Personally, I'd love to use this if it can provide context to my photos. No one gets context right. Couple that with discovery and you have a winning proposition.
I don't think the rejection has anything to do with the product itself. I reckon they got a lot of applications this year they wanted to fund that drowned out a lot of the other applications (such as mine, to ally different story though:)).
Appreciate the feedback. The challenge seems to be wrapping a revenue model around what amounts to a feature (context). The obvious play is to provide the common utility (backup/storage) which puts me in competition with the big dogs and storage is a bad business when you really get into it.
Originally had planned this as an app but took the idea to a startup weekend competition (we won) and mentors there were pushing me to find a monthly revenue model.
Now that YC has came and gone I may revisit simply building this as an app.
NOOOOOO!!! Don't give up! You could, monetise context. So, for instance, I'm looking at a pile of photos from Glastonbury from when I was at university. If you can tag the photos as from Glastonbury and intuitively know that Eminem performed there in 2007 (he didn't!), you could enable commerce on the content itself - Eminem one-click song downloads from 2008.
Think about it.. Same goes for you being with someone whose birthday pictures you're looking at and you can provide a context to them. Gifting is an area you can charge advertisers for. Think fashion!!! We take pictures all the time!! If you could provide the context to where the pictures were taken, the store it was taken in, and how there is a discount going on in that store, it would be amazing! Use the context of the photos, for instance, as 'subscriptions' to these contexts.
To elaborate, think of this scenario. I took a photo at H&M on Regent Street in London and then at Next further along the road. Since I took at photo at H&M, you can 'subscribe' me into H&M offers, etc. And same goes for Next. So when there are offers, an ongoing sale or either of the brands just looking to reach out to customers, you could be the conduit for them!!!!!!!!! THAT IS WORTH A LOOOOOTTT OF MONEY!
I too think you shouldn't give up. Just because there may be other competitors doing something similar -- even giants you feel you could never tackle -- doesn't mean you don't have something unique to offer that the competition doesn't.
Also, even if you don't topple the competition, who cares? If you have a product that others are interested in, your product has the ability to be much less successful and still yield you more of an income, just because you have much less overhead than the giants.
Worst case, you'll come out of it having gained a lot of experience -- you'll know the technology better, and will have learned some good life lessons. Then you'll be better prepared for the next YC app!
Hi, I co-founded a company that works on a similar idea, just from a slightly different perspective (focus on storytelling, not so much the aggregation):
http://memoarc.com/
I think the problem with that is that everyone under the sun offers that same exact service.
Facebook does it, Dropbox does it, Google does it, Apple does it. There's nothing you can really do to usurp such entrenched and cohesive services who offer it as a part of their broader platform.
I agree from a utility perspective, our differentiation is our ability to determine context about the photos, knowing for example that you were tailgating at a 49ers game rather than simply saying you were at a certain lat/lon on a given date. Once we know that we can supplement the UX with that context.
This is where I wish there was some, even a few words or a sentence, feedback.
We had 8 different alums look over the application and only one raised the competition issues (I think our system differences were clearer when you read the application). Consistently we heard about weakness of my co-founder experience wise and questioning of our 70/30 equity split.
Was it the idea? The team? Possibly the fact that YC has already funded a company very similar to us (Snapjoy) and another recently (Loom)?
