Okay, let me preface the following question with the admission I'm a complete jerk.
Now that's out of the way, I'm wondering what makes me want to use Kicksend over Ge.tt or the half dozen other file transfer services? WTH makes you so special?
EDIT: Upvoting this comment will only encourage me. Stop it.
Our product is designed for non-technical users. We want to empower everyday people to do things that they weren't able to do before - namely send large files, big batches of smaller files, and easily receive and organize files sent to them by people they know and care about.
Most of the work we've done these past few months was more user-experience than technical, and there's a ton more that we're going to improve as we move forward.
Here's why we're special:
Our desktop apps are killer. You can drag and drop a big batch of files in, and we take care of the rest. If someone sends you a thousand files, we make sure those are auto-downloaded, and display them in a way that's easy to browse. Since you're on HN and used to things like Dropbox, you might consider this trivial or solved, but our fleshed out desktop experience is highly visual and is something many consumers find very, very appealing.
Our webapp has a 3-step interface for sending files to any email which was a direct result of hundreds of hours of user-testing. If you've never done user-testing, trust us when we tell you that it's usually a humbling affair. The last time we were on HN, our product was terrible compared to what it is now. It's only going to improve from here on out.
The mobile apps that we're planning will change things. To date, nobody has a way to take a video on your phone, send it to a select group of people and have it downloaded on all the devices they have connected.
Our backend infrastructure is a lot more generic than most other file-sharing services, which enable us to cook up slicker features faster than anybody else.
People also seem to like our customer support.
This was long, hope this answered some of your questions. FYI, we're still iterating on everything, everyday based on user feedback.
our fleshed out desktop experience is highly visual and is something many consumers find very, very appealing.
This is only because I'm obsessed with such things, not to sway your audience one way or another, or suggest you're wrong but...
I'd actually like to see the data on this. As it stands, opening up my dropbox folder and getting access to the functions I need to share files through the OS native context menu I'm already familiar with (copy public link, for example) seems like it'd be a no brainer. Why add layers of complexity and abstraction through excessive visuals?
1) Click on "Select files"
2) Click on the files, press "Open"
That's all, you got a download link that you can paste in an email.
Now let's see how many steps your site takes:
1) Click on "Sign up for Kicksend"
2) Fill out the form (equivalent to 20 clicks I'd say)
3) Click on "Sign Up and Continue"
4) Click on "Send files to a friend's email address in the next 5 mins"
4) Click on "Select Files"
5) Fill out the email field
6) Click on "Send Files"
(There's still no download link at this point, like if I want to IM it to my friend.)
7) The person who received the email, doesn't get the download link, but a "Friend request" link instead. Click.
8) Click on "Approve"
9) Click on "Inbox"
10) Click on the file name
You are right, however it is not bad to question a business model or the fact why YC put money in this idea. There are 1000s of these kind of services and a lot of them work really well and are very user friendly.
I do think there are valid questions here like; what is your USP and why did YC invest in this dime-a-dozen concept if you don't have a USP?
You are right, however it is not bad to question a business model or the fact why YC put money in this idea. There are 1000s of these kind of services and a lot of them work really well and are very user friendly.
I do think there are valid questions here like; what is your USP and why did YC invest in this dime-a-dozen concept if you don't have a USP?
Edit: you indicate non-tech usability as USP: a lot of others have that as well as rorrr indicated. He only names a few but there are really 100s or even 1000s that are more user friendly than Kicksend seems to be at this moments. So what is your USP?
Edit2: Too much TL;DR from me I see :) The desktop apps. Ok, going to sign up and check it out :)
Ah! Password picking is good! I get very frustrated when systems don't allow my passwords (and there are tons of sites which don't); my password generator is set to;
Constructive criticism does not normally begin with "that is such bullshit."
I certainly did not say they were friendless. I insinuated that if they believed they were following the community guideline of "being nice" they probably did not have a lot of friends.
To be sure, the "bullshit" comment could have been toned down.
Suggesting that probably would have been fine, particularly if you had other interesting comments to add as well; including a personal attack earns downvotes, though; that doesn't add anything.
