Get 10 GB of space on the new Minus.com | Hacker News Reader

Get 10 GB of space on the new Minus.com

minus.com

77 pointsmindotus72 comments

This domain sounded familiar and I see where it recently sold for $115,000 to an "non-profit startup".

The seller shared his story in the comments at http://www.thedomains.com/2011/06/30/domain-investor-brian-w... (scroll down to July 25). It's interesting to see that while the buyers claimed to be a "math educational non-profit startup", the seller was skeptical of the story.

It was a huge amount for us and we went through a broker for the process :) Still love our old http://min.us

Congrats on the purchase. A good .com domain definitely enhances credibility outside of the startup world over a domain hack.

Thanks, the .com definitely helps lessen the confusion, as the name Min.us was getting misspelled especially when our users try to share/tell their friends about it.

I wonder if anybody in the startup world is thinking of solving the domain problem. Eventually founders are going to get sick of dot com domain hacks but without ICANN cooperation I just don't see how this can change. There are only a limited number of quality domains that are variations of English words.

Agreed. We'll see how things go over the next few years :)

Are you a non-profit startup? If you're not, did you (or your broker) claim that you were during the negotiations to get a better deal?

It is a great domain, and that feels like a good deal for a five letter, very common word .com. (though I'm sure it feels like a lot of money for a startup).

I don't know if it was all of the people thinking HP selling TouchPads at a loss was a good idea or something else, but I've recently gone from indifferent to adamantly opposed to the whole "give it away for free and worry about money later" attitude that pervades our industry.

The only compelling aspect of the offering is the promise of free 10 GB of storage. I don't see a dollar sign anywhere on the site, so I don't understand how they intend to keep that promise for very long. I refuse to sign up for a product, much less take the time to integrate it into my workflow, without knowing that it will be around for longer than a few months.

Thanks for the comment and your concerns are very valid. We're fully confident in keeping the service up/free and are currently deployed in Amazon's EC2/S3 with many optimizations for cost saving.

We're also seed-funded and that gives us room to go further without monetization for longer period of time while we work the features/bugs out :)

Thanks again!

> but I've recently gone from indifferent to adamantly opposed to the whole "give it away for free and worry about money later" attitude that pervades our industry.

As funding continues to dry up, this problem will take care of itself. (It's already far better than back in the days of the tech bubble, which was really where the "ignore profits" stupidity went parabolic.

I'd have thought HP's idea was brilliant had I managed to get in on the deal.

But "we spent 100k on a domain name for a non monetised service which competes with dropbox file hosting on one hand, picasa and imgur on image hosting, letscrate and sendoid on file sharing, and has nothing to match Dropbox on the high end, and is 'just' framing S3 storage" screams "hello? Bueller? What are you doing?"

I can get 25Gb free from Windows Live Skydrive with Microsoft behind it, soon to be 5Gb free from app-integrated iCloud with Apple behind it, 5Gb free from JungleDisk, 2Gb free with industry leading sync from Dropbox, and miscellaneous 10Gb free from 4shared.com, 50Gb free from Adrive.com temporarily, 1Gb from freedrive, 1Gb from flipdrive, 1Gb from fileden, (and stuck in the past there's 20Mb from filegenie).

Thanks for the detailed comment, truly appreciate it and a lot to take in all at once ;)

There is a lot of noise in the space and a lot of competition, and as someone new entering the space, we definitely have a long way to go. We've only setup a team and started working on Minus full time about a month ago here in NYC. The vision behind Minus is and will be focusing on creating a simple and universal sharing experience.

Minus will evolve over time and we are open to all suggestions and feedback on how to improve and hopefully you'll think differently in few months :) Not sure if you saw, but we have many apps also available via http://minus.com/pages/tools that we're working on simultaneously and improving along with the web front.

Thanks!

The vision behind Minus is and will be focusing on creating a simple and universal sharing experience.

Listen, I'm glad you are enthusiastic about your product and I wish you guys luck. But, seriously what is not simple about Dropbox? Are you hoping to grab market share simply by offering people free space? Who is dying to switch over to your service over Dropbox (or any other large competitor)? OR are you just trying to go along the journey to see if there is anything in the market that will differentiate yourself?

