Brenden Mulligan
Founder, LaunchKit & Cluster
Discussion
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Brenden Mulligan
@mulligan · Founder, LaunchKit & Cluster
Hi, Brenden here. I've made more products than nearly anyone else on product hunt. I'm also one of the creators of LaunchKit, a set of tools to make mobile development much easier. Please do ask away!
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Erik Torenberg
@eriktorenberg · Former Product Hunt
if you were the CEO of product hunt - what would you do ? :P
Ben Tossell
@bentossell · Community Lead, Product Hunt
@eriktorenberg hire @rrhoover to PM it all? ;)
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Brenden Mulligan
@mulligan · Founder, LaunchKit & Cluster
@eriktorenberg hire Ryan Hoover as my replacement and get out of the way.
Ben Tossell
@bentossell · Community Lead, Product Hunt
@mulligan Hey Brenden, Is there a 'friendly' rivalvry between you and Mubs ;) - what drives you to make so many products?
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Brenden Mulligan
@mulligan · Founder, LaunchKit & Cluster
@bentossell no rivalry at all! :)
The making products thing is just natural. When our team finds an interesting problem that we feel best suited to solve. Sometimes that takes a weekend, sometimes it takes months.
Seth Louey
@sethlouey · 🙌 2016 PH Maker of the Year Nominee
@bentossell Oh snap! Called out @mubashariqbal in an AMA ;)
Mubashar Iqbal
@mubashariqbal · 2016 Maker of the Year.
@mulligan I find competition is healthy. It's great to see the quality of products that your team is producing and just encourages me to do better! // @bentossell
Ben Tossell
@bentossell · Community Lead, Product Hunt
@mubashariqbal @bentossell agreed!
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Brenden Mulligan
@mulligan · Founder, LaunchKit & Cluster
@mubashariqbal agreed, but building a product just for a stat on product hunt is pretty much the opposite on my belief about building products. So personally, i'm not competing :)
Andrew Ettinger
@andrewett · Product Marketing, Twitter (ex-PH)
Hey @mulligan!
1) Is there any particular product that you wish you'd have built? Why? (Not necessarily just because of dollar potential)
2) Which technological advancement do you foresee most positively affecting the product world?
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Brenden Mulligan
@mulligan · Founder, LaunchKit & Cluster
@andrewmettinger
1) so many. recently, it's calendly because it's such a simple and powerful tool. too many to list though. people build some amazing stuff.
2) i think driverless cars is going to be transformational to our society, infrastructure, and safety. I'm impatiently waiting for it.
Ryan Hoover
@rrhoover · Founder, Product Hunt
Brenden! You and the team have transition from Cluster (a series of photo-sharing apps) to LaunchKit (a suite of tools to help mobile app builders). Both are very different products. What inspired you to switch directions?
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Brenden Mulligan
@mulligan · Founder, LaunchKit & Cluster
@rrhoover It was a slow evolution over time. We've been working on Cluster for about 3 years, and we all adore the app. We have a very dedicated and growing user base. But we raised capital, and had to face the reality that private networks are very slow to grow. So although it is growing faster than ever before and we still are actively developing it, it didn't seem like something that was going to return our investors their money.
But while building Cluster, we had also been releasing a lot of learnings and tools to the developer community. For example, the post we did on iOS permissions got over 250,000 views. The Sketch template we posted here was the top product of the week. So we decided to explore taking all the learnings and internal tools we'd built for ourselves and turning them into a product. We started the experiment in February this year, and within 2 months it was clear we wanted to double down on LaunchKit.
Mike Coutermarsh
@mscccc · Code @ Product Hunt
@mulligan Hey! Is there anything weird that you do to stay so productive? Any routines?
Interested in if you've ever struggled with burnout / how do you keep cranking away? 😎
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Brenden Mulligan
@mulligan · Founder, LaunchKit & Cluster
@mscccc our team has always kept reasonable work/life balance. Personally, the only time I've ever burnt out was when I was working all day and all night on my startup. That "hustle" ended up making me less creative, more stressed, and ultimately less effective. Other people on my team have experienced similar.
