I Like That You “Don’t Get It”
2009: created textsfromlastnight.com
It was embarrassing to tell our friends our idea for TFLN while Ben and I were building the site. They kept saying they didn’t “get it.” But we did.
Within a few months of our launch, we had millions of hits, thousands of submissions a day, a book and television deal. People finally *got it.* Because we were unlike anything before, it was impossible for them to understand TFLN until they were spitting out a drink reading our feed.
It gave rise to thousands of tumblrs like these and hundreds of sites like:
textsfrommittens.com
textsfromsuperheroes.com
2012: created web annotation and sharing text as an image at Findings
At the time I joined the team, Findings was only a way to sync Kindle highlights. My ideas about what the product could potentially turn into were met with a lot of “don’t get it” responses. So, I convinced Borthwick to let me set up a “Findings Lab” to prove how engaging text as image can be as a share object. It worked.
Then, we got to work redoing the entirety of Findings. We also added web annotation via Chrome extension so users could see highlights from users anywhere on the web.
Unfortunately, our release got us too much attention and shortly after Amazon sent us a cease and desist re: Kindle syncing (more info here).
But now there are tons of similar services (people who *get it!*) like:
Genius’ web annotation (built without a chrome extension, better idea)
Oneshot (text as image share)
Instapaper’s notes feature (text as image share)
2015: Cam and I created Listen
There were so many investors who heard the pitch while we were still a prototype and said they “don’t get it.” Luckily, I was already used to that.
Now, we’re live with some beta testers and our numbers show that Listen is wickedly engaging and fun for users.
It’s stupidly simple. It’s still under wraps a bit, I’m sorry about my opaqueness. But, you know, since we are stupidly simple with a fuck ton of engagement and not yet in the AppStore, we have to be a little discrete.
Some people don’t make “X for Y” things. It’s hard for them to get funded. You would think two founders with years of experience and stellar stats on their product could easily get funded. We can’t.* People want us to be building bots on top of our service, or charging insane rates, or turning it into some sort of a game. But to do any of those things would manipulate the authenticity of the app, which is precisely why the app is working so well.
So, we keep building. Hope to be setting you up on the Listen app soon.
*We did raise a small pre-seed round a year ago from Notation Capital, run by two guys who are used to (and trust) not “getting” my ideas and from Rob Fishman, who knows our market well enough to get it.
