The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source

Taking on Goliath (Interview)

Feb 8, 2024

Nadia Odunayo, founder of StoryGraph, shares her journey from a solo developer to creating an Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads. She emphasizes the power of customer research in product development and faces technical challenges during rapid user growth. Nadia discusses the balance between profitability and user engagement, innovative features to enhance user experience, and the strategic insights gained from building a community around reading. Her story inspires how startups can thrive through adaptability and listener-centric development.

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ANECDOTE

StoryGraph's Humble Beginnings

Nadia initially envisioned StoryGraph as a companion app to Goodreads, not a competitor.
It leveraged the Goodreads API to create a dashboard of shelves and reading progress.

ADVICE

Prioritizing Customer Research

Always conduct thorough customer research before building a product, even if eager to start.
A clear hypothesis, a structured approach, and a method for analyzing feedback are crucial.

ADVICE

Effective Interviewing Techniques

Use open-ended questions in user interviews to gain deeper insights.
Avoid leading questions or demos during early research to get unbiased feedback.

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This week on The Changelog we’re talking with Nadia Odunayo, founder of StoryGraph. Nadia started out as a one woman dev and product team — she’s had to adjust and maneuver along way to becoming the Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads.

We talk about the importance of customer research, the iterative nature of customer research and what it takes to synthesize and analyze the findings to guide product development, the technical challenges and learnings she faced while building StoryGraph, for example at several points they’ve faced challenges in handling an influx of users and had to re-architect the system. We also talk about the business model of StoryGraph and how they generate revenue through Plus subscriptions, and partnerships with publishers for book giveaways.

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Featuring:

Nadia Odunayo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Jerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!