

Instapaper Goes From Hobby To Startup - pathik
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/23/instapaper-goes-from-hobby-to-startup/

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mortenjorck
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
Don't compare him to Patrick or he'll be next on lionhearted's chopping block!

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docgnome
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?

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glhaynes
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
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.

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agent86a
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!

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StavrosK
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...

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photon_off
I'm in the same general space as you (bookmarking / browsing tools), and I
have some insight.

I think Instapaper gets a lot of word of mouth spreading because it's an
iPhone App. That encompasses _a lot_ more than it sounds. Being an i
_Whatever_ App means you get eyeballs from the store, but more importantly
from its users - both online and in real life. iPhone/Pad/etc applications are
highly sociable and shareable; revealing a useful App to somebody is a form of
social value. It's a platform that is in vogue right now: How many times have
you been recommended a certain App, or have seen somebody using an interesting
one? Ok, now how many times have you been recommended a bookmarklet?

You were blogged a few times, that should have helped somewhat. It's possible
that Historious isn't as useful as you think it is. I had written in this box
a big long paragraph about why I think that is, but it's not pertinent to your
question about promotion. If you'd like more of my thoughts on Historious,
shoot me an e-mail, I'd be glad to give you my $.02.

There was also a post around here that detailed a template and methodology for
'pitching' an article about your product to bloggers. The gist of it was: You
need to be actively seeking bloggers and promoters, you need to show them
you're interested in their work, and you need to pitch them your product in a
way that makes them feel their readers will click to read about it.

~~~
StavrosK
I see, thanks for your feedback. Could you email me at support at historio dot
us, as I don't have your email?

Thanks again!

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WarDekar
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!

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DannoHung
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.

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

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mynegation
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).

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sahillavingia
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.

~~~
grinich
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-
avai...](http://techcrunch.com/2008/01/30/simple-bookmarking-now-available-
with-instapaper/)

~~~
sahillavingia
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.

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anarchitect
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!

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

~~~
cake
Ads on the website too I guess.

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darushimo
go marco!

