The New Disruptors

Marco Arment's career has come in two main acts: as the first employee of Tumblr, he helped create a service that changed the fundamental nature of blogging by introducing both ease of creation and social networking. While there, he toyed with a service, to let him read Web pages offline without formatting, that became Instapaper. In late 2010, he left Tumblr to focus on that service full time. Now Marco is a successful podcaster and the editorial director of The Magazine — the best publication ever created — at which I'm the editor and he's my boss! (I still have a job after we recorded the podcast.) Our conversation will be aired in two parts, each about an hour long. In this first part, we talk about how as a Tumblr developer Marco found out he didn't want to manage people, how Instapaper developed, and issues of managing resources and scaling. In the second, we move further into podcasting, The Magazine, blogging, advertising, and other areas. On Twitter, Marco Arment, Instapaper, and The Magazine.

Duncan Davidson and Greg Koenig joined forces a few years back to start Luma Labs, a firm that makes across-the-chest camera straps. The two collaborated first on Luma Loop, a free-sliding camera strap, and then created Cinch, one that holds a camera tighter but still allows for movement. The Loop was kaboshed by a potential patent lawsuit; the second model has been a good seller, but with volume comes decisions about ramping up production. In this episode, we discuss all that, how they developed the original Cinch and Cinch 2 (about to be released), and quite a bit about rapid prototyping. On Twitter, find them at @lumalabs, @duncan, and @gak_pdx (Greg)

Aly and Beth Khalifa have decades of experience in product design, both as consultants for clients and in making their own stuff. The Teastick was the first product they made and sold themselves; the Impress coffee filter is the latest. The North Carolina designers are bursting with ideas and work actively to promote collaboration, including in their own shared work space. @GamilDesign on Twitter

Craig Mod writes essays that have the power to change the way you look at everything around you. At regular but somewhat distant intervals, he posts a long bit of writing that retrains your mind to see the world as he does. But he doesn't just talk: He creates projects that demonstrate his points as a designer and publisher of print and electronic work. Craig and I had such a great but long conversation that we decided to split it into two parts. This is part 1, about publishing and crowdfunding; part 2, on publishing to different platforms, will air in a few weeks. On Twitter, he is @craigmod.

Jonathan Coulton has called into existence a world in which a bearded Brooklyn-residing, Yale-graduated, Whiffenpoof-participating programmer singing songs on nerdy topics he records in a home studio posted to the Internet can quit his job, build an army of fans, give his music partly away, attract 700 people to a themed cruise, become a regular on public radio, and have his work ripped off by a major network television show. We talk about his singing background, how his career began and progressed, and how you bring your fans with you when your style matures.

Zach Weinersmith, the artist behind Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, takes nerdy Web comics to their logical extreme, and has developed a huge following among science geeks. We talk about his career, the popularity of Web comics, and fulfilling big Kickstarter campaigns in this podcast. Find him on Twitter as @zachweiner; his SMBC comics feed is @smbccomics.

John Gruber is either the world's biggest Apple fanboy or the most nuanced explicator of Cupertino's smoke signals, depending on whom you ask and on what day. In a more objective reality, John's Daring Fireball is the place you go to if you want to have a bigger-picture understanding of the universe in which Apple is firmly in the center. We talk about how he turned Daring Fireball from a side project into a heavily visited and deeply satisfying outlet for his writing.

Dalton Caldwell is the head of App.net (sometimes called ADN for App Dot Net), which some think is a Twitter competitor, but it isn't quite. It seems to be a typical venture-backed startup firm, but it is not quite that, either. There's a lot more under the surface of App.net, including neutrally hosted services, ecosystems aimed at software developers, and crowdfunding, among other topics, which we talk about in this episode. App.net is offering a limited number of free-tier accounts, introduced last week and explained in the podcast, to listeners of The New Disruptors. Follow this link to sign up. If the link says there are no invitations left, please send me an email (click Contact above) or message us through our Twitter or App.net accounts.

