That said, this isn't a reflection on Submittable as a company or the Submittable founders. I'm sure they are awesome and have an awesome service, and I hope they have the best of luck.
I think there's more to my interview than your short summary. For example, Michael made a mistake that's common to people who start with their own pain, so he pretty much had to scrap a whole year's worth of work.
What he learned was that he -- as an author -- was experiencing a ton of pain when he submitted to manuscripts to publishers. But the pain wasn't caused by the way he submitted his work to them. It was caused by the way their processed what he (and other authors) sent.
The cure for this was to have outside conversations. Picking the right person to talk to is a whole other part of this interview, but I won't get into it here. I don't want to recreate the interview.
Some really great quotes about what kind of competition he's most afraid of.
Really thoughtful interview.
Not everyone has read pg's essay, even if they have, they may have forgotten it's contents, not agreed with it, or simply decided to ignore it while pursuing their startup ideas.
Listening to an interview, even one that repeats most of the same advice, can still be beneficial because it is a reinforcement of a lesson that still needs learning and because you may identify better with the Submittable guys as fellow founders after hearing their voice, than with pg as a distant ex-entrepreneur-turned-investor with his more dry prose.
I don't understand it very well.
These documents need to be reviewed by the organization and then decisions need to be made - should the article be published? Should we interview the candidate?
Submittable makes it easier for the outside people to send the documents, and makes it easier for the organization to receive, review and decide on the documents.
I wish them the best of luck in their business, it was an interesting ride for us.
