Connor Bowlan

Former builder of bad apps & mediocre startups. Co-founded @gocintric (acq’ 2017). Now figuring out stuff to do with location data from 1 billion+ smartphones.

[Fedor Shkliarau @shkliarau]

Sometimes the difference between "real" design and design from Dribbble is just appetite and the company's focus on customer experience.

Airbnb's last release shows yet again that they care about design.

[Connor Bowlan @ConnorBowlan]

@frantzfries Also reminds me of their spat with UberMedia all the way back in 2011. Cutting off API access to a competitor trying to leverage their graph, etc.

Quite an entertaining little drama in Twitter's history that often goes unmentioned. It's worth looking up, for those unfamiliar.

[Connor Bowlan @ConnorBowlan]

@tibo_maker Those saying "Tibo is just a whiner" are missing the ruthless 5D chess he's playing here

He blatantly cloned Hypefury after seeing them build in public, and now is going hard on making them seem like the bad guys to his audience built on questionable tweets

Impressively brutal.

[JohnRiggs @johnblueriggs]

I can't get over how freakin' cool this is from @Wallmasterr

[Nasdaq Exchange @NasdaqExchange]

.@Near Intelligence, Inc. & KludeIn I Acquisition Corp. join us for the @NasdaqExchange Opening Bell! 🛎

Near is one of the world's largest sources of intelligence on people, places, and products processing data from over 1.6B unique user IDs across 44+ countries.

[Connor Bowlan @ConnorBowlan]

@jasonacurry @Bfaviero Impossible, there’s sunlight in this photo

[Josh Pigford @Shpigford]

Sooooo @maybe's transaction data is about to get reeeeeal good, thanks to GPT-4.

[Connor Bowlan @ConnorBowlan]

@notmetallikat @tibo_maker Not at all, honestly I find the real version of the story to be more impressive.

In addition to building the original app, he raised capital from great investors, made an equity deal with a major R&D firm, and got Yh! to give him an outsized PR win. Seems way harder to pull off!

[Connor Bowlan @ConnorBowlan]

@tibo_maker That all doesn’t mean he’s not inspirational. It’s still a feat at 17 to maneuver into raising VC, and eventually into a huge PR win and major deal.

It’s just not the fantasy “maker becomes millionaire overnight” story that we all want to believe can happen.

[Connor Bowlan @ConnorBowlan]

@tibo_maker Summly was backed by Ashton Kutcher, Brian Chesky, Yoko Ono, Stephen Fry, Betaworks, and more.

The app itself was developed by the second largest mobile marketing agency in the UK at the time.

Even without SRI, he wouldn’t make $30M from the deal. That’s not how this works.

[Aleks @aleksliving]

everyone's timeline rn

[Nikita Bier @nikitabier]

There is a tendency for app designers to create layers & subgroups to deal with complexity:
Mastodon attempts this with usernames—which have 2 parts.

For every part of your app that you fragment, expect to increase your app’s overall probability of failure by 50%.

[BORED @BoredElonMusk]

Evolution of scroll bars.

[anton @abacaj]

Frontend: We are an AI startup
Backend: API call to gpt-3

[Joshua Browder @Joshuabrowder]

Founders should never have to “pay to pitch.” But some predatory VC firms try to scam founders by “offering an investment,” after they have completed their paid course.

Today I want to name and shame NewChip and warn others about behavior I have heard about:

[Chris Frantz @frantzfries]

This new Bolt logo with the lightning bolt between the L and the T is actually insanely good

[Shit Management Says @ShitMgmtSays]

Important to highlight that Excel’s row limit brought down Charlie Javice

cc: @ryxcommar

[Connor Bowlan @ConnorBowlan]

@mediaking Matt, clearly you just don’t understand ethical minimalism in entrepreneurship

[Connor Bowlan @ConnorBowlan]

@BirkirLeo @rspineanu It's not quite on the same level as American Kingpin, Bad Blood, Smartest Guys in the Room, etc. But it's certainly at the top of whatever the next tier down is. Quite a crazy story, and the author Evan Ratliff does a great job unpacking the complexity of Le Roux's empire.