# Brenden Mulligan Biography of Brenden Mulligan, from https://brendenmulligan.com/. Last updated November 2026. ## Summary Brenden Mulligan has been building software for more than twenty years. Most of what he has made didn't work; a few things, with a lot of luck, worked out really well. What he's good at is building something quickly that solves one specific problem, usually alone or with a very small team. He founded Podpage and Premint, co-founded Cluster and LaunchKit (acquired by Google in 2016), and was a product manager at Google on Firebase, Google Workspace and Cloud developer tools. Earlier companies ArtistData and Onesheet were acquired by Sonicbids and Bandzoogle. - Name: Brenden Mulligan (sometimes misspelled "Brendan") - Now: Founder of Podpage (2020–present); also runs Premint (2021–present) - Previously: Product manager at Google (2016–2019) - Location: San Diego, California - Education: Vanderbilt University; Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management - X / Twitter: @mulligan — https://x.com/mulligan - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mulligan/ - Medium: https://medium.com/@mulligan ## 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. ## Work history ### Now #### Podpage — Founder (January 2020 – present) Website builder made specifically for podcasts. Imports every episode from a show's feed and keeps the site up to date. Powers tens of thousands of podcast websites. Self-funded and run by a small team. https://www.podpage.com/ #### Premint — Founder (September 2021 – present) Allowlist platform for NFT projects: a page that checks a collector's wallet, X and Discord accounts, replacing spreadsheets and Google Forms. At its peak it served 40,000+ projects, 70 million+ allowlist registrations and nearly 6 million collector wallets. Still running, at a much smaller scale than during the NFT boom. https://www.premint.xyz/ ### Before #### Google — Product Manager (July 2016 – August 2019), Mountain View, CA Joined through the LaunchKit acquisition. Worked on three teams: Firebase (leading growth tools for app developers), Google Workspace (leading the core product for Hangouts Chat, now Google Chat; then called G Suite), and Cloud developer tools. #### LaunchKit — Co-founder, CEO, Designer (February 2015 – July 2016), San Francisco Started by the Cluster team. Tools for launching and growing mobile apps: App Store screenshots, app websites, review and sales monitoring. Used by 50,000+ developers, who made over 1 million screenshots and 8,000 app websites. Acquired by Google in July 2016; the team joined Google's Developer Products Group. #### Cluster (Cluster Labs) — Co-founder, CEO, Designer (November 2012 – July 2016), San Francisco Private photo and video sharing app for friends and families. Grew to millions of users. Raised a $1.6 million seed round led by Steve Anderson of Baseline Ventures, with First Round Capital, Freestyle Capital, Google Ventures and Sherpa Ventures. When Google acquired LaunchKit, Cluster was sold to a small company; it still has hundreds of thousands of users. #### Onesheet — Founder (July 2011 – May 2013) Simple, automatically maintained web presence for musicians and entertainers. Used by tens of thousands of artists. Acquired by Bandzoogle in 2013. #### ArtistData — Founder (October 2006 – May 2010); Sonicbids — VP Product Strategy (June 2010 – June 2011) Let musicians publish tour dates once and distributed them across social networks, concert listings and local media. Used by more than 60,000 musicians and bands. Acquired by Sonicbids in May 2010, after which he ran product strategy there for a year. ### Along the way #### Product studio — Solo founder (August 2019 – 2020) A year after Google spent building small products quickly. Ten launches, nearly all designed and built by Brenden himself, a couple in under 24 hours: Humblebrag (websites for VCs and angel investors), a rebuilt Tiplist (travel guides), Kit (personal CRM), Pulse (product-market-fit surveys), Reflect (daily mood journal), Gutcheck (new-user feedback), Podpage (podcast websites), Rapid (restaurant donations), Rapid Menus (QR-code 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. About five more prototypes were never released. Podpage was the one that became a lasting business. He also did consulting and coached product managers during this time. Thread about the year: https://x.com/mulligan/status/1344011273961234434 #### Smaller projects (throughout) 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. #### Commonstock — Head of Product (January 2021 – January 2022), Advisor (January 2022 – June 2022) Fintech startup building a social community for investors. ## Personal Brenden grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, 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 University'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 lives in San Diego with his wife and children.