#101 - Brian Donohue

Brian Donohue is President of Instapaper and a Product Engineering Manager at Pinterest.

You can find him on Twitter @bthdonohue.

The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.

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Topics

00:19 - The history of Instapaper

8:19 - Free competitors enter the market

10:19 - How Brian joined Instapaper

14:34 - Transitioning from paid to freemium

19:19 - Pinterest's acquisition of Instapaper

26:34 - Moving to California

29:04 - Working on Instapaper within Pinterest

32:19 - Spinning Instapaper out of Pinterest

42:34 - Jareau Wadé asks - What types of product integrations could Pinterest have done with Instapaper?

50:04 - Ryan Hoover asks - I’m curious how he and the team balance simplicity with new feature development/product expansion.

54:19 - Raymond Durk asks - I love the rapid reading mode but would also love a voice enabled mode where the Google Assistant or Siri reads it. Speaking of I'd use it on my Google Home to listen to news if that was a skill.

57:39 - Brian Kim asks - Any growth hacks that worked well?

1:00:04 - Gustaf Alströmer asks - How does it make time for focused time to catch up on everything he saves? What are his best productivity hacks related to this?

1:03:44 - Backpacking