

Garry Tan moving on from Posterous and joining YC - j_baker
http://garry.posterous.com/moving-on-and-thanks

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ptn
Congrats, Garry! Could you please make the arrows here on HN bigger? I keep
clicking the wrong one. Thanks.

~~~
jeff18
And 2x bigger than that on the iPad please :)

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ghshephard
I would pay money, right now, to be able to get a version of HN that would
somehow solve the IOS interaction issues on the iPad/iPhone. It's always an
incredibly painful dance to pinch open the screen so I can figure out how to
click on the four elements - "Comments" vs "Article" and "Upvote" vs
"Downvote" - I'm not sure how it can be fixed, but boy would life be better if
it could.

I should track how much time I spend over a month, heck, sometimes over a day,
I spend doing that pinch open, pinch open, click dance.

~~~
jonasvp
Have you tried <http://ihackernews.com>? I use it on my Droid and it works
extremely well.

~~~
ghshephard
That's pretty darn close - amazing that I'd never heard of it before. I'll
send some feedback - it Doesn't let me upvote on comments, and the UP and Down
arrows are still pretty close to each other - but it's worlds better than
trying to do it through news.ycombinator.com. Very nicely done.

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jolie
Very deft career move, Garry. You'll have more access to more people, see more
fresh ideas, and have a much larger megaphone.

Y-C's gonna be awesome for you, but I _really_ can't wait to see what comes
next. =)

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thesethings
I'm super happy for Garry, but for selfish reasons, I'm bummed out.

I feel like a band i really like was in the studio working on a new album, and
a songwriter just left.

I guess i was waiting for another shoe to drop in terms of the realization of
the Posterous vision.

Anyway... congrats to Garry. I saw his TWIST interview a while ago, and
thought he seemed really nice and had really interesting ideas.

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portman
This is great. I hope that 2-3 years from now we see large numbers of
"designers in residence" at VCs and incubators.

See also Jason Putorti's gig (now over) at Bessemer:

<http://www.bvp.com/team/Jason-Putorti.aspx>

~~~
DaniFong
I agree. It's very interesting to see. Andressen Horowitz is following a
similar model, too.

I'm starting a greentech incubator and intend to have engineers/scientists in
residence. A certain kind of person just love the technical issues at hand
during the inception of a project.

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btipling
Does this mean posterous isn't doing well?

~~~
harscoat
While I think he is a great add to YC, maybe also Gary acknowledged Posterous
lost the battle vs Tumblr?

Anecdote: for our Quantter blog, we chose Posterous first. But then Marco
Arment (busy) advisor of us, just told us: sthg like "Posterous?? those guys
keep on trashing us (ie Tumblr)". While 1st impression preferring Posterous
product, the switch to Tumblr was easy because of Posterous aggressive attempt
to "poach" another startup users. That was not good karma.

~~~
swombat
_While I think he is a great add to YC, maybe also Gary acknowledged Posterous
lost the battle vs Tumblr?_

Huh, what? What evidence is there that Posterous has lost any battle against
Tumblr? Just because you chose Tumblr after being advised by one of the
founders of Tumblr doesn't mean Posterous has "lost a battle"...

~~~
harscoat
Traffic, users, unique visitors?

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swombat
Evidence? And alexa data is pretty useless, since a large amount of traffic to
both tumblr and posterous is not on their home domain.

~~~
harscoat
if for both Posterous & Tumblr a large portion of the traffic is hidden, all
conditions being equal, on Quantcast & Compete Tumblr is way above Posterous.

~~~
swombat
They also have almost a year and a half of headstart...

~~~
rorymarinich
Tumblr's become a youth phenomenon. In high schools and colleges it's
everywhere.

Posterous is prolific, but it's not omnipresent. And I doubt it will ever
become omnipresent, because it doesn't offer enough to differentiate itself
from Tumblr and because it's nowhere near sexy enough to capture the vast
audience that only cares about things being sexy.

~~~
swombat
I'm not arguing that Tumblr isn't successful or that Tumblr doesn't have more
traffic (that would be a stupid argument!). What I am arguing against is this
suggestion that somehow Posterous has "lost" and it's time for them to throw
in the towel or something. Posterous is a fairly young service that's seen
great growth and is, as far as I can tell, going places, and fast.

The suggestion that Garry Tan is leaving because Posterous isn't working out
is unsubstantiated, and that's what I'm arguing about. This is like pointing
at Facebook when they were much smaller than MySpace, showing that such-and-
such person just left, and saying it's because Facebook has lost the battle.
It hasn't. The battle is still raging, and who will win is definitely up for
grabs.

~~~
rorymarinich
That makes sense. Cheers!

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danielha
Wow, congrats Garry and have fun!

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jonathanjaeger
I'm a Posterous user - I personally enjoy the features and layout. I don't
necessarily use it for the community aspect, so I can't really compare it to
Tumblr in that respect. I have no use for the email function, so I'm glad they
incorporated many other aspects that would appeal to me personally.

I was also surprised at how quickly I got a response via a customer service
request. Nice.

Congrats to Garry Tan - I always equated him to Posterous since I saw him on
This Week in Startups. Hope to hear more about his newest endeavors.

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iamclovin
Congrats Garry! Looking forward to more awesomeness.

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b3b0p
Garry reached out to me for an interview with Posterous. Although, I didn't
get the position in the end I was stoked about the fact he even contacted me
in the first place. Thanks Gary! And good luck on your future endeavors with
YC!

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tommy_mcclung
Congrats Gary! Woo!

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chrisbroadfoot
Good move, I think!

I'm glad you'll be able to provide high impact work to many startups.

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jw84
I remember Garry, like me, arrived early at the Y Combinator pre-party. He had
long hair, kind of like every other Asian friend I had so I figured he must be
really smart. Stanford smart.

I shook his hand and he introduced himself as getting an interview slot too.
Naturally we conferred and compared notes. Mine was something weird, a
scheduling software--we haven't decided yet. His was a photo blog. Well like a
photo blog, but easier, the kicker is you only manage it through email.

Oh, I said. That sounds... interesting. Since I was young that was go-to
answer for any pitch. The less he explained the more compelling it was.
Blogging for your grandma, blogging that anyone can do, blogging that's
accessible. I remember asking how long he's been working on it, he said for a
few months. I smiled and said he's probably going to get funded.

I didn't, it was my fifth try and became my last.

Throughout the years Posterous' engineering skills, design skills, and
marketing skills have made the platform really awesome. Reading his blog,
learning his thought process, and seeing the passion he puts into his work,
it's inspiring. Very inspiring.

Blogging for grandmas is such a good idea, it's carved a great niche amongst
giants WordPress, Blogger, and Tubmlr, and it's growing as a company.

Our career paths took really drastic divergence but seeing what you've done in
the past three years is one of the examples of the immense potential working
in our little crazy world.

Congrats and good luck.

~~~
garry
Thanks for the note Jerry. I really appreciate it.

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hank53
This is a good move. I think Posterous has plateau

