5 ms·

Instapaper Goes From Hobby To Startup

132 points by pathik 16y ago

sahillavingia 16y ago
A bit of a sensationalist headline: I wouldn't consider this a startup, as no actual changes have been made yet, besides availability of time. Though I am extremely excited to see what Marco has to offer the world now that he can devote more than 10 hours a week.
- jasonjei 16y ago
  I kinda had a hunch he would be doing this. As it stands right now, Instapaper has a greater chance of making more money than Tumblr, simply because they are selling iOS apps already and the datamining potential is greater (with Tumblr, how do you analyze different blog posts and so on?), such as finding out which blogs are most popular.
  - cake 16y ago
    They alredy extract the most popular posts http://www.tumblr.com/popular/top http://www.tumblr.com/popular/top I'm sure they have no problems to know which blog is the most popular (page views, number of "reblogs"...)
- grinich 16y ago
  The product has been out for nearly 3 years[1] and he's been making money for at least half of that. I'm curious why you don't consider that a startup. What's your criterion? [1] http://techcrunch.com/2008/01/30/simple-bookmarking-now-available-with-instapaper/ http://techcrunch.com/2008/01/30/simple-bookmarking-now-avai...
  - sahillavingia 16y ago
    I meant, the title says from a hobby to a startup but I believe it's always been both (it didn't just become a startup, it always has been in a sense). Sorry, maybe my wording was off.
mortenjorck 16y ago
It's nice to see Marco Arment pursuing another fine example of the Patio11-esque approach of building a minimum viable product in his spare time, gradually improving and expanding it while keeping the day job, growing his userbase, and then smoothly transitioning into making it a full-time gig, all without talk of crazy hours, scrambling for investors, or even subsistence on ramen. Obviously this doesn't work for every kind of startup, but it's great to see it working where it can.
- Psyonic 16y ago
  Don't compare him to Patrick or he'll be next on lionhearted's chopping block!
agent86a 16y ago
I've been using and loving instapaper for a few months now. It's really helped me not get distracted spending 20 minutes reading an article when I find something interesting. Also: the ability to grab an up to date mobi file remotely from my kindle is fantastic. For anyone with an ereader, instapaper is the easiest way I've found to get articles on the web well formatted for reading. Really looking forward to seeing where this goes!
WarDekar 16y ago
I should probably submit this to him (and I shall now), but my chief complaint with Instapaper is that on split-page articles it doesn't automatically combine them into one. Some sites (namely WashPo comes to mind off the top of my head) won't let you single page articles, so it makes it a pain to use Instapaper on those. Hopefully with more time on his hands he'll be able to add more features like this. EDIT: Looks like he already has this requested since it's listed on the FAQ page, so I look forward to seeing this functionality soon!
- DannoHung 16y ago
  Heck, I'd be pretty happy with a little button/dropdown in the popup that let me say which article the page is a part of.
danielhfrank 16y ago
How does this stack up against Read It Later? Anybody tried both of them? They sound identical
- kroger 16y ago
  I never used Read It Later, but instapaper can also save kindle and epub files. Even if I have a pro instapaper iphone app, I mainly use it on the kindle these days.
- mynegation 16y ago
  I use both and Instapaper does much nicer job of reformatting HTML into something readable. Most of the time it is a blessing, but sometimes it may be the curse (e.g. you have colored table with critical information).
- mcepl 16y ago
  Because it is much more than that ... combines Read It Later, with Readability (Firefox add-on), and ability to download ePub to my N-900 (so it works virtually everywhere, not only on iP*). Also, there is no cost of using it ... if it goes away (or requires payment), I don't loose anything than one day worth of reading.
darushimo 16y ago
go marco!
StavrosK 16y ago
Does anyone know how he promoted it? I'm having a bit of trouble with my startup (historious), in that I don't know how I should go about promoting it...
- adambyrtek 16y ago
  Tadam, you've just promoted it! I googled and took a quick look at it, but I'm curious how different is it from a bunch of other already entrenched bookmarking sites?
  - StavrosK 16y ago
    That's my biggest problem (getting people to understand the awesomeness). I've used other sites, but this is the only truly zero-cost bookmarking service (I'm referring to mental cost). When the mental cost for bookmarking is removed, you find that you bookmark anything that looks remotely interesting and then you can find it very very easily. Other services have the burden that I either have to fill out too much stuff when bookmarking (tags, categories etc), and/or that I have to categorise my bookmarks. This adds the pages you bookmark to the index right away, so bookmarking is single-click and then you have your personal search engine. Try it, it's really great. My problem, however, is that I can't find a good way to tell people about it without spamming it, and I was wondering how people approached this problem for Instapaper, which is a not entirely different service...
    - photon_off 16y ago
      I hate to say it, but while historious might be pretty awesome, you have a lot of factors working against you. First, there are things that already do this, and they work well enough. My browser address bar (FF3) finds 95% of stuff that I'm looking for. The other 5% I can open up my history and search. And, if that fails, I can retrace my steps somehow (re-searching Google, etc). I don't find it to be a big deal. Second, Historious has a pretty large barrier-to-entry, and the pain-point may not be strong enough to overcome that. By barrier to entry, I'm referring to the effect of users finding it very difficult to switch the way they do things. I'm sure this is well documented, and there's a name for it, but if a user has their own way of doing things it will take additional value over just the new process being better, because there is a cost to the actual switching itself. By routinizing a process, it actually feels easier (even though it may be much more difficult than other methods). Since finding things you've previously browsed probably happens a lot, people probably have their own way of dealing with this. I'll just search again, or look through my browser history. Third, it makes me think. I don't want to constantly evaluate whether or not I should historify a site; which is necessary since it'd be ridiculous to historify every site I come across. It's hard to gain a fresh perspective on something you've worked so much on. Believe me, I know. I've been working on an the most incredible bookmarklet (guaranteed). I use it all the time, and I love it. But I've been routinized, and that's one of hugest problems. Even though it solves some pretty annoying problems and is awesome, I've found that people who try it out will not connect the fact that it solves problem XYZ, and they have problem XYZ, so they should use it. If they already have a solution to XYZ, that comes up to the top of their mind's list of how to solve the problem.
docgnome 16y ago
The thing that has always made me hesitant to use Instapaper and services like it (in particular the ability to read stuff on an e-ink reader later) is for me a major part of the value of most of what I read, is the comments on HN. When you move the content to a reader device, you lose that. Has anyone though of a solution to this other than read the article and then hop on HN and try to find it?
- glhaynes 16y ago
  I personally find that there's nearly no overlap between articles with comments (at least those which I'm interested in) and those I read on Instapaper. Think that's because I don't tend to put short "news" items on Instapaper, just long form articles.
  - duck 16y ago
    I find the opposite true - for me it seems like HN is a great way to find those longer, more detailed, articles that I use Instapaper for all the time.
- TheSOB88 16y ago
  You could always put the comments page on Instapaper instead.
  - omaranto 16y ago
    I haven't tried that recently, but the Instapaper text extractor didn't use to parse HN comment pages at all.
duck 16y ago
Is the only revenue stream for Instapaper the app you can buy?
- cake 16y ago
  Ads on the website too I guess.
coned88 16y ago
Im surprised they haven't been sued yet.
anarchitect 16y ago
Sometimes I wonder what my iPad can do that I can't do better on my laptop. The answer, always, is reading articles Instapaper. That is if I can manage to wrestle it away from my girlfriend playing Plants vs Zombies!

