Otis Chandler Founder and CEO in San Francisco Visit my company website. Interviewee: I think he hired smart people, and like you said, smart people want to work with smart people, and that just kind of grows. Youll notice that if you create a group on Goodreads the next page is invite your friends to your group on Goodreads and I wouldnt say those are insanely viral like that because youre not going to invite everybody, but it definitely helps. Otis Chandler was born on November 23, 1927 in United States (78 years old). Andrew: Alright, but, so you were taking things apart even as a kid. And this is very similar to the Facebook self-serve product or the MySpace self-serve product. I actually found a dating site once for people who golf. Hes talking to fans and hes got big followings on all those services. So, if the product is going to be viral it has to be useful, more useful if there are friends then if there are not. The New York Times noted that Goodreads, at the time of the acquisition, had a more reputable reviewing system than Amazon's. So Tickle was viral because when you took a test it would say compare your result with your friends and it was kind of like an early social network in that there were friends except the only thing we did with them was when you took a test was show you Okay youre a Saint Bernard, and heres your friend Andrew whos a Golden Retriever, and heres your other friend Olivia whos a Pug or something like that. [7] On March 28, 2013, Amazon announced its acquisition of Goodreads,[8] and by July 23, 2013, Goodreads announced their user base had grown to 20 million members. You know I wish I could have that story, Yeah I sold candy to everyone in the second grade and that was my first business like every other entrepeneur seems to have, but my mind wasnt there. Last week, O'Reilly GM and publisher Joe Wikert reviewed Goodreads' CEO Otis Chandler's TOC session, in which Chandler presented the results of a recent Goodreads readers survey.One of the interesting pieces from the survey covered the effectiveness of Goodreads reviews. I should have gone for Mix Energy or Mix Synergy. Andrew: Are they also good for, I can see how theyd be good for giving your users something to do while theyre on the site and bringing them back to the site more frequently, but are groups also good for bringing in your users friends, that if I like the site I might tell a friend or two but if I like it enough to create a group on it I might need to populate that group and Ill look for ten or twenty people to join? Interviewee: Well, the other caveat is that we launched it in the US only. In 2013, Goodreads sold to Amazon for an undisclosed sum; and today, it's the world's largest site for readers, with 125 million users. Can you talk about some of the things that you did over at, and for the transcribers its tickle.com T-I-C-K-L-E.com, can you talk about some of the viral techniques that you used there? And thats okay. Andrew: We might need to start something like that. But actively working at it, getting into doing speaking events around the book, doing readings and absolutely social media, I think, is big. So weve essentially built a really good way for our users to talk to us everyday and half of what I do is I listen to what our users are saying about various features weve built, about various ideas for things we could build, about things that we have built that might be buggy, and then I go react to it. Whereas mechanical engineering you werent going to be able to do as much on your own. Like everything else we do at Goodreads, KINDLR was a passion project from start to finish. Requires subscription and macOS 11.4 or higher. Maybe theres the business model. I'm an entrepreneur, a product person, a book lover, a surfer, and a geek. Do you think you couldve learned it so quickly? We allow you to actually create custom shelves. So we both launched it, blasted out an email to all of our friends and we got it up toI dont know, I think after a month, from December to January, we got it up to about 800 people with our friends and friends of friends, just kind of organically grown. You would add photos and there was a news feed that had all your friends photos and our whole company, an 80-person company used this every day and every day there was an email update with everyones photos from the weekend or the day before and it was really amazing because you really got to know everyone in the company much better than you did by just talking to them because you got to see where they were and then you had a basis for a conversation. So am I coming up with these ideas, kind of, but really its our users who are coming up with it and saying Gee it would be really great if you did this, and I go Yeah, youre right, so its not that hard actually, you just have to listen. Its all about (muffled) testing. Otis and Elizabeth Chandler are founders of Goodreads. . So this is fun, youre like wow, Ive got three friends and I can see their results I want to see the rest of my friends results let me go send them an email. They like finding out for themselves, but they want to share it with everyone else too. Or do what Ning did and allow people to create small niches. Thank you Otis. Andrew: I see. If the product is going to be viral it has to be more useful if there are friends then if there are not. Luckily the guy who had Goodreads.com with an s sold it to me otherwise Im not sure if it would have taken off like it did. Goodreads founder Otis Chandler said that "his management team would remain in place to guard the reviewing process" with the acquisition. Interviewee: Yeah, I mean if its you, do it. Interviewee: I had an absolutely horrible design at first and then I had one of the Tickle designers, friend of mine, do the design and he was really good. US . When he decided to launch his own site just for book lovers, a respected colleague told him there was "probably not a very big market there.". Net income in mil. When he decided to launch his own site just for book lovers, a respected colleague told him there was "probably not a very big market there." Otis figured he might prove him wrong, and in 2007, launched Goodreads, a book catalog and review site that he coded from his LA apartment. So I wanted to provide that experience around reading. [1] Then I read your review of it and you said, This guy can write. Youre a great reviewer by the way. What was it like at first? Andrew: Sure. Did you code it all up yourself in the beginning? Otis Chandler is the founder of Goodreads. The scion of the wealthy Chandler family who took over the Los Angeles Times and transformed it into a nationally respected publication. [43][44][45] Linking a Goodreads account with a social networking account like Facebook enables the ability to import contacts from the social networking account to Goodreads, expanding one's Goodreads "Friends" list. I was