2023-05-18. Aboard.com

So Rich. this podcast has a sponsor.

It does.

And this sponsor never seems to launch their product. It's always like, oh, it's coming soon. It's coming soon. Oh my God. So we should let people know that we're talking about a product called Aboard. Okay.

Okay?

A board is a web software thing. Ama jig. Now we can let, let it be known what it's all about. Yeah. And it launched to today. What does launch actually mean in this context?

Uh, we've got a big list of beta invites. We're asking others to, um, sign in, sign up to get invited in. But we're waving legions of people in. Uh, so over time we'll give you access, but we can talk about it now. It's out. Uh, a board.com is out in the world. Um, there's a great blog post that you wrote, which I thought really nicely summarizes what it is. So there's a blog link at the bottom. Um, It's out. Uh, we, we did a thing, uh, we've been working on this thing for a really long time.

All right, so let's do this because this is an audio. experience. Get me onto this thing and I'll tell people. I'll tell people what we're looking at.

Absolutely.

so what do I do? Where do I go?

A board.com. A B o A r d.com.

Type, type, type, type, type. Okay. I'm hitting return. Alright. And it says one click to turn any webpage into a card. Organize your passions. And might I say that this is a very simple and attractive website?

Oh, thank you, Paul.

no worries. No worries.

Great. I'm glad. So what does a board do? Uh, we wrangle. Links, uh, we wrangle emails, stuff's in our messages when we talk to people. Everything's scattered everywhere. People leave a lot of tabs open when they're doing research or looking up something or researching whether, whether what to buy or which. Product to buy or whatever. And what a board does is it treats the web as this place where you can pluck the stuff you care about and put it into your own experience, into your own space.

Mm-hmm.

The best way to use it is through a browser add-on. Uh, for Chrome and Edge and Safari's coming soon. And when you're on a webpage, pretty much any webpage, it could be a YouTube video, it could be a product that's for sale on any shop, uh, on the internet. It could be an article. That you're interested in, but it also could be any link whatsoever.

Okay?

You click on the browser, add-on, and it turns the page into a what we call a card.

Okay? So let, let's do this cuz this is very abstract. I've clicked a button, it made a card. It looks like a card. I'm gonna tell you what I see and then you're gonna tell me what I should understand. I'm researching snacks.

Oh, I love snacks.

love snacks? And so, uh, I'm, I'm into snacks of the world,

Okay.

okay. And I'm looking at some Japanese snacks. I'm looking at a car, I was looking on the web, and I wanna save all my, my snacks into a place using a board. That's me, that's what I like to do. So I'm on the web, I'm on BSU Market, one of my favorite websites. Okay. And I see that they have Colby Jagar, Rico, original French Fried Japanese. Sort of

sounds really, really, really

Mm. They're, they're just very flavorful and wonderful

All right, you're creating sort of a list of

little giraffe on there. So I, I, okay. I did the thing, I clicked the plugin and it made an, it looks like a little card. It's a little rectangle. It's got the picture and,

Okay.

It says it's 2 99, so it picked up the price. That's cool. And it saved it. Into a board and now I, it turns out I saved, I'm looking at it and then I've already saved like five other snacks. I'm looking at five nice cards of Japanese

Yes, a board is very visual and if you go to board.com you'll see some examples of this. Um, and it is also a. Uh, once you file it away, it, it's there for you forever. And then we can talk about sharing in a bit. So what's diff Oh, it sounds like Pinterest. Uh, yes. I mean, we're, we're doing to the whole internet. What, uh, Pinterest did for pictures. The idea of clipping pictures off the internet turned out to be immensely popular. A lot of people like to look at boards of stuff,

useful. People like to curate their collections. Exactly, yeah.

But pictures are just pictures. Um, and so a board is going to get really, really smart over time so that the information you're bringing in is not just the picture, but also other information like the price of a product or the Yra movie was made, or uh, uh, how many pages in a book.