132 points by pathik 16y ago

A bit of a sensationalist headline: I wouldn't consider this a startup, as no actual changes have been made yet, besides availability of time. Though I am extremely excited to see what Marco has to offer the world now that he can devote more than 10 hours a week.

jasonjei 16y ago
I kinda had a hunch he would be doing this. As it stands right now, Instapaper has a greater chance of making more money than Tumblr, simply because they are selling iOS apps already and the datamining potential is greater (with Tumblr, how do you analyze different blog posts and so on?), such as finding out which blogs are most popular.
- cake 16y ago
  They alredy extract the most popular posts http://www.tumblr.com/popular/top http://www.tumblr.com/popular/top I'm sure they have no problems to know which blog is the most popular (page views, number of "reblogs"...)
grinich 16y ago
The product has been out for nearly 3 years[1] and he's been making money for at least half of that. I'm curious why you don't consider that a startup. What's your criterion? [1] http://techcrunch.com/2008/01/30/simple-bookmarking-now-available-with-instapaper/ http://techcrunch.com/2008/01/30/simple-bookmarking-now-avai...
- sahillavingia 16y ago
  I meant, the title says from a hobby to a startup but I believe it's always been both (it didn't just become a startup, it always has been in a sense). Sorry, maybe my wording was off.

mortenjorck 16y ago

It's nice to see Marco Arment pursuing another fine example of the Patio11-esque approach of building a minimum viable product in his spare time, gradually improving and expanding it while keeping the day job, growing his userbase, and then smoothly transitioning into making it a full-time gig, all without talk of crazy hours, scrambling for investors, or even subsistence on ramen. Obviously this doesn't work for every kind of startup, but it's great to see it working where it can.

Psyonic 16y ago
Don't compare him to Patrick or he'll be next on lionhearted's chopping block!

agent86a 16y ago

I've been using and loving instapaper for a few months now. It's really helped me not get distracted spending 20 minutes reading an article when I find something interesting. Also: the ability to grab an up to date mobi file remotely from my kindle is fantastic. For anyone with an ereader, instapaper is the easiest way I've found to get articles on the web well formatted for reading. Really looking forward to seeing where this goes!

WarDekar 16y ago

I should probably submit this to him (and I shall now), but my chief complaint with Instapaper is that on split-page articles it doesn't automatically combine them into one. Some sites (namely WashPo comes to mind off the top of my head) won't let you single page articles, so it makes it a pain to use Instapaper on those. Hopefully with more time on his hands he'll be able to add more features like this. EDIT: Looks like he already has this requested since it's listed on the FAQ page, so I look forward to seeing this functionality soon!