As per usual I guess - better user interface, better marketing, better affiliate programs, etc. Though it'd be nice to have a look at their YC application to know what they thought themselves :)
Perhaps nothing, but there's always room for another. It's execution that matters, right?
I've tried Kicksend and dig it. Though my problem at the moment is determining whether to use Dropbox, Cloud, or Kicksend. I used to send music with it, but now that I use Spotify, that's no longer necessary.
It's not really surprising. PG has said many times that they invest in people not ideas. I gather they also discuss ideas with founders and try and put them onto something other than what they applied with if it sucked.
From YC's perspective investing in several startups doing the same (or very similar) things increases the chance that at least one of them might get somewhere with it.
"While you retain all rights in such communications or
material, you grant us and our agents and affiliates a
non-exclusive, paid-up, perpetual, and worldwide right to
copy, distribute, display, perform, publish, translate,
adapt, modify, and otherwise use such material for any
purpose regardless of the form or medium (now known or not
currently known) in which it is used."
I do not understand how I retain all rights if I am giving you everything but exclusive use. Did you guys (i am assuming you are tech not law folks) change that or did your lawyer?
This doesn't sound like it is referring to files uploaded, does it? "such communication or material"?
I've seen many sites with similar clauses for communications with them -- mainly so they can use your email as a customer testimonial, I believe.
I'm okay with that, but certainly if this applies to the files uploaded, that's a deal-breaker. Facebook's similar clause applying to uploaded content is why I don't upload photos directly, just links to albums I host myself.
Edit: I looked at the terms more closely. Those sections just need to be rewritten; they seem to be cobbled together and not quite regularized to make sense.
6. Intellectual Property Information: defines "content" to include "message boards, chat, and other original content", then (huh) has this: "all content presented to you on this site is protected by copyrights, trademarks, service marks, patents or other proprietary rights and laws, and is the sole property of Kicksend, Inc. and/or its Affiliates." Well, no, that's a direct contradiction with the definition of content, especially since I assume people can share public domain material.
7. Unauthorized Use of Materials: much of this seems like a cut/paste out of terms I've seen referring to messages that users submit to a company (saw something like this on an Adobe site) -- e.g., feature ideas that you "transmit to us", NOT original or public domain content uploaded to a sharing service. These terms are a bit scary in the current context.
Honestly, what's really missing from my life is a way to plug something into a USB port on my mac, plug something into a USB port on my friend's Windows computer, and give him 20 GB of pirated video. I would pay for that.
You would think so. You would properly say "em pirates won't pay for content, no way they would pay for online services". The existence of bittorrent would seem to indicate this.
Let me introduce you to hotfile.com, megashare.com, duckload.com, fileserve.com, filesonic.com.
All of these people makes money of pirates by charging for downloads. They can do this because it is convenient and easy for people to download through them.
Erm... at least once every few months I need to transfer multiple GB of data between computers, and it's not pirated media. Photos/video from my camera, music that I actually own, etc..
I know my way around computers, so I can set up the FTP server on my wife's MacBook Air (for example), but it might be trickier for a "regular" person to do it.
Well, on second thought -- thumb drives are pretty big and pretty cheap nowadays. It'd be tough to sell two USB devices for sharing data when someone can just buy, say, a 32 GB thumb drive for $30.
You reckon? I think there is quite a large market of people who are 1) totally price insensitive up to say $100/yr and 2) could not give a shit about copyright, they just want to be able to share things they like with friends.
PS. Can I ask you to stop using country-specific slang like "a wee bit" on HN?
A business model based around people who have difficulty agreeing to pay more than eight bucks a month for something is probably not a hugely profitable proposition. And as Patrick said, people who "could not give a shit about copyright" by definition will not have any qualms about flat-out stealing your product if they get half a chance. Such a high-risk market tends to drive prices up, which will just drive copyright infringers to try harder to steal your product.
And it's not really relevant, but since it's probably the part you're getting downvoted for, I figure I should explain: Your objection to "a wee bit" seems really weird. It's not particularly region-specific anymore — my mom from Mississippi uses it — and even if it were, it's not hard to grasp the meaning. I can't think of any good reason to avoid it.
