Rip through books in 8 mins

DROdio -

Product Market Fit is a really funny thing. Products with great PMF seem obvious in hindsight, and yet even once I experience strong PMF, if I were to imagine it not existing, it's still not obvious to me that I would be feeling this way.

A great example is Blinkist, a new service (and mobile app) that my VP Product Alex turned me onto. I would describe Blinkist as "Old-school Cliffs Notes re-imagined as a Podcast." But that doesn't describe the magic that Blinkist is. Blinkist is a superpower that enables me to rip through books in 8 minutes. It's a service that enables me to read all the books I've been meaning to read. It's a way for me to say "yep, I can absolutely read that" when someone recommends a book to me. It's a way for someone like me who's very "time poor" to have a superpower.

I've added Blinkist to Armory's list of efficiency pro-tools to "Play your Device like an Instrument."

What Blinkist actually is is a series of "Blinks" that summarize books. Blinks are also great because they let me share concepts with my tribe and the world in bite-size consumable pieces, which makes the concepts much more accessible than asking someone to read an entire book.

For example, in this blog post, I reference two Blinks as a way to quickly understand the concepts:

How to see if Blinkist is right for you:

Blinkist is a bargain at $100/year if you're time-poor. My recommendation would be to try listening to some "Blinks" of books you already know well to see if you feel that the service is summarizing key points of books in a way that resonates with you. I did that and found it to be spot on for me.

What could be better about Blinkist?

  • Blinkist maxes out at 2x playback speed, and I wish it was configurable to 3.5x speed.
  • Sharing features are also strangely missing from the web page, although they're present on the iOS app. I'd like to be able to share share content right from the website instead of having to open up my mobile app to create a sharable URL for a Blink.
  • I've got a bunch of other feedback as well – LMK if you're listening, Blinkist, and I'll share it w/ you directly.