So we have a pretty nerdy audience, and so we do two things here. One is the web is actually full of data in a way that is hard to get at for most people. Bookmarks don't pick it up

They don't

because everybody who's building a website right now really wants Facebook, Twitter, and Google to make good use of it, right? They, they wanna be found, and so they've been making better and better data and putting it into the pages. So we're making that available. You can grab that. Hold onto it and keep track of it. And it looks really nice. There's also a lot of data out there that's absolutely a garbage fire.

it's, it's so, um, oriented around like getting you to put stuff in a cart and go and whatnot.

I do a good commerce site right now. You go to the commerce site, you're like, you know, I wanna buy something. And then it's like, Hey, it looks like you wanna sign up for a newsletter. No, no. I just wanna buy something. No, no. Hold on a minute. Yeah. And, and after like three times of them interrupting you, you're like, screw it, I'll just go to Amazon. Leave me alone.

Yeah. I mean, again, for the nerds, um, the web is an incredibly rich data platform actually. And, and what a board is doing is it's giving you, uh, the power to kind of bring anything you want into this other space where you have control.

All right, so I got a lot of cards and they're kind of pretty, and I can, I can do stuff with them and we'll talk about, like you said, we'll talk about the social stuff in a minute. Um, I, I see on the bottom right there's a little plus sign. What does that do for me?

So you're in the Aboard

I'm in the Aboard app. I'm looking at my, my snack cards.

is actually important because for people who are using Safari or some other browser or don't want add-ons, some people don't like add-ons, browser add-ons, you can just use the plus sign. You can open that up. And by the way, if you don't wanna bring stuff in from the web and you want to use it to just throw notes in and. Create your own cards with their own fields. You can do that too if you want.

Okay. So I'm getting data in, but how is it, this is just like, is this a like web Trello? What have we made here?

It's, well, it's a few things

Cause I'm seeing cards. I got a lot of cards.

You got a lot of cards before. Yes. Now you've created a resource, so let's get one thing outta the way you can share that resource with others.

That's true. I can invite you, I can say, [email protected]. That's right. Come on in and build snacks with me. And in fact, I've done that. I have a snack board. We're looking at it right now. That's right. And when you see good snacks, you can add them and you can name them. And you can create buckets of snacks, which we call stacks. So it's stacks of snacks

if you are a vc

Mm-hmm.

And you're looking at 300 portfolio companies and you're gonna pick 10.

right?

Housekeeping that, and you're never gonna do it alone. It's probably a team of analysts and partners that are gonna look at different startups and whatnot. It's a great way to have all the resources in one place. Otherwise it's a spreadsheet or it's, you know, something a lot

So I can comment on the cards and that's just like kind of typical form. There's also a chat that looks a little bit like Slack, so I can chat with the group

if you've invited others in. You're now have a space where there are these resources and you can talk to each other about them. And you might be, you know, hobbyists or you might be, you know, investment bankers, who knows. by the way, investment bankers can also be hobbyists. I just wanna say that.

Yeah. Their hobby is investment banking. Um, can I invite like 10,000 people to this? And we have our, our huge form is this like discord, but with cards

You theoretically should, could, but that wouldn't be wise to invite email by email. The invite is a proactive measure. You're taking, you're not just giving someone a link. However,

well hold on. And actually this is an important thing. Small private spaces seem to be something the internet needs right now.

Small private spaces, more specialized places. Um, and uh, a place where your, your tendency to sort of jump on the soapbox and scream at the crowd is kind of not here.

This is the group chat for getting stuff done.

This is the group chat for if you wanna get stuff done. Sometimes you just wanna share things you love, like,

no, that's getting stuff done. This is the funny thing about this product. I'll, I'll take a, let's just get outta marketing zone for a minute and into a different kind of marketing zone. Cause I'm gonna talk about why I like it.

Okay.

I am making the snack board and it's kind of good content. I made a lot of content on the internet. I've made like more than most humans can even

your content guy.

I am a machine for generating internet content.

Yes you are.

And. It gets at something really fundamental about the web, which is, oh my God, look at what happens when you put all this together. And it's interesting, like I'm just like, okay, this is, did I make in 20 minutes the greatest world snack resource that has ever existed? No.

Yeah.

But did I make something that I kind of enjoyed sharing with you, even though I was just hacking it together as a proof of concept?

actually pretty fun.

