In episode 1.3, we talk to Chao Lam, the founder of Next Small Things.

Next Small Things is a company that develops and operates multiple consumer-oriented apps and websites, and one of their more prominent apps is the Thread Reader Twitter app. Which some of you may have used or seen while scrolling through your Twitter feeds. It's one of the first Twitter bots to address the readability of long ugly Twitter threads where the app unrolls these Twitter threads and displays them in an easy-to-read blog format.

Chao has a really interesting background and he has essentially seen it all when it comes to founding and running internet businesses. Chao founded venture capital-backed companies such as ShoppingList and AdKnowledge during the dot-com boom, between 1996 and 2001. After this, he went on to explore different areas in tech, including working at eBay and leading product management at a nonprofit.

Some topics we cover with Chao in this episode include, how to focus your efforts when bootstrapping, building on platforms such as Twitter, and evaluating when to acquire versus when to build. To wrap it up, we discuss how the current economic climate affects people that are currently building internet products and his advice for navigating this environment.

Make sure to check out Chao's Substack, Next Small Things, if you want to learn more about Chao and what he has learned during his adventurous journey in, entrepreneurship, tech, and life. Also, don't forget to check out the Threadreader Twitter app if you haven't been using it already!

As always, we constantly look to improve The MVP Pod as our goal is to make building successful products easier by sharing stories and learnings of other products and builders. We would appreciate it if you could tweet or dm us @m2s4n and @harrysiva_ with your feedback!

Check out themvppod.com to learn more about the pod!