If you sit on, sleep on, stare at, or touch something for more than an hour a day, spend whatever it takes to get the best.
Attention to detail can't be (and never is) added later. It's an entire development philosophy, methodology, and culture.
Writing your own blog platform is like roasting your own coffee: it's impractical and you probably shouldn't do it, but for people who really, truly care about it, it's worthwhile to them for their own personal priorities that sound crazy to everyone else. Well, I write my own blog platform and I roast my own coffee.
People have different interpretations of "urgent".
Programmers work in bursts of productivity. Then, they let the brain rest and get back into it. A lot about the office world is not a great fit for me.
Microsoft loves losing money with online services, so this should stay free forever... unless they get a new CEO who isn't crazy about pouring billions into a hole.
Making a product better often requires removing features.
One reason I love the Kindle, more so than the iPad, is that on the Kindle you can't do anything else but read. It's the best, because it does the least. It doesn't even show a clock.
Charge for something and make more than you spend.
Keep building and supporting new tools, technologies, and platforms to empower independence, interoperability, and web property ownership.
Google won't break into your home. You'll invite them in.
I don't need every customer. I'm primarily in the business of selling a product for money. How much effort do I really want to devote to satisfying people who are unable or extremely unlikely to pay for anything?
Emphasizing and rewarding length over quality results in worse writing and more reader abandonment.
I started out from a pretty modest background, so I always had a pretty good sense of money. I always had to work for my money, save my own money, I always bought my own stuff with my money... trying not to waste money unnecessarily.
I don't even like being quoted in a press release.
With a Web and iPhone app, I try to find new and tiny ways to delight my customers. They may not notice, but it helps drive goodwill and makes your product remarkable.
People want to download publications quickly and read them without cruft. Publications that started in print carry too much baggage and usually have awful apps. 'The Magazine' was designed from the start to be streamlined, natively digital, and respectful of readers' time and attention.
People will pay for something they like because they want to ensure its future.
Apple already had everyone's billing information from iTunes... you could buy things just by typing in your password... That, for the first time, brought very, very easy payment to the modern software world. That, more than anything, is why there is a business for paid apps.
I've worked with many large and small publishers, and nearly all of them love the value that Instapaper provides to their readers.
Instapaper does support paywall sites. I have a list of them, that when someone saves something it sends a copy of the page as they are viewing it only to them. If you subscribe to a paid site, you can save the content. I'm not really touching the money.
With Betaworks' drive and resources now behind it, I'm confident that Instapaper has a very bright future. I'm looking forward to seeing what they can do.
Instapaper is much bigger today than I could have predicted in 2008, and it has simply grown far beyond what one person can do. To really shine, it needs a full-time staff of at least a few people.
As long as I manage investments properly and don't spend recklessly, Tumblr has given my family a strong safety net and given me the freedom to work on whatever I want. And that's exactly what I plan to do.
With Instapaper, I can take a few months off. I can't stop publishing 'The Magazine' for two months and work on something else.
