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Justin and Jason interview Samuel Clay, developer of NewsBlur, and Amir Salihefendic, developer of Wedoist, Todist and Plurk, about how they came up with their product ideas, what technologies they used, how they designed the UIs, how they get press and attract customers, their take on competitors and the reasons behind their entrepreneurial endeavors.
Thanks guys, really enjoyed that show (as always!)
I realized after Samuel mentioned going to the Hackers & Founders meetup in NY every month that I’ve actually met him before. We just spoke for a few minutes but I remember being “pitched” on NewsBlur briefly.
The idea of doing something mainly for the notoriety that it brings is interesting, and something I’ve thought about before. If you can bring something to a high level of adoption among the geek community, even if it doesn’t end up being profitable itself, it gives the next project that you work on a certain level of credibility. To put it in Techzing parlance, it greatly increases your luck surface area.
@ Yeti – I’m glad you liked the show. Do you (anyone else reading this comment) think the format worked – with two entrepreneurs on at the same time? On the one hand I was frustrated that I didn’t have more time to dig deeper on certain topics and cover more ground, but on the other I found being abe to compare and contract two different approaches to be pretty interesting.
@Aaron – Yeah, I think that working on (and releasing and promoting) anything can greatly increase your LSA and the better and more interesting it is the greater the increase. This interview is a case in point. Had he not built NewsBlur we wouldn’t have had much interest in interviewing him and the way he came to my attention was by blogging about NewsBlur (something which I think he needs to do a little more of, in fact).
Anyway, I really liked enjoyed talking to Sam (and Amir as well) and I promised to bring him on again once he’s ready to release the upcoming NewsBlur iPhone app.
Hi Guys,
I’m not sure about the format–but this was one of my favorite shows so far. Part of it might be due to my own interests though. I really wanted hear more about the algorithms used in NewsBlur. Also, I had a student experimenting with using Celery for scheduling CPU intensive jobs. Also, did you guys follow a hacker news story where one guy was comparing his experience with Erlang and node.js? I’m very curious about this and need to run some “experiments” with both…..
@William – I also wish we had had more time to go into some of those things, but we’ll have Sam on again in the near future to discuss them in more depth,
I think the Node.js / Erlang post you’re referring to is this:
http://blog.mysyncpad.com/post/2073441622/node-js-vs-erlang-syncpads-experience
and it’s on my “to read” list. I really want to do a show on Node,js and related topics and will try to get something set up after the new year.
I liked it. The new format as you mentioned Jason allowed for the bouncing of ideas off two people with very different approches and it worked well. I think it could have been improved with you two however throwing in what you are doing for each of those approches. Sure I know because I listen, but it would be good to get others opinions of your approach.
Would I prefer this to a single person interview? Sometimes. I like the in depth stuff, but I found this one pretty useful myself.
Hmmm I did not care for the format at all – sorry. I felt I was listening to a remix of 2 separate podcasts onto one single track (I am exaggerating of course). The two stories seem too different to really work in the same program.
I did however enjoy the stories.
Samuel’s concept on NewsBlur looks pretty innovative and I am already using it now to browse the TechZing comments (instead of using the Sage Firefox RSS browser)!
Oops. Have to admit I agree with @Philippe Monnet, and I think I expressed that in the show at the point when I incredulously asked… “How exactly IS this going to work!!” 😉
As a follow up, just so I’m not being completely negative. I want to say that I DO like having two guests on panel shows with general discussion. I just found the telling of two stories at the same didn’t work as well as I was hoping… (even though I did really enjoy both guests stories)
@Philippe Monnet & Justin – I think that might be right. Having multiple guests can work pretty well on a panel discussion show (like the one we just did today – #91 with Gabriel Weinberg and Phil Aman), but it’s a little too difficult sorting through two different interviews at the same time. Even though it was my idea I think I’m leaning against the two interviews at the same time approach.
Anyway, I still think it’s worth experimenting with new formats on occasion just to see what works best.
I definitely praise you guys for trying different things out. 🙂
I very much liked the panel format when you had either one of your friends or a couple folks (like Rob W. and Pete M.) but focused on a specific topic at a time.
out takes at the end are always the best…”what ever floats your boat.” LOL
New panel idea works pretty well! very interesting show.
I’m with Philippe there. The one with Rob and Pete was great as a panel show, while this one was more like two parallel interviews.
Of course, it’s also a matter of how much the guests will interact with each other, which you can’t always predict.
Still a great show, though.