DannoHung 16y ago
Heck, I'd be pretty happy with a little button/dropdown in the popup that let me say which article the page is a part of.

danielhfrank 16y ago

How does this stack up against Read It Later? Anybody tried both of them? They sound identical

kroger 16y ago
I never used Read It Later, but instapaper can also save kindle and epub files. Even if I have a pro instapaper iphone app, I mainly use it on the kindle these days.
mynegation 16y ago
I use both and Instapaper does much nicer job of reformatting HTML into something readable. Most of the time it is a blessing, but sometimes it may be the curse (e.g. you have colored table with critical information).
mcepl 16y ago
Because it is much more than that ... combines Read It Later, with Readability (Firefox add-on), and ability to download ePub to my N-900 (so it works virtually everywhere, not only on iP*). Also, there is no cost of using it ... if it goes away (or requires payment), I don't loose anything than one day worth of reading.

darushimo 16y ago

go marco!

StavrosK 16y ago

Does anyone know how he promoted it? I'm having a bit of trouble with my startup (historious), in that I don't know how I should go about promoting it...

adambyrtek 16y ago
Tadam, you've just promoted it! I googled and took a quick look at it, but I'm curious how different is it from a bunch of other already entrenched bookmarking sites?
- StavrosK 16y ago
  That's my biggest problem (getting people to understand the awesomeness). I've used other sites, but this is the only truly zero-cost bookmarking service (I'm referring to mental cost). When the mental cost for bookmarking is removed, you find that you bookmark anything that looks remotely interesting and then you can find it very very easily. Other services have the burden that I either have to fill out too much stuff when bookmarking (tags, categories etc), and/or that I have to categorise my bookmarks. This adds the pages you bookmark to the index right away, so bookmarking is single-click and then you have your personal search engine. Try it, it's really great. My problem, however, is that I can't find a good way to tell people about it without spamming it, and I was wondering how people approached this problem for Instapaper, which is a not entirely different service...
  - photon_off 16y ago
    I hate to say it, but while historious might be pretty awesome, you have a lot of factors working against you. First, there are things that already do this, and they work well enough. My browser address bar (FF3) finds 95% of stuff that I'm looking for. The other 5% I can open up my history and search. And, if that fails, I can retrace my steps somehow (re-searching Google, etc). I don't find it to be a big deal. Second, Historious has a pretty large barrier-to-entry, and the pain-point may not be strong enough to overcome that. By barrier to entry, I'm referring to the effect of users finding it very difficult to switch the way they do things. I'm sure this is well documented, and there's a name for it, but if a user has their own way of doing things it will take additional value over just the new process being better, because there is a cost to the actual switching itself. By routinizing a process, it actually feels easier (even though it may be much more difficult than other methods). Since finding things you've previously browsed probably happens a lot, people probably have their own way of dealing with this. I'll just search again, or look through my browser history. Third, it makes me think. I don't want to constantly evaluate whether or not I should historify a site; which is necessary since it'd be ridiculous to historify every site I come across. It's hard to gain a fresh perspective on something you've worked so much on. Believe me, I know. I've been working on an the most incredible bookmarklet (guaranteed). I use it all the time, and I love it. But I've been routinized, and that's one of hugest problems. Even though it solves some pretty annoying problems and is awesome, I've found that people who try it out will not connect the fact that it solves problem XYZ, and they have problem XYZ, so they should use it. If they already have a solution to XYZ, that comes up to the top of their mind's list of how to solve the problem.

docgnome 16y ago

The thing that has always made me hesitant to use Instapaper and services like it (in particular the ability to read stuff on an e-ink reader later) is for me a major part of the value of most of what I read, is the comments on HN. When you move the content to a reader device, you lose that. Has anyone though of a solution to this other than read the article and then hop on HN and try to find it?

glhaynes 16y ago
I personally find that there's nearly no overlap between articles with comments (at least those which I'm interested in) and those I read on Instapaper. Think that's because I don't tend to put short "news" items on Instapaper, just long form articles.
- duck 16y ago
  I find the opposite true - for me it seems like HN is a great way to find those longer, more detailed, articles that I use Instapaper for all the time.
TheSOB88 16y ago
You could always put the comments page on Instapaper instead.
- omaranto 16y ago
  I haven't tried that recently, but the Instapaper text extractor didn't use to parse HN comment pages at all.

duck 16y ago

Is the only revenue stream for Instapaper the app you can buy?

cake 16y ago
Ads on the website too I guess.

coned88 16y ago

Im surprised they haven't been sued yet.

anarchitect 16y ago

Sometimes I wonder what my iPad can do that I can't do better on my laptop. The answer, always, is reading articles Instapaper. That is if I can manage to wrestle it away from my girlfriend playing Plants vs Zombies!