What Every Client Should Understand.

Marco Arment’s success with Instapaper is no accident. When you have his grasp of how to run a good business, it all falls into place. His recent post on what the potential introduction of a Mac OS 10.7 Instapaper-competitor could mean should be required reading for everyone who fears competition and its allegedly deleterious effects on nascent industries.

Marco:

My biggest challenge isn’t winning over converts from my competitors: it’s explaining what Instapaper does and convincing people that they actually need it. Once they “get it”, they love it, but explaining its value in one quick, easy-to-understand, general-audience sentence is more difficult than you might imagine.

If Apple gets a bunch of Safari users — the browser that works best with Instapaper — to get into a “read later” workflow and see the value in such features, those users are prime potential Instapaper customers. And it gives me an easier way to explain it to them: “It’s like Safari’s Reading List, but better, in these ways.”