Facebook won, right? Then why are so many joining Ello? – with Paul Budnitz

Paul Budnitz, Ello, Bootstrapping, Hiring, Mobile Apps, Social Media

3 million people flocked to Ello within 2 months. How many sites do you know that grew that fast?

Paul Budnitz says that’s because social media sites stopped being fun. Maybe it’s because they started caring more about advertisers than users.

So Paul decided to create a site that puts users first and won’t accept ads. This is the story how he turned his vision into Ello, a social network that balances commerce with art, and care for people with the realities of the way the world works today.

Paul Budnitz

Ello

Paul Budnitz is an artist at heart. He founded Kidrobot, the premiere creator of art toys and runs Budnitz Bicycles, the premier maker of titanium luxury city bicycles. He is currently working on a new ad-free social network tool, Ello.

Andrew: Hey there, freedom fighters! My name is Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of Mixergy.com, home of the ambitious upstart, the place where I interview entrepreneurs about how they build their businesses. Well, a few weeks ago, I heard about a super-fast growing social networking site, called Ello. I thought social networking sites were done! You know, Facebook locked the whole space up and owned it. But this artist in Vermont created something different. Led by a manifesto that said users should not be products whose privacy is sold to marketers, Ello got millions of people, including me, to flock to the site and ask for an invitation. I didn’t get my invitation accepted until this week; we’ll talk about that.

I invited the founder, Paul Budnitz, to talk about how he built up Ello. I’m also hoping to talk about his other projects, including Budnitz Bicycles, which makes light, fast, and elegant bikes, and Kid Robot, creator of limited edition...

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