Brad Feld

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NewsGator’s Next Big Move

Jan 10, 2008
Category Investments

When Greg Reinacker – NewsGator’s founder and CTO – first talked to me about NewsGator, he told me that he wanted to create software to enable everyone on the planet to read RSS feeds, anywhere, anytime, on any device.  Since I didn’t know what an RSS feed was when he first told me this in 2004, I wasn’t sure what to think of this.  We hung out together for a while and I quickly got sucked into his vision.

Whenever I go back and look at my post from June 28, 2004 titled Why Did We Invest in NewsGator? I get this warm tingly feeling inside.  I’m incredibly proud of what all the people at NewsGator have accomplished and the progress we’ve made in creating a real company over the past 3.5 years.

As part of our next strategic move as a business, all of NewsGator’s RSS client software is now free.  This includes Nick Bradbury’s FeedDemon and Brent Simmons’ NetNewsWire – both NewsGator products.  It also includes NewsGator Inbox (for Outlook) and NewsGator Go! (for many mobile clients, including Windows Mobile, Blackberries, and iPhones.)

Greg did a great job of explaining why we did this in his post titled NewsGator’s RSS clients are now free! so I won’t repeat what he said.  Nick Bradbury also nailed it in his post titled FREE Demon? Yes, FeedDemon is Now Free!  Jeff Nolan underscores a main point in NewsGator Client Apps Want to Be Free that the goal is an acceleration of our current market leadership position in the enterprise with these products.  Today – millions of people use NewsGator products every day – by this time a year from now I hope to be able to say "tens of millions of people use NewsGator products every day."

Now that the clients are free – there’s no reason not to try them.  I encourage you to wander over to the NewsGator site and download away!  Feedback – as always – is welcome and encouraged.  And – to all the NewsGator users out there that have helped us build and evolve these products, thank you!