Garry Tan moving on from Posterous and joining YC
garry.posterous.com
garry.posterous.com
I should track how much time I spend over a month, heck, sometimes over a day, I spend doing that pinch open, pinch open, click dance.
Y-C's gonna be awesome for you, but I really can't wait to see what comes next. =)
I feel like a band i really like was in the studio working on a new album, and a songwriter just left.
I guess i was waiting for another shoe to drop in terms of the realization of the Posterous vision.
Anyway... congrats to Garry. I saw his TWIST interview a while ago, and thought he seemed really nice and had really interesting ideas.
See also Jason Putorti's gig (now over) at Bessemer:
I'm starting a greentech incubator and intend to have engineers/scientists in residence. A certain kind of person just love the technical issues at hand during the inception of a project.
Anecdote: for our Quantter blog, we chose Posterous first. But then Marco Arment (busy) advisor of us, just told us: sthg like "Posterous?? those guys keep on trashing us (ie Tumblr)". While 1st impression preferring Posterous product, the switch to Tumblr was easy because of Posterous aggressive attempt to "poach" another startup users. That was not good karma.
Huh, what? What evidence is there that Posterous has lost any battle against Tumblr? Just because you chose Tumblr after being advised by one of the founders of Tumblr doesn't mean Posterous has "lost a battle"...
Posterous is prolific, but it's not omnipresent. And I doubt it will ever become omnipresent, because it doesn't offer enough to differentiate itself from Tumblr and because it's nowhere near sexy enough to capture the vast audience that only cares about things being sexy.
The suggestion that Garry Tan is leaving because Posterous isn't working out is unsubstantiated, and that's what I'm arguing about. This is like pointing at Facebook when they were much smaller than MySpace, showing that such-and-such person just left, and saying it's because Facebook has lost the battle. It hasn't. The battle is still raging, and who will win is definitely up for grabs.
I was also surprised at how quickly I got a response via a customer service request. Nice.
Congrats to Garry Tan - I always equated him to Posterous since I saw him on This Week in Startups. Hope to hear more about his newest endeavors.
I'm glad you'll be able to provide high impact work to many startups.
I shook his hand and he introduced himself as getting an interview slot too. Naturally we conferred and compared notes. Mine was something weird, a scheduling software--we haven't decided yet. His was a photo blog. Well like a photo blog, but easier, the kicker is you only manage it through email.
Oh, I said. That sounds... interesting. Since I was young that was go-to answer for any pitch. The less he explained the more compelling it was. Blogging for your grandma, blogging that anyone can do, blogging that's accessible. I remember asking how long he's been working on it, he said for a few months. I smiled and said he's probably going to get funded.
I didn't, it was my fifth try and became my last.
Throughout the years Posterous' engineering skills, design skills, and marketing skills have made the platform really awesome. Reading his blog, learning his thought process, and seeing the passion he puts into his work, it's inspiring. Very inspiring.
Blogging for grandmas is such a good idea, it's carved a great niche amongst giants WordPress, Blogger, and Tubmlr, and it's growing as a company.
Our career paths took really drastic divergence but seeing what you've done in the past three years is one of the examples of the immense potential working in our little crazy world.
Congrats and good luck.
Oh and I've always been struck by his humility both offline and on.