Founders of Flipboard Evan Doll and Mike McCue essentially met on a blind date at a coffee shop. They instantly knew they wanted to build something together, but they weren't sure what.
On this episode of the Valley Girl Show, Doll shares that the duo tried quite a few things before settling on the right product. The initial idea came from trying to re-invent the web browser.
"With startups you can always get rid of the product and build another one, but it's harder to change the team," he says.
Design is another important element that came into play. "The iPad is what crystallized everything for us," Doll adds. It didn't take them long to realize that it would enable people to peruse content in a magazine-like way.
With so much happening on social networks these days, Flipboard is one of the only content curation products that has clearly cut through the noise. It's not just news, it's personalized news. "We try to bring relevancy to it," says Doll.
Doll taught the first ever class on iPhone app development at Stanford University. As an added bonus in this episode, Doll teaches us to code.
Jesse Draper is creator and host of The Valley Girl Show, through which she's become a spokesperson for startups and helped pioneer the way of new media content distribution. Formerly a Nickelodeon star, Draper is now CEO of Valley Girl, where she oversees the show and runs technology blog Lalawag.com.
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