When William LeGate was a fellow at the Peter Thiel Fellowship in San Francisco, he envisioned a social media platform that would allow users to create and discover interesting content, without the drama of an Instagram or a Facebook.
“Let’s face it: social media is a popularity contest,” said LeGate. “It should be a place where good content becomes more popular based of its quality, not how many followers the account has."
Upon completion of the Fellowship, LeGate was pitched on the idea of moving to LA by investor Mark Cuban and LA Mayor Eric Garcetti. He took them up on the offer, and shortly after relocating to LA he was introduced to Tyler Mateen, brother of Tinder co-founder Justin and an original member of the Tinder staff. The two bonded over a somewhat pessimistic outlook on the current state of social media, and Tyler decided that LeGate's new company was something he wanted to be a part of.
Over the next few years, LeGate and his platform
would garner support from an impressive list of backers, including Cuban, the founders of
and Greylock Partners (early investors in Facebook and LinkedIn). The finished product was released April 14.
Users of the social media platform don’t comment on anything; a user’s only interaction with the content comes in the form of a “push,” or a “pass.” Pushes indicate that the user is pushing, or sharing, the image with users who have similar tastes, while passes indicate a lack of interest. Both founders stress that a pass isn't a negative, but rather an expression of neutrality. A user's feed then populates based on the type of content they push.
“Ponder is about discovery and helping people discover new forms of content that we think they’ll like,” said Mateen. “It’s about democratizing the discovery and distribution of your photos and videos.”
Though Ponder features an all-star team of financial backers (all funds raised to date have been undisclosed) and advisors, it still faces a market with firmly entrenched giants like Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat. For now, LeGate and Mateen are focused on what their product does well, in addition to their backing.
“The main feature that differentiates Ponder from other social networks is that other social networks are closed networks in that you follow people and see posts from those people exclusively,” said Mateen.
Now firmly established in their West Hollywood Headquarters, the team is focused on building the community of users.
“I think for what we’re trying to do, as a cross between media and tech, it makes sense to be in LA because LA is the center of pop culture,” said LeGate.
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