Interview with Greg Reinacker and Brent Simmons of NewsGator

Greg Reinacker and Brent Simmons

I had the opportunity to sit down with Greg Reinacker and Brent Simmons to talk about the NewsGator and its recent acquisition of Ranchero Software. I spent about 30 minutes with Greg and Brent talking about how they decided to work together, how NetNewsWire contributes to NewsGator‘s product strategy and revenue goals, and what changes we can expect from both sides in the near future.

I asked a few questions Greg and Brent had never discussed and there are definitely a few details yet to be worked out. We also talked about Nick Bradbury and NewsGator’s acquisition of Bradbury Software in May. We discussed the recently shipped NewsGator Enterprise Edition, what it’s like to maintain code bases in 4 languages, and how properties such as NetNewsWire and FeedDemon integrate with the NewsGator vision.

Download the full interview in MP3 format here. The 14.7 MB file is 32 minutes and 11 seconds in length.

Interview Questions

  1. Brent, what were the growing pains of Ranchero? What options did you consider moving forward? (00:27)
  2. Brent, how were you first introduced to the idea of joining NewsGator? (02:25)
  3. Greg, why is the Mac important to your product roadmap? (03:13)
  4. Any plans for a Linux client? (04:21)
  5. How does MarsEdit or TopStyle fit into your product strategy? (05:08)
  6. What do you gain by acquiring these companies instead of just doing a partnership? What do you gain by bringing them in-house? (06:02)
  7. What’s it like having engineers in Tennessee and Washington and headquarters in Denver? (06:56)
  8. You currently maintain code in C#, ASP.net, Delphi, and Objective C. Any concern about maintaining such a large codebase? What are the plans to backup or augment Brent and Nick’s development efforts? (08:59)
  9. How big is your support team? (11:30)
  10. Will Shiela become an employee of NewsGator? What will be her role? (13:20)
  11. What is possible with NewsGator synchronization? What should developers be paying attention to and how can developers tap into the NewsGator user base? (13:59)
  12. Tell me about post-level ratings. Any plans to integrate post-level ratings? (17:24)
  13. NewsGator for Outlook, FeedDemon, and NetNewsWire each offer a list of suggested feeds. Any plans to combine such a feature into one list? (17:44)
  14. Are any of those feed listings paid inclusion right now? (18:55)
  15. How has the company grown and changed in the past year? A year ago did you see this all playing out as it did? (19:18)
  16. Now that you have given away two years of client products, what are the revenue opportunities over the next two years for those products? (20:52)
  17. What’s next? Tell me about your private label product and other things you have planned for the next six months. (22:19)
  18. What do you need to be able to run NewsGator Enterprise Server? (23:48)
  19. Brent, what are you working on with NetNewsWire? What are your top feature requests? (25:55)
  20. I hear you are hiring. What are you looking for, and are there geographical constraints? (26:52)
  21. What do you see as emerging trends in blogging or aggregation? (29:30)

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