Abdur Chowdhury
CEO Pushd Inc. Previously Twitter's Chief Scientist, Co-founder Summize and Chief Architect AOL
Discussion
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Abdur Chowdhury
@abdur · CEO, pushd Inc.
Hi - I'm Abdur Chowdhury and I'm a recovered academic. Formally, Twitter's Chief Scientist, Co-founder of Summize and Co-founder of Alta Vista a STEM school for k-8. I've done a bunch of investments from Product Hunt to Deepflight building personal submarines I hope you get to experience someday. Currently I'm the CEO of Pushd where we work on small networks that bring people closer together. I'm excited to be here-- ask me anything!
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Ryan Hoover
@rrhoover · Founder, Product Hunt
Abdur! Shortly after we first met, you started working on a location-based app with emojis 😸🔑💃 named Steven (love the name). Unfortunately, it didn't work out and you shut it down. Looking back, why didn't it work and what would you have done differently (if anything)?
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Abdur Chowdhury
@abdur · CEO, pushd Inc.
Ryan, Steven really took ambient awareness of someone to the extreme. For everyone else the app encoded automatically everything you did. For example at a bar would be 🍺. Was an interesting way to see what people were doing. We really reduced the barrier for status to just carrying your phone. While the app grew to about 15k people it really didn't get to a point any of us believed it would organically grow or be sustainable. So we killed it. Sad. Also the cat it was named after passed away. :(
Andrew Ettinger
@andrewett · Product Marketing, Twitter (ex-PH)
What's the best non-technical skill you've acquired over your career?
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Abdur Chowdhury
@abdur · CEO, pushd Inc.
@andrewmettinger Aikido, diving and skiing. Remember no matter how hard you work you need to have time to have passions and live life to its fullest... Keep your hobbies up...
Jon Wirt
@jon_wirt1
What was your favorite thing you purchased last year that has an on / off switch? Why?
Sarath
@sarat
Hello - What Pushd is trying to solve comparing to other personal/social networks?
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Abdur Chowdhury
@abdur · CEO, pushd Inc.
@sarat I am mostly over social networks. First to build a new content type that is valuable is really hard. Then to build a social network for that type is next to impossible. While I thought that was an easier thing I have mostly found that to be a lost cause. Check out how many cool new image, X, Y other apps have come out, then see how long they live. Its not an engineerable problem IMO, rather if it happens its purely random.
We are really interested in providing using technology to simplify and improve our lives. For our next project we are looking at building our own screens that are ambiently interactable in the space you live. A bit vague but it's coming along and cool so far. I'm into building things I like now. :)
Sarath
@sarat
@abdur Thank you for your response. Quite excited hear your vision behind Pushd. In fact business can't live long without positively impact people's lives. All the best.
One more question, can you share your experience on moving from Chief Scientist to a CEO driven organization? Do you've some interesting experience to share with us?
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Abdur Chowdhury
@abdur · CEO, pushd Inc.
@sarat I see it more as a natural evolution. Moving from a expert to an organizer. It just suites me better at this stage in my life.
I think everyone should be asking themselves what story do I want to tell myself about the next 5 years of their life and then start working on that chapter of your life. When you think about it that way, the chapter has to be different than the last chapter.
Zach Cmiel
@zach_cmiel · CEO, PoKoBros
Do you think the news can be benefitted by the upcoming paradigm dubbed the conversational commerce paradigm by Chris Messina?? If so how??
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Abdur Chowdhury
@abdur · CEO, pushd Inc.
@zach_cmiel Sorry I haven't been following that from Chris, you know he does a lot of stuff. :)
Danielle Newnham
@daniellenewnham · Founder, The Junto Network. Author
Hi Abdur. I have a few questions.... 1 + 2 Why did you leave Twitter back in 2011, and what do you hope for its future?
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Abdur Chowdhury
@abdur · CEO, pushd Inc.
@daniellenewnham Lots of reasons to complicated to review here. I still use Twitter daily and love the product. I think the company provides a valuable service and will be successful.
Danielle Newnham
@daniellenewnham · Founder, The Junto Network. Author
Q3/ Can you tell us more about Alta Vista and what led to you setting it up?
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Abdur Chowdhury
@abdur · CEO, pushd Inc.
@daniellenewnham Pretty simple, we wanted a school that was STEM focused taught critical thinking from an early age and had small classrooms. We started with 7 kids now we are ~220 kids and 47 teachers. Edu is important and everyone of us should be investing in it for all our futures.
Ben Tossell
@bentossell · Community Lead, Product Hunt
Hey! What are some of your favourite questions to ask founders?
Kate
@katesegrin · Community @ Product Hunt
Who have been some of the coolest people you've gotten a chance to work with?
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Abdur Chowdhury
@abdur · CEO, pushd Inc.
@katesegrin Biz, Ev & Jack. All really amazing people, but there were lots of amazing people.