So, with Cluster and LaunchKit, we stress that family comes first and except in rare cases, evenings and weekends are for the team to spend away from work recharging for the next day/week. It's worked wonders, as our tiny team (we're only 4 people!) is one of the most productive teams I know. We're able to get things done and ship things quickly. I attribute this to the fact we're not killing ourselves simultaneously.
Also, I try to sleep at least 6-7 hours a night. No reason to be exhausted when trying to create solutions for complicated problems.
daniellevine
@daniellevine · Docket.report
@mulligan Thank's for doing this AMA. I'm wondering, what's the best thing you've come across in the last 30 days (other than a product you've made) and why? Could be anything, a product, an article, a tea, a quote. Anything! Thanks for answering.
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Brenden Mulligan
@mulligan · Founder, LaunchKit & Cluster
@daniellevine wow. big question! stream of consciousness: I love the new Chvrches album that was released today. I've recently started using Outlook on iOS for email and love it. And I'm fairly obsessed and have written about a new way to schedule meetings with tool called Calendly.
daniellevine
@daniellevine · Docket.report
@mulligan @daniellevine thanks @mulligan. I too started using outlook recently but haven't fully committed to it. Gonna check out your other recommendations!
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Brenden Mulligan
@mulligan · Founder, LaunchKit & Cluster
@daniellevine it's not perfect, but i like it. The badge count alone is so much more accurate and immediate than Mail.app
Ben Tossell
@bentossell · Community Lead, Product Hunt
@mulligan What would you like to see built that you will not be looking to tackle yourself?
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Brenden Mulligan
@mulligan · Founder, LaunchKit & Cluster
@bentossell hmm. it's not so much that i dont want to tackle, but can't tackle not because i dont know the right approach. but i'd love to see technology help the less fortunate in a more direct way. San Francisco is a wonderful city, but the dichotomy between overpaid tech workers and a giant homeless and displaced population is challenging to witness daily. I'd love to find a way for one to help the other in a way that made people as inspired as they get with other things.
I think there are a lot of opportunities to bring transparency to challenging social problems that have been difficult to understand before. but again, i'm very green on this and have no solutions. Hand Up is a great example of an organization attempting to make a difference with a unique product.
Eric Willis
@erictwillis · Working on something new
@mulligan Hey Brenden. What's a typical day for you like? Can you just run us through your day (start to end) so that we can just get a good idea of how you plan out your day and some of the tasks you handle on a normal day?
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Brenden Mulligan
@mulligan · Founder, LaunchKit & Cluster
@erictwillis It's a mix. We're hiring, so I spend a LOT of time on recruiting and talking to candidates. That is a lot of calls, coffees, lunches. I try to block out time in the middle of the day for solid creative time. So ..
730 wake up, shower, check email (i've started leaving my phone in the living room instead of next to the bed),
8/830 - ride train to work, get in between 8-9
8-10 is social time (recruiting)
10-12 design/creative
12-1 lunch with the team
1-130 customer support for LaunchKit and Cluster (I do it all)
130-5 creative time
5-6 afternoon coffee/call with candidate
6/630 head home
Kiki Schirr / 史秀玉
@kikischirr · Founder, WeKiki Video Chat Platform
Brenden, I understand having multiple products going at once (maybe all too well!) but you seem to be very successful at *finishing* your products. Any pointers for someone who might have spread herself too thin with a few projects at once?
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Brenden Mulligan
@mulligan · Founder, LaunchKit & Cluster
@kikischirr stop worrying about showing it to other people. it's 10x better than you think it is and get it out there and show it to people. i dont consider all the launchkit tools finished. they're all missing critical features. but they're perfectly fine to release and already solve a ton of products. so LAUNCH! :)
Kiki Schirr / 史秀玉
@kikischirr · Founder, WeKiki Video Chat Platform
@mulligan @kikischirr Thank you, that's great advice.