Netflix proved this idea incorrect. People pay for movie access they could still torrent because of the access and peace of mind.
As for the parent above, if an easy USB-USB device that was easy and existed, I'd buy it. It isn't just movies anymore, it is also about giving grandma the HD video of her granddaughter's dance recital as easy and quickly as possible.
As far as I know, Netflix didn't primarily target serial copyright infringers or the destitute. Most of the Netflix early adopters I knew were reasonably well off middle-class film aficionados, and movie piracy over the Internet was not very common in those days (as the majority of the country was still on 56-kilobaud modems and even pirating music was a time-consuming task).
I used to have a crossover cable which is basically a single ethernet cable where the two connectors are reversed. You eliminate a switch / hub and it is a ridiculously fast way to transfer between two machines.
Looks like a take on Cloudapp, http://getcloudapp.com/, but free and supports up to 150MB transfers. Cloudapp is free with premium features that supports up to 250MB and is dominating the space.
CloudApp's approach to this is slightly different. It's more than just sharing files; they have an image viewer as well as a music player, with the ability to customize your own pages via the viso project (https://github.com/cloudapp/viso). You also don't need to know your recipients ahead of time. Just upload your file/bookmark, and share with anyone, anywhere.
It doesn't look as though Kicksend is useful for URL-shortening as well, which CloudApp makes dead simple.
I am curious, though, to see if/how the guys at CloudApp respond to this...
When I signed up and first arrived at the get started page that list of steps freaked me out a bit. I thought 'what the hell I have to do all this just to send a file?' I soon realized these were just ways I could get more quota, but perhaps the first page should be the send files page, rather than the how to get more bandwidth one, or redesign that page a bit.
"While you retain all rights in such communications or
material, you grant us and our agents and affiliates a
non-exclusive, paid-up, perpetual, and worldwide right to
copy, distribute, display, perform, publish, translate,
adapt, modify, and otherwise use such material for any
purpose regardless of the form or medium (now known or not
currently known) in which it is used."
How do I retain all rights If I am giving a ton of them to you?
PS
Your lawyers did a poor cut and paste job on the terms of use page.
There is some unicode conversion problems:
"Users Materials" (this is not the only time but you paid them not me)
The terms of use mentions sections named "Use of Your Materials" and "Users Materials" however neither of these sections actually exists.
Realtime? I don't think it's realtime at all. The file has to be uploaded, my friend has to be on your site to even get the link to the file. Hows that realtime?
Ge.tt is more realtime! You get the link even before your file is completely uploaded. You can share that link while things are still being uploaded.
And here is the reason why I did not sign up - You ask me to sign up. You ask my friend to sign up. I still get spams from a million other similar services (YouSendIt, for eg.) who don't stop spamming me no matter what I do. When a file sharing service asks me to sign up, I see a big red flag instead of a homepage.
Why would I "kick send"? Wouldn't I press send, or touch send, or maybe kick to send, or send a kick (violent)... is kicksend supposed to be a new verb? I can't get past the name.
It sounds like a mispronounced "quicksand", a meaningless mash of two words. Neither the noun+verb nor the verb+verb interpretations are grammatically sensible, and the verb+noun meaning just doesn't feel right.
How funny, when I first read about Kicksend.com, I thought they were Letscrate.com and wondered if this was just a big redesign.
As a frequent user of these services, I admit the variety is a bit dizzying at times. But I welcome all the competition (and wonder what market consolidation will look like down the line...)
I've been using Kicksend as beta. I transferred several gigabytes of data to a dozen or so people. The developers were always responsive to feedback and I am glad to have contributed to this project, if only in a way of feature suggestions.
I'm sure the team is fantastic and will create a great and successful product leaving egg on my face, but aren't they attacking a problem solved by either DropBox or RapidShare et. al.
One problem with your desktop app is that it is not allowing me to login. I am using the same password that i successfully logged into your website with and nothing...
Now that's out of the way, I'm wondering what makes me want to use Kicksend over Ge.tt or the half dozen other file transfer services? WTH makes you so special?
EDIT: Upvoting this comment will only encourage me. Stop it.