Thanks Michael. It is definitely going to be a long journey and we will learn and improve over. This is only the beginning :)

I can't tell if your refusal to answer the question is just avoiding giving away your plan, or if it's an indication that you don't have one at all.

If you don't have one, my suggestion is to start with native folder support. I use Dropbox because I don't have to use my browser to use it. That would be a good place to start.

thanks for the suggestion, we'll definitely study more and prioritize the next steps and directions to take Minus :)

Are you going to prevent or encourage this to become a new rapidshare/megaupload etc...

Re: the FAQ

---- How can I use Minus?

* You can use Minus to:

* Create an online portfolio of your work with your Minus profile

* Share photos and videos from your recent trip

* Publish your work whether it's an ebook, music, photos and more

* Brainstorm and share your next killer project

* Collaborate and share design mockups, code snippets and beta apps

* Backup your important files, documents and access or share it later

* Share lecture notes with your class

* Share all aspects of your life

These are just ideas we came up with. Start sharing today with Minus!

----

FWIW, if I were someone new to the cloud-sharing thing, that last 'idea' would freak me out.

Thanks, we have tweaked that a bit. Will be re-doing the entire about, faq/help page soon =) Haven't had a chance yet.

I used to work with Carl, and he is a super talented guy who has built an impressive team in a very short amount of time.

Congrats on the launch!

Thanks for the encouragement, Jordan! I noticed Amazon.com is getting faster and faster. I suspect a good part is due to your work ;=).

Pardon the skepticism, but why would I upload anything of value to yet another file sharing service? I looked at the web page and aside from "Drag here to upload", I am not seeing a significantly attractive differentiation (or much of a differentiation at all).

Plus, the name "minus" sounds negative. Who would want to store data on a "minus"?

Thanks for the feedback and I can understand your concerns. We created Minus to create a universal sharing platform that focuses on simplicity and minimalism and the name Minus itself reflected that, and our original name was http://Min.us which is still active.

We are working hard to improve and create a unified experience across all platforms and here's some of the other tools: http://minus.com/pages/tools -- so it is not only a web experience.

Additionally the data you upload and store as a registered user will be kept and stored in Amazon S3.

Thanks!

I've been using minus since it launched primarily to share files with multiple people SUPER easily. For example, I dragged several versions of biz cards and asked #startups what they thought.

I like the simplicity of it. So what's the catch?

Thanks :) There is no catch and it's free to use. We have monetization strategies that we will implement in the future.

Cheers!

How do I create 'folders' on the site?

Just drag a file onto any page on the site, and a new folder is created (or click 'Upload' if you're using IE).

Monetization strategies such as...?

We have not solidified the direction to go yet but we have few ideas in mind, both traditional/proven business models in the space and some creative ones that may be bit risky.

I haven't looked at Minus yet, but is the "but, but ... Dropbox!" argument going to be brought up every time some form of online storage is advertised? I, perosnally, decided Dropbox was not the right solution for me at this time. I don't need the starving man's repository; I need my crap backed up. Without having to move everything under one folder(some commercial software doesn't cotton to you just choosing where you want to store your data). I don't play musical chairs with multiple computers. On the off chance I was using my laptop away from home and needed to access something, web access is sufficient for me.

Thanks for the comment, hope u give Minus a shot! :)

I see no mention of "security" or "encryption" on your site. I assume that all files are uploaded as-is? Is there an option to have files encrypted on upload?

Add a tree structured tagging system with tags/sub-tags (to replicate folders, without folders, but with extra ability to have files capable to belong to different folders at once) and it's gonna be a very, very good service. Otherwise, it is simple, yes. Spartan design, but I like it.

Thank you very much and very helpful, we definitely have lot a long way to go and have many improvements to make :)

On another note, what are the current plans with "karma"?

We are still brainstorming. Would love to hear some ideas !

There is something wrong with the logo. There is a white vertical rectangle behind the 'S' of minus.

