Betaworks Acquires a Majority Stake in Instapaper

By: Jeff Stewart  |   April 26th, 2013   |   Business, News

The popular web service Instapaper that allows users to save articles for reading later is owned by Betworks, as the original owner of the site Marco Arment declared that he has sold most of the stake to the venture capital company. Arment made this announcement through his blog post in which he also mentioned that both service and app will keep working in the future as well. Betaworks on the other hand has bought Digg for $500,000 last summer and after that it started developing a substitute for Google Reader. Perhaps that’s why Arment, who used to work in Tumblr as a lead developer, decided to sell his Instapper to Betaworks “a couple of months ago,” maybe just before Google made the announcement of killing its popular RSS feed service. Here is the complete story in Arment’s own words in which he described how he managed to strike this deal with Betaworks:

 

“When I launched Instapaper in 2008, it was a very basic web app. It quickly expanded to define the pillars of the read-later market: a one-click “read later” bookmarklet, a web sync service, an adjustable text view optimized for reading, and an iPhone app with offline saving. I did almost everything myself, which worked well for the first few years, but for the past year, I’ve had a lot of trouble keeping up with it.

 

Instapaper is much bigger today than I could have predicted in 2008, and it has simply grown far beyond what one person can do. To really shine, it needs a full-time staff of at least a few people. But I wouldn’t be very good at hiring and leading a staff, and after more than five years, I’d like an opportunity to try other apps and creative projects. Instapaper needs a new home where it can be staffed and grown, but I didn’t want to give it to a big company that would probably just shut it down in six months.

 

A couple of months ago, at 1:30 AM, I suddenly realized who should take it over. I jumped out of bed, tiptoed downstairs (no parent wants to wake a sleeping baby), and sent an email. It didn’t take much convincing, because we both knew it was a great fit.

 

I’m happy to announce that I’ve sold a majority stake in Instapaper to Betaworks. We’ve structured the deal with Instapaper’s health and longevity as the top priority, with incentives to keep it going well into the future. I will continue advising the project indefinitely, while Betaworks will take over its operations, expand its staff, and develop it further.

 

I’ve known Betaworks for years, and I’ve spent a lot of lunches at their office. They have great engineering talent, great product direction, and plenty of experience running services at Instapaper’s scale. I wouldn’t put Instapaper in just anyone’s hands, and I know that they’ll do right by it.

 

With Betaworks’ drive and resources now behind it, I’m confident that Instapaper has a very bright future. I’m looking forward to seeing what they can do.”

 

Source: iPhoneinCanada, Marco