When a founder heeds the entrepreneurial wisdom of building one thing that works really well, it is like the rug that “really ties the room together.”
Many things in life are easily taken for granted, but once they’re gone, one realizes how useful those things really were and wishes to have them back.
There was a slew of articles from the likes of Inc, Business Insider, and Forbes circulating some years back that all had the same advice for aspiring entrepreneurs. In a nutshell that entrepreneurial advice was “do one thing and do it really well.”
It speaks to those who spread themselves too thinly — those who try to build an array of products or services in a short time, but haven’t developed any single thing to near perfection — those jacks-of-all trades but masters of none.
But when a founder heeds this entrepreneurial wisdom of focusing on building something that works really well and is better than the rest, that product is like the famous rug that “really tied the room together” from the 1998 Coen brothers cult classic The Big Lebowski.
That is exactly what web developer and entrepreneur David Lynam did when he founded Bookmark OS. He saw that most web browsers were severely lacking in organizing bookmarks, built a great platform, and turned it into something that web surfers can’t stop using.
Lynam’s Bookmark OS is an online desktop for organizing, sorting, and browsing your bookmarks, and it does exactly what it says it does. It really ties your browsing experience together, and once you’ve tried it, you won’t want to go back.
Carpet-pissers aside (Lebowski reference), it’s the type of product that without it, people would be willing to do whatever it takes to get it back — possibly even going to the extremes of fighting off marmot-wielding nihilists or delivering suitcases filled with dirty laundry as a ransom in their pursuit of something great.
So, how did one man create an AI-driven software that the entire team at Google didn’t? He adhered to entrepreneurial wisdom and focused on one thing, and he did it well.
“How this product came to be is that over time my Chrome bookmarks became so cluttered that I stopped using them and began dragging urls to my desktop,” Lynam wrote when Bookmark OS landed on Product Hunt. “This worked well as I was able to leverage the GUI of my mac to keep them organized and sorted. I thought to myself, hey, I could build this in the browser, so I did!”
David Lynam, Founder of Bookmark OS
“For me, it’s the overall experience and design,” Lynam continues. “I like having the screenshot icons in ‘icon view’ for visual references and the sizing/spacing makes it easier to use. Another great feature is sorting. You can sort any folder along with ‘view all’ and search results. An example use case is finding a bookmark that you opened last week by clicking ‘view all’ and sorting by ‘last opened,’ or maybe you recently tagged something and can’t remember what it was, you could search that tag and sort by ‘date created.'”
When I asked Publicize PR strategist Criz Guerra about her experience with Bookmark OS, she matter-of-factly told me flat-out, “I find it quite useful. I cleared up my bookmarks bar yesterday thanks to it.”
Nothing flashy there; just honest feedback about a well-built tool that gets the job done. You can check out the website for more testimonials where users are literally saying, “This site has changed the way I use the web. Can’t imagine surfing the net without it now.”
Bookmark OS is a responsive website, it works with any browser and you can use it on your laptop, phone, or tablet. Artificial intelligence learns the content of your folders and provides folder suggestions when creating bookmarks and web page screenshots are used as icons for fast and easy previews of the site.
It really ties the web together.
