I think the photo management space is like blog platforms. They die so rapidly, I don't want to invest the considerable time to try out a new startup. Dropbox bought out Snapjoy and now Loom. Everpix is gone. I guess Picturelife is still around.
I'm the CEO of Picturelife and I wouldn't dream of rolling over like this so easily. We have thousands of customers and just killing our service would be such an assault on their trust.
All these services you mention are just taking the easy way out. There's a long road ahead for us and we'll going to keep making the product and experience better for people, no matter what.
Everpix looked really great, and I was very close to signing up, but then they shut down. I'm glad I didn't just to see them shut down.
I know you say you wouldn't roll over so easily (which is great!) but it ultimately comes down to whether you have a viable business, which Everpix clearly did not. If I sign up for Picturelife, will it survive without outside investment or some miracle? Is it on a stable trajectory?
Thanks for any insight you can provide. Your service looks great :)
Glad to hear you at least want to be in it for the long haul.
You're not selling me a utility — you're selling me your fantastic product. Let me pay for it!
That's kind of the point of this thread, in fact. If you don't charge enough, then you won't survive, and your users lose. I would be uneasy using an important service without paying for it (but I do like the idea of my data living in my own s3 bucket).
Like I said, as we take another look at pricing (we are in the middle of it now) we will think about what to do on a more formal level.
Thanks for the feedback.
We support Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android. And then imports from Dropbox, Facebook, Smugmug, Flickr, Instagram, Foursquare, and a few more...
Speaking of your promise... What is "so easily"? Does it have 6 or 9 trailing zeros?
As for what's "So easily," it's not just about money. What I mean is this... if something's not working, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. What you'll see from Picturelife in the next few months is us hustling like crazy, putting out major releases and taking risks. "So easily" to me is trying one thing, seeing that it's not working, and then taking someone's offer to make the pain go away. It's like watching someone get dunked underwater and not fight to get free. If someone wants to get free, you could tell, because you'd see a lot of splashing and fighting to survive.
So "so easily" to me means fighting. And that's what we're doing, and that's what you're going to see us do a lot of from now and into the future.
I'm sorry, but I don't believe you. If someone waves $10M in front of you, you're going to take it. I think that's ok and I don't think it's (exactly) giving anyone a "bad name" (in the moral sense). It does mean that I'm going to be hesitant to put my photos into a startup again.
Are you willing to put out a guarantee? Are you willing to refund 100% of the money I paid in the last year if you sell and the service is shutdown? I'm betting there is some kind of legal instrument available to me, as a user, to soften the blow when this inevitably happens.
But in general I can tell you that we really are driven by much more than money here. A few times we've gotten to consider the idea of having a small financial outcome, and we keep coming back to the same thing: if we all became millionaires and then went out to start another company, what would we do?
If we're being truthful with ourselves, it's still doing Picturelife. There's just not another idea we're passionate about, and working on something we're not passionate about sounds like a terrible, terrible time. So we're just not going to take any easy roads here. If it ever gets tough, we're going to toughen up. When things get really good, we're going to dream bigger.
Maybe it's that we've all been around the block a bit -- both of my co-founders have already had great companies (OMGPOP and Threadless) -- but we really don't want to be doing anything else.
We love our customers, we love our work, we love the challenge. Selling out for 10M to Dropbox frankly sounds like a shit time to us, and we wouldn't do it.
Because you - like me - will probably be happy to be bought out for sums of money over a certain number. (let's say, 1 billion). And unless you have a fairly hardcore contract with me, I'm not willing to bet your service won't be wound up by the acquirer.
So my pictures are on my hard drive and an external drive.
I have a half-written blog post from a few months ago (proof: http://note.io/1lde2HC ) that tries to address this. My idea was that every SAAS startup should start with an exit plan for its customers that would be legally viable in the case of acquisition, being shut down, or any other scenario. Basically a set of software tools and policies that are clear from the get-go, so you aren't waiting to see what they'd do in that case.
We're working on some pretty major releases here so I haven't gotten a chance to finish the post (and publish a plan ourselves) but it's something I think about a lot.
It's a SAAS problem beyond the photo space.
It's a bit more complicated than that, though, and management always has the most control. For instance, it's because of this mentality we're not just shopping ourselves around for little exits -- and so offers like these never have to be decided on. We also chose Spark as a VC because we knew they wouldn't want a small outcome either. They invested in Twitter, Tumblr, and more. We, and they, are looking to build something big and meaningful. A VC like Spark is going to have a lot more patience than some other VCs -- and so it increases our chances of staying independent.
As for the OMGPOP question, I was never a part of it. My co-founder Charles Forman founded it and left the company a year before its sale... so he could start Picturelife with me and Jacob. As it turns out, 3 of our core team members were also at OMGPOP and later joined us at Picturelife, after the company sold to Zynga.
It's definitely makes me think twice about which service I use next.
Now I don't know what to do.
For photos, I am using Adobe Lightroom and organize files into folders by year/month/day/subject during import. Edited GoPro videos go to YouTube etc and originals/edits straight to Glacier.
This takes a bit of effort to set up but works great great.
I have roughly 600GB stored on Glacier and around 50 GB on S3 so far this year.
I am yet to spend more than $10/month.
Wait, you say, Google Drive is 9.99 for 1T!
True, I say, but on AWS you only pay for what you use. So you will realize real saving once you push past your first 1T in cumulative storage.
http://research.ivanplenty.com/2014-economics-everpix-shutdo...