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Everpix was great. This is how it died

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Re: Everpix was great. This is how it died

#131

Post by 650REDHAIR »

rfnslyr wrote: post #84
sameer_sundresh wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you go down the VC path, they expect hypergrowth; certain doors are opened and others are closed. Personally, next time around I minimize dependence on funding.

VC kids treat themselves like kings and never truly get to hacking. What ever happened to internal hardware? Build, setting up, and tuning servers is one of the most fun parts of running a service. When you get millions in funding its easy to piss away on the highest tier services. When you start from the ground up, every cent is managed.

Oh get off your high horse. "VC kids", really?

Re: Everpix was great. This is how it died

#132

Post by rfnslyr »

650REDHAIR wrote: post #131
rfnslyr wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VC kids treat themselves like kings and never truly get to hacking. What ever happened to internal hardware? Build, setting up, and tuning servers is one of the most fun parts of running a service. When you get millions in funding its easy to piss away on the highest tier services. When you start from the ground up, every cent is managed.

Oh get off your high horse. "VC kids", really?

Yes, VC kids. Let's be honest. Kid creates a decent website/service in a few days/weeks -> VC funding -> ludicrous spending on top tier development environments, offices, staff, and services -> "oh fuck".

I'm 20 myself, and while I'm not the hottest shit around, I have been working at a bank for the past two years. I've been exposed to some really smart people with extremely challenging problems, way more so than creating a pretty service in a few weeks and getting crazy amounts of funding for a business that's most likely going to fail because we're just that, kids.

Before coming into my role, I truly did think I was the best because I was able to create pretty websites with whatever is the latest JS library everyone is fawning over. That illusion was destroyed immediately when you start designing and working on infrastructures that have to handle millions of payments a minute, working with multiple vendors, business units, testing units, and various other departments you need to familiarize yourself with.

Re: Everpix was great. This is how it died

#133

Post by ngoel36 »

dm8 wrote: post #72
kohanz wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not hold an MBA, but have a few friends that do and this seems like an inaccurate generalization. My understanding is that MBA's can have varied focus areas, with a varying curriculum. For example, MBA's can be focused on: Finance, Marketing, Management, etc, and yes, Entrepreneurship.

How can you have formal education in Entrepreneurship? It's pretty much on job type of learning. Not trying to be snarky but I'm genuinely curious.

The same way you can have formal education in Computer Science...but never mind, you're right, no on-the-job learning in CS...

Re: Everpix was great. This is how it died

#134

Post by 650REDHAIR »

homersapien wrote: post #26

Their focus wasn't on the product, it was on living/working in SF. They could have saved a year's worth of AWS payments alone by trimming the fat that comes with wanting to be in a "hip" location.

And shoot yourself in the foot when it comes to future funding, potential hires, and acquisition talks.

Of course there are cons to living in SF, but if you're going for a series A after landing an initial investment it makes sense to base out of SF.

Re: Everpix was great. This is how it died

#135

Post by zaidf »

My hunch is that Everpix's $35,000/mo AWS bill could have been significantly less if they went with their own dedicated servers.

When I ran my music start-up, really smart people would look at me funny when I'd tell them it is cheaper than AWS for us to get a couple of high-power dedicated servers with unmetered 100mbps bandwidth. We were pushing over 100tb per month and paying under $3,000/mo, including the cost for our web and db servers.

Re: Everpix was great. This is how it died

#136

Post by gte910h »

Part of this is a lesson on using AWS early then looking for cheaper stuff later if your income doesn't rise above your AWS costs. There are considerably cheaper options for many of the categories it serves that would have drastically cut down their bills.

Re: Everpix was great. This is how it died

#137

Post by weixiyen »

martingordon wrote: post #28

> They spent too much time on the product and not enough time on growth and distribution. The first pitch deck they put together for investors was mediocre. They began marketing too late. They failed to effectively position themselves against giants like Apple and Google, who offer fairly robust — and mostly free — Everpix alternatives. People on HN crap all over MBAs, but these are the types of problems many of them…

You don't need an MBA to solve those problems. It's a problem with prioritization, not lack of ability.

Re: Everpix was great. This is how it died

#138

Post by dmourati »

autarch wrote: post #80
aespinoza wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think they were better off by having their own servers ? (Honest question we use AWS and Rackspace, and we feel the pain of Monthly bills as well).

This should be fairly easy to price out, right? I suggest you start by simply comparing the cost of dedicated hosting-provided hardware. This is the middle ground between owning your own stuff and something like AWS. Pricing out the cost of owning your own servers can be tricky since you need to account for a number of factors: * Initial cost of hardware - don't forget to include things like network switches, remote…

I did this math at Eye-Fi, a competitor of sorts to Everpix. What I learned, is the answer to whether to build or buy is the classic: "it depends". The driving factor? Data retention policy. The one move Amazon made during my analysis that had a huge shift in the calculus was to introduce Glacier.

My takeaway, the economics of a lifetime storage offering are very difficult to achieve. Glacier changes the rules by altering the SLA for data access to make the money work out.

Re: Everpix was great. This is how it died

#139

Post by EricDeb »

dm8 wrote: post #72
kohanz wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not hold an MBA, but have a few friends that do and this seems like an inaccurate generalization. My understanding is that MBA's can have varied focus areas, with a varying curriculum. For example, MBA's can be focused on: Finance, Marketing, Management, etc, and yes, Entrepreneurship.

How can you have formal education in Entrepreneurship? It's pretty much on job type of learning. Not trying to be snarky but I'm genuinely curious.

I have an MBA and MS in CS from Arizona (who at the time was ranked top 10 in entrepreneurship). I did not have a focus in the MBA so I could do Computer Science but the entrepreneurship track sounded like a less serious/competitive YC with a few classes thrown in the mix. You grouped up with others and worked on an idea for a year. The program recruited successful retires to both teach the classes and advise you on your idea. It actually sounded fairly practical, and the caliber of advisors they recruited was pretty good (most of them had run several businesses and made a few million dollars over their lifetime). It was definitely less tech-oriented though.

Re: Everpix was great. This is how it died

#140

Post by radicalbyte »

Sad. It looks like their technology did a great job at solving a very real problem.

If any of the founders are here, can I ask a question: why did you chose to implement this as a cloud based service, when a little basic Math would suggest that it was a better match as a client-based tool with upgrades?

Take me for example. My internet is 20mb down, 1.5mb up. That's pretty good for Western countries. I currently have around 300gb of photos taken in the last 10 years. That'll take months to upload. But if you made it client based you could do conversion & classification locally. Then uploaded the best into a pinterest style gallery for your website (with social features).

Then offer backups, custom galleries etc as professional features ($5/month for low-res jpeg backups, $20/month for 500gb RAWs). Maybe you could have found a niche with semi-pro photographers who're fed up with flickr? Or families who want to share photos with relatives without the risk of Facebook/Google using them in adverts?

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