Short bio
Brenden Mulligan has been building software for more than twenty years. Most of what he has made didn’t work. What he’s good at is building something quickly that solves one specific problem, usually alone or with a very small team.
He started in the music industry. His first company, ArtistData, kept tour dates in sync across the web for more than 60,000 musicians and was acquired by Sonicbids in 2010. His next, Onesheet, a simple web presence for bands, was acquired by Bandzoogle in 2013. He then co-founded the venture-backed photo-sharing app Cluster and, with the same team, LaunchKit, a set of tools for mobile developers that Google acquired in 2016.
At Google he was a product manager on Firebase, Google Workspace, where he led the core product for Hangouts Chat (now Google Chat), and Cloud developer tools.
After leaving Google in 2019 he spent a year running a one-person product studio and launched ten small products. Most went nowhere. One was Podpage, a website builder for podcasters that now powers tens of thousands of sites. He later started Premint, which more than 40,000 NFT projects used to run their allowlists. Both are self-funded, run by very small teams, and built to be high-margin and low-maintenance, which is the kind of business he likes building most.
Twenty years at a glance
Work
Now
-
2020 to present
Podpage
Founder
A website builder made only for podcasts, so a show can have a good site without its host becoming a web developer. Podpage imports every episode from the show’s feed and keeps the site up to date as new ones come out.
Powers tens of thousands of podcast websites. Self-funded and run by a small team.
-
2021 to present
Premint
Founder
Gives NFT projects a simple way to manage who can mint a new collection, replacing spreadsheets and Google Forms with a page that checks a collector’s wallet, X and Discord accounts. Still running, at a much smaller scale than during the NFT boom.
At its peak: 40,000+ projects, 70 million+ allowlist registrations, nearly 6 million collector wallets.
Before
-
2016 to 2019
Google
Product manager
Joined through the LaunchKit acquisition and worked on three teams: Firebase, leading growth tools for app developers; Google Workspace, leading the core product for Hangouts Chat (now Google Chat); and Cloud developer tools.
-
2015 to 2016
LaunchKit
Co-founder, CEO and designer
Started by the Cluster team. A set of tools for the tedious parts of shipping a mobile app: App Store screenshots, landing pages, and review and sales monitoring.
Used by 50,000+ developers to make over a million screenshots and 8,000 app websites. Acquired by Google in July 2016.
-
2012 to 2016
Cluster
Co-founder, CEO and designer
A private photo and video sharing app for friends and families, built as an alternative to posting everything on social media. Raised a $1.6 million seed round led by Baseline Ventures, with First Round Capital, Freestyle Capital, Google Ventures and Sherpa Ventures.
Grew to millions of users. When Google acquired LaunchKit, Cluster was sold to a small company, and it still has hundreds of thousands of users.
-
2011 to 2013
Onesheet
Founder
A one-page web presence for musicians and entertainers that assembled itself from the profiles they already kept elsewhere: music, video, tour dates, mailing lists and stores.
Used by tens of thousands of artists. Acquired by Bandzoogle in 2013.
-
2006 to 2011
ArtistData
Founder; VP of Product Strategy at Sonicbids after the acquisition
Let a band enter its tour dates once and published them everywhere fans looked: social networks, concert listings and local papers.
Used by more than 60,000 musicians. Acquired by Sonicbids in 2010.
Along the way
-
2019 to 2020
A one-person product studio
Solo founder
A year after Google spent building small things fast. Ten launches, nearly all designed and built by him, a couple in under 24 hours: Humblebrag, a rebuilt Tiplist, Kit, Pulse, Reflect, Gutcheck, Podpage, Rapid, Rapid Menus, and the web platform for Frontline Foods, a volunteer Covid-19 relief effort that raised more than $10 million and merged with World Central Kitchen.
Podpage was the one that became a lasting business.
-
Throughout
Smaller projects
Dozens of other small products over the years, each built in days or weeks, including the original Tiplist, Webbygram, MorningPics and PhotoPile. Most of them failed.
-
2021 to 2022
Commonstock
Head of Product, then advisor
Led product at a fintech startup building a social community for investors.
Personal
Brenden grew up in Baltimore and went to college at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. He then spent about a decade in Chicago, where he worked in the music industry at a record label and an artist management company and attended Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. That’s where he started building software, and where he founded his first company, ArtistData. He later moved to San Francisco and now lives in San Diego with his wife and children.
Common questions
- What companies has Brenden Mulligan founded?
- ArtistData (2006), Onesheet (2011), Cluster (2012, co-founder), LaunchKit (2015, co-founder), Podpage (2020) and Premint (2021).
- Which of them were acquired?
- ArtistData by Sonicbids in 2010, Onesheet by Bandzoogle in 2013, and LaunchKit by Google in 2016. Cluster was sold to a small company at the same time and is still in use.
- What did he work on at Google?
- From 2016 to 2019 he was a product manager on Firebase, Google Workspace (leading the core product for Hangouts Chat, now Google Chat) and Cloud developer tools.
- Have all of his products worked?
- No, most haven’t. In the year after Google he launched ten products, and one of them, Podpage, became a lasting business.
- What is he working on now?
- Podpage, a website builder for podcasts. He also still runs Premint, now at a much smaller scale than during the NFT boom.