We just deployed earlier and had some sprite issues. This will be fixed shortly ! :)

No sprite on the sign-up button :-/

Yes, the signed out homepage needs some polishing :)

"Share Large Files up to 2 GB each"

Why the limitation? Filedropper has been offering 5 GB uploads for a while now.

This is temporary, we may increase it in the near future. However being on S3 the largest we can go is 5 GB actually :)

Awesome! Just letting you know, the "Take Screenshot" feature seems to be broken on OS X Lion, it would probably be easier to use the default 10.7 screenshot capture mechanism, and upload the files once they reach the Desktop.

Great, be sure to stay subscribed to http://blog.minus.com We'll push a fix for it soon.

tried to upload a big photo folder, 4.5GB, with 688 photos in a couple ways and neither works.

1. Love the simple drag and drop to upload idea. it didn't work, though, when i simply drop that big folders. it just hang, ie seems to be working away but gave no errors. after 4 hrs, i stopped it.

2. created a folder then dropped 688 photos in. Error msg: max limits # items is 100. why is this limit? I can think of many cases where people need to store more than 100 items in 1 folder.

suggestions: 1. please spelled out your limitations somewhere. 2. remove that 100 items/folder limit.

I like your website flow and UI. keep at it, guys.

1) Thanks, we do have a 100 files limit per folder, this will change soon.

2) Agreed, we will work on communicating more clearly!

I thought this would be useful for backing up my documents. I zipped them up until a 9gb file and tried to upload them and the website reported a 200mb limit. Is there a way to get around this? I know dropbox has a 300mb limit but you can upload files of unlimited size using the desktop client.

Anyone know how 'free' storage providers make any money? This is basically 10G + backup + geographical replication. IT costs (hard disks), electricity,cooling, bandwidth all add up.

We are deployed on Amazon EC2 + S3 so the backup infrastructure cost is saved. In terms of profit, it definitely works out depending on how you go about doing it :)

We will add options to earn more free storage soon, but I would love to see some stats behind other similar services if they are available!

I swear I saw an interview with imgur's Alan Schaaf about how it made money, or broke even. So far I've only found this 10/2010 interview in which he only says "it's been really hard to make a profit"

http://thenextweb.com/us/2010/02/10/alan-schaaf-interview-im...

In the 10/2010 interview, Schaff said imgur served 471 million images totalling about 65 terabytes. It had just started pro accounts at that point.

Thanks for the link and yes imgur is definitely a great success story. I'm sure it is doing well these days :)

I'm curious, what were your motivations for diving into this market? Are you looking to do it better than Dropbox and everybody else out there?

Great question ~ There are many direct and indirect competitors out there but our vision is to create a unifying experience that is a simple and universal sharing platform.

"...our vision is to create a unifying experience that is a simple and universal sharing platform."

One might say Dropbox has a similar (or the same vision). My question, more directly, is how are you any different than those "direct and indirect" competitors?

I don't feel that your vision is different based on your statement.

Thanks. We're still in the early stages of Minus but our focus will always be on creating a simple and universal experience for our users. Part of that is also to make sharing more interactive and that's something we'll be exploring next :)

Full changelog to the latest version here: http://blog.minus.com ^^

Nice pivot. Used to be a pic-sharing app. I guess my pics are gone now?

Thanks ^_^ Yes we're focusing more on File Sharing !

Your pictures stay. We've added support for files, that's all.

Why did you choose a name with a "negative" connotation?

we originally had Min.us ~ the concept was to have a focus on simplicity and minimalism, that less is more, and the name is very suitable for that.

it could also mean "less", which translates pretty well to a minimalistic UX and feature set.

What is your @twitter to follow your updates?

@mindotus ^^

HTTPS/SSL support coming soon?

Yes ;)

Is there an api? Thanks.

Yes, http://minus.com/pages/api

However we have API v2 coming out soon, over next few days.

Thanks. Just a simple rest based api suits me fine.

If you're building a new application you should use our new API. Docs here: http://miners.github.com/MinusAPIv2/v2/index.html. Write us at info@minus.com to let us know you're working on something, and we can collaborate on making things work for you. This is a work in progress.

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