running a dating website [before Goodreads]. Interviewee: For one, I didnt feel like getting another job. Andrew: [Andrew Laughs] that actually I think is a good prep for a business. Interviewee: Right, sure. One of the sites we built, that photo-sharing site I mentioned, was called ringo.com. Were you also building or creating little businesses as a kid? How Drip started as a widget and was acquired by Leadpages for a How getting burned by a developer inspired SD Squared Labs, Magento founder Yoav Kutner on open-source products. Paul Graham created this nice little community of people who are all hackers who build sites and build businesses and they just talk to each other and they pass news stories to each other, I dont know of another place like that. Goodreads CEO & founder Otis Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler Editor & Chief run a social reading site that offers book reviews and a place to discover new books to read, based in part by. [26][27][28] Amazon had previously purchased the competitor Shelfari in 2008,[29] with the Goodreads purchase "stunning" the book industry. Alright, how many members do you have now? [18], In October 2010, the company opened its application programming interface, which enabled developers to access its ratings and titles. Goodreads publicly posted its review guidelines in August 2012 to address these issues. Or if its you but youre not good at thinking about the business side I think engineers like myself, who can think about the business side and the engineering side, are kind of rare, and I dont know why that is. If your name is Chris Anderson or Malcolm Gladwell theyre going to help you. Big Space, I see your note. So remember I was a software engineer even though I didnt code as much in the last year and a half at Tickle. And Good Reads it was obvious. Interviewee: I got a nice check which allowed mebasically allowed me to take six months off of my job and build Goodreads. MySpace everyday and hes just posting little stuff, little snippets, things hes thinking about. So they finally got an idea that went big, it was just because it was something that was fun. So its not keyword based like the other ones; its book genre based. Even if you get published by Harper Collins or Manninghouse, great theyre going to put your book in the Barnes & Noble store but, theyre not going to market beyond that. You know, theres still challenges. Youll hear how working for Tickle.coms founder, James Currier, was better than going to business school. Not Mixergy. So what we had is we animated on this fun, plus serious model and I think at the end we had maybe 600 fun tests and maybe 150 serious tests, and the serious tests we eventually figured out we could sell a result to these. If they were Jewish, they would go to JDate. Nothing big. The idea came about when Otis Chandler was browsing through his friend's bookshelf. He was the fourth and final member of the Chandler family to hold the paper's top position. Edit Personal Investments Section. Goodreads is basically a social network for book lovers. You dont have to be a published author to do this. You know theyd spend half a work day going down memory lane, all the books I read in junior high, all the books I read in high school, and its a kind of fun process to go through actually. So, everywhere on the site you go we dont show you like book reviews about Harry Potter, we show you heres what your friends thought of Harry Potter, and we show you heres what everybody else thought of Harry Potter. In relation to Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn and The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, 58% of surveyed readers said they . If they were Christian, theyd go to ChristianSingles. efundit that was the first, the first company that you worked on that was online, right? Alright so it seems to me like where you really learned the business side of things was working at Tickle.com the company that you were with for about six years. Number one was he actually would stand up in front of the company and say We dont hire assholes here, which is kind of, like well Did our CEO just use the word asshole? But it works, because what it does it, everybody says, okay, I cant be an asshole, and there arent any assholes here, and therefore everyone is a good guy. Andrew: Alright, so one of the reasons that it went viral is because people love talking about their IQs or the results of their tests, what kind of dog they were. It did not give me much more than that. It just seemed like there was a lot more innovation going on. So I realized that a niche social network around reading, much like a social network around photos, would probably work. I was talking to Lea, why cant I think of her last name, the founder of Pounce, who told me it that it just feels like a superpower, you dont rely on anyone else you can just build it yourself, from start to finish. You can get real time feedback about something you write. [17] During its first year of business, the company was run without any formal funding. On his own, and then he went out an got funding. [?] How can they get their books out there? And wed already built it so every book has an author profile that lists the titles by that person. If you havent heard of Otis Chandler its because he spends more time coding his site, Goodreads.com, than promoting himself. Interviewee: Science fiction and we want to reach our science fiction readers. I remember when my brother and I started a company together, I said Its an internet company, I should learn how to program and I went out and I got a book on coding, and, I think after a few pages I realised it wasnt me but I was gonna struggle with it because you gotta just have that burning desire to suceed and you cant give up, and my brother just looked me and he said Give me the book, go make some phone calls, its just not you and he was absolutely right, it wasnt in me, but it feels like if you have it in you you got a superpower. [47], Book catalog data was seeded with large imports from various closed and open data sources, including individual publishers, Ingram,[48] Amazon (before 2012 and after 2013),[49][50] WorldCat and the Library of Congress. So much depends on being able to get stuff done, and engineers are the only guys who can get stuff done, so yeah, they have a lot of power in todays internet company. Or much faster feedback about something you write. Alright how can people connect with you Otis? If a user has written a work, the work can be linked on the author's profile page, which also includes an author's blog. If your name is Stephanie [Myer] or Dan Brown, then theyre going to help you. Which were very passionate about. But without much fanfare -- or outside funding -- he built his community of booklovers to 650,000 members. Did you have shares of Tickle.com? 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