Hey everyone. I'm Bill, CEO of Readup and Jeff's co-founder.
FYI: We applied to YC and we're still waiting to hear back. They asked to provide a revenue update a few weeks ago. We grew a lot in September (50% increase in total # of subscriptions, MoM) so that was good. Fingers crossed!
Smart comments. I don't think you're being picky. I'm kinda shocked that this is the only thread about reading because that's what I think is wrong with the web: It's not good for reading. I'm 4 years into co-founding a startup that's solving this problem.
As long as it doesn't feel like I'm over-posting (We'll see! And I'll write about that too!) I'll probably post to (1) Twitter (2) Facebook and (3) LinkedIn.
I was def looking forward to the built in audience. Back in the day I had a little following on Medium. Nothing special, but definitely a few dozen people. Half were friends and half weren't. I just followed a few people, but I've been poking around quite a bit and it mostly feels like all the social stuff has been ripped out. The language "upgrade" is really confusing. Makes me think "Premium," yet the value prop is that I'm going to get paid for my writing. (Doubt it.) Medium feels very confused right now.
I'm just realizing that Medium might not be the right spot for me to post these daily updates.
It's nothing like it was before I disappeared a few years ago. When I went to hit publish, it gave me a lengthy explanation that, basically, it's going to be behind a paywall and there's nothing I can do about it (?)
Hiya folks. Bill here, CEO/co-founder of Readup. My co-founder and I are both going to be hanging around here all day today and we'd love to answer your questions and hear your feedback.
Also, we recently applied to YC (corona batch?) so let's get this conversation going. ;P
I knew nothing about Krugman before reading this piece, which I enjoyed, but in general I'd rather hear perspectives from people who are in the action, rather than just studying things from the outside. Plus, ranting and moralizing aren't good looks.
This comment fascinates me. I hope you don't mind a very candid reply: You already know exactly what you need to do. You need to get away from the screen that you're looking at right now. Disconnect. Get to where you can see the clouds in the sky, and see how they move - spontaneously. Try to do THAT with your life.
No, it's good. It stands alone as a piece of literature. Atlas Shrugged doesn't - it's skippable. The Fountainhead is about work, art and passion. It's also just a much better story.
That first sentence took me a little while to wrap my head around and I don't think it's true or logical. In other words, even if it was true, I don't see why it matters.
I'm building a company that plans to charge people to read things. The reading experience, without ads, is superior. It's worth paying for. That means that an ad free future is possible.
I love this: "a social reading platform built around the central tenet that reading an article to completion should be an essential prerequisite for sharing, commenting on or rating it."
In other words: "People can't have opinions on stuff they haven't read."
Readup is still small. But even with just a few people in each thread you can still feel the difference. On Readup, every comment comes from a person who read the entire article at hand. Let us know what you think! We're all ears!
The New Yorker is indeed pretty solid, but it's funny that that's the standard because - as you say - it's still not quite as good as most "reader modes." The margins contain ads and I feel like I'm seeing "suggested articles" (aka pictures of AOC) every 5 minutes - which is a lot of AOC since some of the articles take up to an hour.
Hey folks - My co-founder and I have been working on this thing for over two years and we're just starting to get some traction. We applied to YC S2019 and we'd love your thoughts/ideas/feedback. Fire away!
I think you'd love what my best friend and I have been building for the last two years. It's like Hacker News except no commenting on articles you haven't read (and no skimming allowed!)
Did you read the article? No judgment if you didn't - just genuinely curious.
Over the course of the last decade (I got a flip phone in high school, smartphone in college, facebook my freshman year, instagram right after college) I feel pretty confident saying, "I didn't know." I don't think it's embarrassing and I don't think I'm alone. It's a big, complicated problem. BTW I went to Stanford and worked in startups. I think I'm a bright, open-minded, curious person.
To your second point: How do you recommend that we respond to environmental degradation? Or should we all look away?
I'm fully off social media and smartphones. On a day to day basis, I'm not being listened to and watched, at least as far as I know. I try to "vote with my behavior" so to speak, but it's tough. I'm concerned, for example, that not having a LinkedIn account is slowing down my career.
FYI: We applied to YC and we're still waiting to hear back. They asked to provide a revenue update a few weeks ago. We grew a lot in September (50% increase in total # of subscriptions, MoM) so that was good. Fingers crossed!