Yeah. And that part, I, I mi the, the fun of social content creation without thinking, oh my God, when this is done, I'm just gonna get screamed at by strangers.

100%. Right.

in there. And I love that. That is the part I love the most.

Most of the social dynamics on the web are driven by you saying something. Yes.

Yes. me personally, and by Paul Ford

when you ask people, Hey, what are your thoughts on this? It. After a while, it starts to wear you down. It's less and less value. Now look, there is a thing

becomes customer service.

Here's what, here's a source of our inspiration. YouTube, but not mainline. YouTube, the edges of YouTube.

gardening. YouTube synthesizer.

little communities that have, you can learn anything on YouTube. I forgot. I met someone recently who's become like a handyman carpenter, like he just loves, he's on

No, it's true. Uh, TikTok is here. The video, it turns out that humans are visual creatures that like to look at other people do things

That's right. And this person, by the way, he was, he, he, they, they came. He's like, I, I can paint, but I can also fix your electrical. And if you have a drainage problem, I can fix your, I'm like, wait, are you a plumber? Are you electrical? What are you? And he just looked at me, said, I just learned everything on YouTube.

People's is folding Samsung phone. It's like, this is my teacher. yeah,

exactly. And, and that the further out of the main highway you get out for whatever reason. People are more generous. They're a little more patient. They love that you've decided to join their community. They're, they're more, um, it's less toxic. Yeah. Um, and do people have debates? But even the debates are so harmless. Like if you're debating, which, you know, which, you know, headphone is better than the other, it's the most innocuous

You learn the, every community has its drama, but it's in context because the drama in the gardening community is a, you know, like, it's a,

it can only go so far.

mint. Yeah. And just like, you know, or, or what kind of grass are you, are you, Is the grass gonna be good for the ecology or is this bad grass? You know, just these are, and these are good, interesting debates to have where you actually have to learn andfor as opposed to just like wading into the infinite political morass that's out there. Right? Absolutely. so that's YouTube.

That's YouTube. So there's really, I, I think a good way to look at this. There's two sort of ways that we see a board kind of making its way into people's lives. One is helping you plan stuff with people that you trust, like. Your, your family members deciding on a what to do on a trip to, to Florida or, um, your family members deciding, uh, working together to help you, um, pick the right university you're gonna go

to. Mm-hmm. It's a

tool to sort of put all the stuff there,

Could even put the websites for all the colleges. Yeah. That's what they're doing. Yeah, that's Right.

And that's terrible. Right. It's not useful and you don't talk on a spreadsheet. And so there is a. A board, you know, finding its way into your sort of life decisions, I think can be really, really compelling and powerful. And that's not about publishing, that's like a very personal, private space where you're like, okay, he got these grades, these are the options in front of us based on our budget. Right. And that's, that's a safe space. It's totally private and you can use

it. Yeah. You're not gonna publish your college applications process.

That's right. The other example is that, Instinct to share knowledge, share expertise. Share your judgment. Your your cur, your crea curated creations with a community. And that community could be pretty ad hoc, like the, you know, local. Uh, town council that is trying to get a new park in place

Church group, be

church group, or frankly, for broadcasting, it's like, you know what, I'm gonna step throw my hat in the ring as an expert on embroideries. Uh, and the kinds of products that I think are, make the most sense. Um, and, and the people, you know, the places to go learn and, and whatnot. That's more of a like, okay, I wanna broadcast into my

It's time for you to get in. You should get into embroidery.

This is not how I wanted

you know what's funny though?

I expected this

tell you, during the pandemic, my brother was very much, my personality got really into knitting.

interesting,

And he made a lot, a lot of scarfs.

Oh, did he?

Yeah. Because you're just sort of like, you know, fiddling,

it's a fidgeting thing, right? I mean,

you can't have another cocktail.

Oh, well this is, this is

you can't, you gotta do something with that energy and that anxiety. Right. You can't, you're, it's a pandemic. You can, it's

very self-aware of

you. You can have one, but then you need to stop. You can't have two every night. Yeah. Right? And so you get those knitting needles out and it's is like, so anyway, yeah. This is perfect for him. He can, we can talk yarn all day long.