Taylor Levy and Che-Wei Wang run CW&T, an art and design studio that produces an array of items ranging from purely commercial to completely aesthetic. The way they string projects along that spectrum offers a lot of insight into how one can fulfill one's own artistic vision in a world of commerce. They're also the team behind the Pen Type-A, a large and ultimately complicated Kickstarter project that we'll get.

Lumi makes a fabric-dye that becomes permanent when exposed to bright full-spectrum light, as from the sun. But that's not why the founders, Jesse Genet and Stéphan Angoulvant, are on the show. Rather, it's the way, starting with an obsession of Jesse's when she was 17, that the two bootstrapped a company using collaboration, crowdfunding, and craftiness.

Jason Fried co-founded 37signals, a Web design company that found one of its internal tools for managing projects could be something effectively used by others. Millions of users later, 37signals offers Basecamp (overhauled substantially a year ago), Campfire, and Highrise among other services. The founders not only transformed their business, but routinely help others transform theirs. Fried collaborated on a book called Rework that distills years of what he learned from running a successful company and helping others with theirs. You can look at and sign up for Basecamp as a trial subscription, but this episode isn't a product plug; Basecamp fits the disruption mindset. Microsoft Project is perfectly fine software for companies that have employees in one place and need the top-down approach. Software as a service (SaaS) typically involves an application you access via the Web for which data is stored centrally, and updates to the software happen centrally as well. Salesforce, an early SaaS alternative to enterprise-licensed and -managed software, was founded in 1999, and had risen as a force that defined the industry by the time Basecamp came out. Rework may be purchased from Amazon.com and many other fine bookstores. Glenn brought up three concepts relating to 37signals' work: The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Eric S. Raymond's explanation of the difference between software code controlled by a handful of priests and that in the marketplace that's open to all; The Cluetrain Manifesto, a provocative set of theses that turned into a revolution and a book by declaring, among other things, that markets are conversations; and Stephen Jay Gould's use of the term hecatomb to explain evolution's remorseless pruning of failed mutations.

Maker spaces are popping up all over where people can go and work with tools of all sorts, from woodworking to advanced 3D printers, to make things for themselves or prototype designs to manufacture. Seattle has been bereft of a large-scale facility with everything under one roof — until now. Ellie and Mike Kemery have just opened Makerhaus, a 10,000-square-foot building chock full of everything makers need. But their secret sauce, they hope, is community and education among their members. We talk about what a maker space can mean to bring all the hardware, software, and people together in one place to make magic happen. This episode is the first in the series in which I talk to facilitators: firms set up to help artists and producers connect with an audience. I'll be talking more over the coming weeks to a mix of creators and these new kinds of intermediaries that help rather than hinder achieving one's goals and finding an audience.

Tonya and Adam Engst have been disrupting publishing for 23 years, starting shortly after graduating Cornell University when they founded TidBITS, a Macintosh journal that is now the longest continuously produced Internet publication. The Engsts took the first online ad dollars (probably), founded a DRM-free ebook publisher nearly a decade ago, and love their readers. The couple discuss their two-decades-plus of insights, including their love/hate relationship with content management systems for publishing.

Jim Coudal runs Coudal Partners, a small design firm in Chicago that crafts all sorts of things. More than a decade ago, the group decided to shift its business from mostly working for others to mostly working for themselves. Field Notes (with Aaron Draplin), The Deck advertising network, and Layer Tennis are some of the commercial and entertaining results. Field Notes is entirely a physical product ordered online; The Deck, a digital one that can't exist without a network of independent voices. We talk about these two extremes and taking your creativity into your own hands.

Andrea Seabrook spent more than a decade at National Public Radio, and covered Congress for a good part of that time. She left NPR to start something of her own: DecodeDC, a podcast and syndicated radio program (on this very network) that cuts through the blandification of politics, and speaks the unvarnished truth that gets lost in the interest of presenting supposedly balanced viewpoints. Andrea is fair, but she doesn't shrink from cutting through layer after layer of spin, something that's typically not possible in conventional broadcast media. We talk about the future of public radio and the joy of making your own decisions about what your audience wants to hear.