OneSignal Podcast

OneSignal CEO and Co-founder George Deglin discusses how OneSignal came to be, pivoting from a mobile games studio, Hiptic Games, to building the world’s most used push notification software.  The story is a classic build vs. buy product decision.   

As a mobile games studio, George and team found in 2014 that they needed a great push notification solution, however the available solutions were rudimentary, inefficient, unreliable and/or too expensive.  As a boot strapped, pre-seed funding stage business, Hiptic, couldn’t afford to spend on every need. They were forced to build their own, and eventually they  being forced to build push notification software, and ultimately open it up torealize there wasn’t a good solution at a fair value, and this led to OneSignal.   

The core consideration, all businesses need to be thoughtful about cost and time.  Businesses must focus on the problem they are solving, spending too much time building a feature or solution that isn’t core to their product isn’t a good use of resources.  If notifications and messaging specifically are a core part of your business proposition, e.g. a social network, then building makes sense.  However utilizing a vendor for a solution such as push notifications for most is a far more cost efficient approach.   

George finishes the podcast up discussing how rapidly evolving the messaging, and how OneSignal is working to stay agile, to remain ahead of the trends to support the nearly one million users and help enable   All these key changes have been documented in OneSignal’s blog, such as Android Q Notifications; iOS 13; Chrome & Firefox changes coming in ’20; Apple Deprecating Binary APN's among others.   You can also read a more detailed overview of the Build vs. Buy decision making process.  

Our guest, Evan Goldstein, eBay's Associate General Counsel, joins us to discuss how GDPR has impacted digital publishers and covers the California Consumer Privacy Act.  The California law is commonly referred to as CCPA, which goes into effect on January 1st. The European Union previously implemented a law for its citizens in May 2018 called the General Data Privacy Regulations, commonly referred to as GDPR.   

We discussed the difference between a data processor and data controller, and the rollout or application of GDPR.
Evan tells us a story about how a wealthy California, Alastair Mactaggart, led a campaign to bring regulation to the online industry, which led to the CCPA (10:50).   

We finish the discussion around how digital publishers can align around some principles to be compliant.  

 
Principles (23:30) 

• Updated, Transparent User Privacy Policy 
• Explicit User Consent 
• Consumer Access Request Process 
• If you’re large, you need a Data Privacy Leader (Chief Data Privacy Officer) 

Audiomack's Charlie Kaplan, their director of product management & growth, talks about how their business is to enable creators to create.  They strive to provide a free forum for musicians to release their music and help them monetize their creativity via consumer subscription and advertising.  Audiomack just released their latest version of the application to drive a feedback loop of artist discovery via notifications, which drives usage, engagement, and serendipity of new music.  They do this by providing recommendations based on preferences, then updating users when new music is released by their preferred artists and highlighting new artists that likely are of interest. 

The passion of Charlie and the Audiomack team is awesome to see, they've built a vibrant community and are supporting musicians and consumers across multiple continents.  We hope you enjoy hearing the Audiomack story and take an opportunity to try out their service.