Marco Arment, the guest on this week’s episode, announced on his blog today that he has sold the majority interest in Instapaper, his read-later clipping service, to BetaWorks. BetaWorks has a portfolio of a bunch of interesting companies and products, including Digg (the rebooted version) and bitly. It seems like a cool fit.
We talked extensively about Tumblr (Marco’s first and really only job as an employee for any period of time) and Instapaper. Marco explained how he really doesn’t think he’s cut out to have employees, and how he left Tumblr when it hit the inflection point to need, suddenly, a whole bunch of staff.
He and I work together well at The Magazine because while I work for him, I’m entirely self-driven and he gives me my lead. We talk about that in the second part of the interview, which will air in a few weeks.
Congratulations to Marco! He’s run Instapaper for five years, and the complexity and reach are huge. He seems delighted to be able to hand it off to people who like to hire other people.