't previously been on my radar, via their discovery tools. Cool to read the founder stories.
deleted 10y ago
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tylermenezes 10y ago
It's crazy how many things we use today were inspired by something Leah did. She also seems like a pretty cool person from the stories I've heard. Hope this becomes her first massive success.

52 points by craigcannon 10y ago

rglover 10y ago

Woah! Cool to see Leah Culver is still around building stuff. Remember her from the Pownce days.

rubberbandage 10y ago
A fellow Pownce user in the wild! Incredible to think that was 10 years ago. I feel like that app was years ahead of its time — the casual immediacy of Twitter without the character limits, the ease of sharing media like an internet-wide HipChat or Slack, topics like Reddit. Selfishly, I always hoped Leah would stop working at Dropbox and start another company :-)
- granda 10y ago
  Pownce WAS ahead of its time. Revision3 built a solid product and I still can't believe that was 10 years ago. God I miss TechTV.
mmalone 10y ago
Pownce, represent.
throwaway2016a 10y ago
That was my first reaction as well. I really liked Pownce and I think she did great work on it. It was sad to see it shut down. The embedding stuff (oEmbed?) was pretty great too. I wish it was used by more people.
cscharenberg 10y ago
Also a group chat site call Convore. It didn't last very long from what I remember but was pretty interesting. https://techcrunch.com/2011/02/09/convore-wants-to-be-the-easiest-group-communication-app-yet/ https://techcrunch.com/2011/02/09/convore-wants-to-be-the-ea...

boomzilla 10y ago

how would `an iOS app for listening to podcasts focused on social discovery` make money? I couldn't find that question in the interview.

ctvo 10y ago
If only they told you their exact business model in every interview. Maybe this will help though: Our initial direction wasn’t the direction we ended up going in. I was interested in building tools for podcasters. Then when we started to talking to podcasters we realized that podcasters just want listeners and data about those listeners. Just providing good tools didn’t really solve that problem. So we shifted focus to work on the user app first.
- DenisM 10y ago
  Did you have to be snarky about it?
  - sebleon 10y ago
    Probably didn't have to, but chose to for any one of many reasons.

hangonhn 10y ago

IIRC, she also wrote quite a bit on using Django. I learned quite a bit about the ins-and-outs of Django because of her writings. Glad she has had a good career.

jchiu1106 10y ago

Cool. Remembered her from the oauth 1.0 days (She's the author of the oauth python library IIRC)

nailer 10y ago
Culver also wrote the oauth spec itself. Also oembed.

taylorwc 10y ago

I've been using their beta app for the past week and love it. I have already added several podcasts that hadn't previously been on my radar, via their discovery tools. Cool to read the founder stories.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

tylermenezes 10y ago

It's crazy how many things we use today were inspired by something Leah did. She also seems like a pretty cool person from the stories I've heard. Hope this becomes her first massive success.