It's great. And look, there are other uses. We also see companies and organizations and groups using it for work cuz it's screaming for that in a way

this is great. This is all

this to

This is all about us. The universe is about to take this thing and say, nice job guys, but I know what

thought we were gonna do with it?

I know what this is for.

Oh no. I had a meeting two weeks ago. The person just looked at was like, that's cool. Add-on. Can I put PDFs in?

Yeah. No, no, no.

He didn't care. You just like, I just wanna use it for that people.

It is interesting. We created a piece of software here though, where people look at it and they go like, oh, you know what that's for? Yeah. And it's, I've never had that experience. Usually you have to tell them for like an hour. Yeah. And now they're like, no, no, no, no, no. That's what

same person told me. What? I've sent the same PDF 30 times. Yeah. To people on my

oh, it's real,

like, oh, I don't know where it is. I'll send it to you.

Yes,

it is the bump up back to the top of the inbox. Right.

This was supposed to be the internet, right? You'd have your internet with all these resources and you'd organize them. But

That's our next startup, by the way. Intranet.

Intranet, but the tools. The tools just didn't evolve in that way. Yeah. Anyway, okay. Here we are.

so here

I've got my cards and I've organized them into these stacks, and one is for Japanese STA snacks and one is for, uh, if I'm gonna do marketing in the future, maybe I won't do something where, like the sound of the subject is exactly the same as one of the features. So it's stacks and snacks. But anyway, I've got, um,

you're forgiven, Paul.

Thank you. Please forgive me. I've got stacks of New York City snacks and I've got stacks of Japanese snacks. And then inside those are all inside of the thing. And the thing is called the space and the, don't worry too much about what, but space is the level of sharing. So when I invite you, when I say, rich, come on in,

come see my collection of things.

can see all that data. All those

can talk

those cards. That's right.

That's right. That's right. Um, We're gonna talk more about a board. This is still the Zian Ford podcast. We hijacked this one cuz a board is an incredibly generous

It's launch day. It's launch

day and we are also the co-founders of a board.

If you go to a board.com and you put your email in, uh, we're gonna wave you in real soon, like in the order of a week or two.

Yes. Come on in.

Um, and, uh, yeah, we'd love the feedback, uh, see what you make of it. We want to know what people make of this because we're, we're finding that people look at it and they go, huh, okay. And then they want to just rip it out of our hands. And that's really exciting to us. We want to know

It really is. Um, you've been listening to the Ford Podcast. Congratulations, Paul. This has been a journey. It's been like three separate journeys that's sort of converged into one, but here we are.

You, you and I have taken a shocking number of journeys together. This is a good journey. I'm, I'm proud of where this landed. Who knows what the world is gonna make of

It's one of the most interesting things I've ever been involved

too. I, I'll tell you, I just, there, there was a point about three or four months ago after our big pivot, we launched this unit, we're like, oh, we're, we're gonna create enterprise software. That was our, that was our comfort zone. And we got the, um, the first card started showing up, coming off of the web. Yeah. And it felt like a magic trick. And I've seen everything on the web.

Exactly.

And it felt like a, it just was like, oh, that's mine now. And it's easy and it's, and I can come back to it.

Let's close with a shout out to the team.

Yeah. Good job.

Uh, great team, really probably one of the best teams I've ever worked with on one of the most interesting products I've ever worked with. Um, they're locked in. We've yanked them in different directions at different times, which can really be,

we're on a path now. I think we're on a

path now and, uh, very happy to be working with them. So congrats to the team. We celebrate for about 20 minutes and then we go back to work.

Well, to be fair, to be fair, we didn't do a huge crunch before this launch.

We did not.

we were, we made sure that things were in a good place. We're putting it over the line. Yes. But no one was working for 150 hours last week and that was part of the goal because we have to keep going. We're, we're only just getting started.

That's right. Uh, reach out at [email protected]. Uh, we love to hear your thoughts, questions. And check out a [email protected] and uh, give us five stars. Stars.

that's, that would be amazing if you did that. It really would be. So thank you everyone for listening. Um, this one was obviously a very special brought to you by sponsored podcast, but, uh, we're glad we could share it with you and we wanna hear what you think. Talk to you soon.

Have a great week.