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The One-Person Product

marco.org

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71–80 of 107 posts

Re: The One-Person Product

#71

Post by return0 »

stevenj wrote: post #10

I know very little about David Karp. But after reading this, I'm a bit surprised that he decided to sell Tumblr. The way Marco talks about David's disinterest in money, and his singular obsession with Tumblr, made me think he wouldn't even consider selling it to someone else. I'd be curious to hear his reasons for selling, as oppose to doing a strategic investment like Facebook did with Microsoft at one point.

Would you want to work your whole life on one product? Maybe he felt it was good enough.

Re: The One-Person Product

#72

Post by rmc »

guelo wrote: post #43
sergiotapia wrote: post #11

I like reading this guys blog, it's well written and weaves a nice story to follow almost always. It's a shame a lot of the Tumblr crowd are like this: http://www.reddit.com/r/tumblrinaction The technology seems great and simple to use.

That actually makes me more wary of reddit than tumblr. For others, the llinked-to reddit seems to be mostly about laughing at and sometimes harassing people on tumblr that have pride in alternative lifestyles or viewpoints.

Yes this seems like one of the anti-feminist 'men's rights activists' type subreddits.

Re: The One-Person Product

#74

Post by piokoch »

imjk wrote: post #52
stevenj wrote: post #10

I know very little about David Karp. But after reading this, I'm a bit surprised that he decided to sell Tumblr. The way Marco talks about David's disinterest in money, and his singular obsession with Tumblr, made me think he wouldn't even consider selling it to someone else. I'd be curious to hear his reasons for selling, as oppose to doing a strategic investment like Facebook did with Microsoft at one point.

I think that's actually the point of the piece: David is so focused on product that he doesn't want to deal with things like operations or revenue that the deal makes sense. Yahoo will take care of those things, and David can focus on the only thing he cares about, product.

I am not sure if David had any power to decide about the deal with Yahoo.

If he took money from Venture Capital he might have very, very little impact on bussiness side of Tumblr.

Re: The One-Person Product

#75

Post by jimzvz »

guelo wrote: post #43
sergiotapia wrote: post #11

I like reading this guys blog, it's well written and weaves a nice story to follow almost always. It's a shame a lot of the Tumblr crowd are like this: http://www.reddit.com/r/tumblrinaction The technology seems great and simple to use.

That actually makes me more wary of reddit than tumblr. For others, the llinked-to reddit seems to be mostly about laughing at and sometimes harassing people on tumblr that have pride in alternative lifestyles or viewpoints.

...alternative lifestyles or viewpoints.

This kind of "alterative lifestyle or viewpoint" is pretty scary: http://factcheckme.wordpress.com/2013/05/19/moron-creativity...

http://www.reddit.com/r/TumblrInAction/comments/1er18l/not_t...

Re: The One-Person Product

#76

Post by [deleted] »

sergiotapia wrote: post #11

I like reading this guys blog, it's well written and weaves a nice story to follow almost always. It's a shame a lot of the Tumblr crowd are like this: http://www.reddit.com/r/tumblrinaction The technology seems great and simple to use.

[deleted]

Re: The One-Person Product

#77

Post by jgj »

ismarc wrote: post #19
clamprecht wrote: post #14

The post says he won't make "yacht-and-helicopter money"... I think helicopters are cheaper than he thinks. On a billion-dollar acquisition, I can't imagine the near-cofounder having less than 1% (hopefully quite a bit more). This means at least $10M, which should be plenty for a helicopter. Maybe I'm reading his comment too literally.

For a helicopter, you need a hangar, a pilot, regular maintenance, insurance, fuel/oil as well as membership/pad fees if you actually want to fly anywhere besides airports. You could do a small helicopter for $200,000-$400,000 and then about $30,000-$40,000 a year in recurring costs before pilot, fuel and oil. You can expect $300-$400 per hour of flight time. If the 10 million is invested and has a return of 4% annua…

You can become your own pilot and mechanic, buy a big plot of land and build your own hangar and helicopter museum, get a helicopter that runs on diesel, open a McDonald's franchise and use the oil to run your helicopter. I ran some numbers and this turns a profit. You can also sell helicopter tours of your helicopter museum for more $$$ and possibly be the first McDonalds to offer delivery by helicopter. With the profits you can buy a 2nd helicopter which, by my number, doubles everything!

Full disclosure: I'm a bad mather, but I'd be a great rich person

Re: The One-Person Product

#78

Post by alttab »

vineet wrote: post #28
bentcorner wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a free lunch though - isn't Yahoo buying them presumably because they foresee a way to monetize Tumblr, possibly in contradiction to David's desired direction of the product?

I believe David is ok with advertising. He just doesn't want it to be the main focus of his effort. The fact that Tumblr has huge growth and Yahoo has one of the largest Ad Sales teams in the world, means that this merger will in-my-opinion be v.successful. My bet/hope is that with more resources from Yahoo, David will pick and influence more parts of Yahoo than just Tumblr.

My guess is a twenty something riding a billion dollar wave into yahoo hq isn't going to make friends quickly. Influencing yahoo as one person might prove difficult. All the best though.

Re: The One-Person Product

#79

Post by roc »

manmal wrote: post #64
joelrunyon wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems disingenuous to me. A key part of creating a great "product" is that it continues to support itself. Having a great product without having some sort of a revenue stream isn't being hyper-focused - it's being negligent. Congrats to David on everything, but it seems very odd to try & separate "product" from the revenue that it should generate if it's going to be a business.

Call it "features and experience", then, not "product".

"features and experience" are still contingent, in a very large way, on how the business runs.

e.g. ad-driven vs freemium vs subscription, quantity and types of advertising, etc.

Focusing on making the best product/"features and experience" without paying (enough) attention to how it's supposed to make money to sustain itself and fit into the world at large, is exactly how NeXT wound up with fantastic computers and software that no-one bought.

Re: The One-Person Product

#80

Post by nhangen »

ihuman wrote: post #61
jph wrote: post #2

Congratulations Marco, to you and your team. Your writeup is great to read-- the history and growth of Tumblr firsthand. I'm excited to see what you all build.

Marco left Tumblr a while ago to work on Instapaper.

apparently the parent didn't read the article.
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