I Have Become Cofounder of Book DNA LLC
Important career update! After having been in this role de-facto for half a year, and having gone through what felt like an infinite amount of back-and-forth with lawyers and tax advisors, we finally signed all the paperwork to make me an official Member of Book DNA LLC (a Delaware company).
I have been working with (my now-cofounder) Ben Fox on Book DNA (formerly Shepherd.com) since 2020 on freelance basis on the same project, and I was offered to become a business partner last year, to which I gladly said “yes”, in large part because Ben is one of the most amazing people I ever worked with!
Last time I cofounded something was 25 years ago, and I had to bail (for financial reasons) before the business ended up being a flop. I also never did any business in the USA, which makes this both a scary and an exciting First!
Book DNA is currently a book discovery platform but we are building a new product based on its foundations that will replace Goodreads for both tracking reads and discovering new books in a private-first approach.
Goodreads is big competition (and there are a few smaller indie alternatives) but many people hate it because it is dated, ugly, and is owned by Amazon ;) We believe there is room for a new approach, built with hardcore book readers in mind (and actually involving them while building the product).
We are planning to launch the public beta later this year. If you are interested in early access, sign up here.
And for those wondering about the technology behind Book DNA, I wrote about that in 2021.