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Comment by tghw | Hacker News Reader

We applied to YC with exactly this idea. We made it to the interview, but were turned down. I wrote about that experience: http://tghw.com/blog/pull-hard

We pulled our bootstraps hard and tried to get it going, but soon realized that there's a pretty big flaw with the idea: most photographers have no idea that they should backup their photos. They know hard drives crash, but they never expect it to happen to them.

This meant that we'd essentially have to become insurance salesmen, convincing people that bad things will happen to them.

Eventually, we decided to shut it down, which I also wrote about: http://tghw.com/blog/well-that-sucks-what-else-you-got

The old homepage is still up at http://www.snaposit.com/.

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> For this experience, we spent less than $1,000. Compared to an entrepreneurship class at any college, that's quite cheap!

My undergrad was in USC's entrepreneurship program. One of the points they always hyped on was whether or not you were "selling vitamins or vicodin", so to speak. As you learned through Snaposit, most people when making chit-chat will be supportive of your venture, but you won't know how they really feel until they vote with their wallets.

Most of the professors were older guys who didn't get online startup culture, but one of their favorite tricks was to put up a landing page detailing a concept they were interested in, with a buy button. They'd spend some AdWords to get people to the landing page and measure the conversion rate. If enough people tried to buy to justify the service, they'd go out and build it.

FWIW, that's the original Lean Startup model.

In fact, that's how the Four Hour Work Week or one of those books was written -- ads first, and when the ads converted, the book was then written.

Professional photographers know they need to backup their photos.

It looks like your product targeted consumers, but professionals seem like they'd be a better market. And it should have been priced way, way higher; the more it cost, the more secure it looks. I'd have a hard time trusting my money-making business assets to a $9/month service.

Of course, I'm not a professional photographer nor do I have your experience in trying to build this business, so who knows what my opinion is worth. :-)

Actually, once we started getting into the market, we found that most do not know they need to do regular, offsite backups.

Consider the some examples:

* An older photographer who grew up in the days of film who has just transitioned over to digital.

* A homemaker who is trying to add some much needed income for her family, with a passion but no formal training.

* A well-off software developer who moonlights as a photographer for fun and a little extra money.

Of those, only the third has been exposed, formally, to correct data backup procedures. The others are likely to keep their photos in folders on the desktop of their laptop.

Furthermore, photography is not a very lucrative profession for most photographers. That limits the amount you can charge. Our original pricing was much higher, but we realized that would be problematic, considering the average photographer brings in around $30k per year.

None of your examples contradict

"Professional photographers know they need to backup their photos."

A homemaker or techie moonlighting for extra income aren't really 'professional photographers'. They may take photographs that look professional, but it's not the same thing.

One might say that professional developers use version control, then have counter examples of "well, this web design student doesn't ever uer version control, but she's the only person working on the code, so it doesn't matter". This is not a professional developer, even if she is capable of producing results that look like they were done by a professional.

A professional, imo, is defined as much by their habits and practices as by the output.

I was a professional photographer for a couple of years (as in, paid most of my rent with it until web dev became a more lucrative venture) and assisted some VERY big and experienced photographers.

Everyone I know backed up on-site, using manual methods as and when they remembered. I did actually set up a good automated backup solution for one of them, but there's definitely a limit to their interest. Remember they're making pretty much all their money off commissions, and are only keeping backups out of some sense of pride/responsibility.

Another blow is that, at least here in the UK, we're only starting to get the kind of upstream bandwidth necessary to make this level of data transfer feasible.

So, it's a brilliant idea and, as long as confidence in cloud storage grows, as time goes on the market will grow and grow. I'm just not sure it's quite there yet.

> doesn't ever use version control, but she's the only person working on the code, so it doesn't matter

As a web developer who works on a lot of solo projects, this sentence hurts me.

Do you use version control? If you do, that sentence doesn't even apply to you.

Your definition is not what defines the market.

Does a homemaker moonlighting as a photographer really pass herself off as a 'professional'?

Absolutely. The advances in digital photography has opened it up to almost everyone. They're not doing Disney's next add campaign, but they are doing several family sessions per week, and they are bringing in money.

A friend of mine had her wedding photographer lose 6 months of data in a hard drive crash. She should have known better, and may have, but she didn't do proper backups.

Yes, my wife's done this for almost a decade. She gets paid well, provides professional service, and works under an LLC

What else would you call it, if not professional?

That said, I have to harass her about backups.

I smell a no true Scotsman fallacy.

No, this is "an American of no Scottish descent who has never visited Scotland is not a Scotsman merely because he owns a plaid shirt."

Or maybe your company's problem was this (from one of your blog posts):

> It did this by compressing the photos to full resolution, high quality JPEGs, which saved anywhere from 50%-90% of the size. The downside of this, of course, is that photographers who shoot in RAW would only have a JPEG copy backed up. We figured this was a reasonable compromise. In a catastrophic event, wouldn't a photographer rather have a JPEG copy than nothing at all? It turns out the answer was no. But we didn't ask that question, because we thought the answer was so obvious.

I am no photographer... but from what I can see in this thread, what people are looking for is a solution to store RAW image files. I am sure photographers can find already good solutions to store good-quality JPG copies of their files.

The problem with the term 'professional' is that the word is ambiguous - do we mean 'people that live off this' or 'people that know what they're doing'? I have two professional photographer friends, and neither have the slightest clue how to protect their data. They live off it, but never grow out because word of mouth is karma and you can't lose someone's wedding photos. These are people that have a duty to protect other people's memories, and are leaving it to chance. They are everywhere.

Yeah, I'd expect the market for this is more niche but could be high revenue-per customer. As a wedding photography studio we'd pay 100$/mo in a heartbeat if this was done well.

[Edit]

Also note that OP wasn't really just pitching "backup". He wants you to reduce the footprint his images take up locally. I think the messaging to casual and hobbyist users probably ought to play on this. Note Loom's taglines "more room to play". Backup is probably boring for people not under the pressure of liability like pros are.

Would you be willing to open source your code? I am running out of hard disk space as well for my photos and have been thinking of writing coding up something very similar to this idea _when I get time_. But I would be willing to contribute to an open source project that does this for self-hosting my photos etc. Contact me if interested, email's in my profile.

Let me consult with my cofounder. I've considered it in passing, but haven't put any time into it.

If you're looking for a more immediate solution, I've been pretty satisfied with FastGlacier, as an Amazon Glacier client.

http://fastglacier.com/

Yeah, you guys decided to push more efforts to blurity if I remember correctly.

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