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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

#252
post #100

Other People's Money. There's a reason they're all smiling in the final photo.

Frankly, thats what struck me the most- them smiling as if nothing happened.

>them smiling as if nothing happened

that is the beauty of enterpreneurship here. You can try until you succeed, and a failure is just a step on the ladder to success. Burning through 4M is not even a noise in the humming of the money making Valley machine.

Re: Everpix was great. This is how it died

#253

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…

We built a unique image pipeline with excellent full-res image optimizations allowing to save close to 5X in bandwidth and storage costs. Incidentally, it also makes syncing entire life photo collections much faster, that's why the average Everpix user had more than 9,000 photos.

I know I'm probably in the minority, but if I was to pay anyone to store and manage my photos, I'd expect to be able to save the RAW files along. For all I care you can use high quality jpeg for daily use, but the raw needs to be accounted for as well, and storing them separately is tedious work.

Re: Everpix was great. This is how it died

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always ask on question to every business, and nonprofit. How much were, are the founders of the company making per year? It's usually a lie. I've also noticed when young entrepreneurs are given a large amount of money; they don't quite realize that it's probally all the big money they will ever see. I know I didn't. I made a lot of money in my twenties, thinking it would always be this easy. Sometimes, the availabi…

It is staggering to me some of the salaries that founders give themselves. I remember reading a tip for pitchdecks/term sheets that if you put your founder salary as anything above 150k that is slightly too high for most offers. That is insane to me. I make less than 80k a year, in D.C., with a mortgage and two kids while I build on the side. A cursory glance tells me most founders aren't under such strict cost regim…

70 k/year doesn't make a difference and it's not a good thing to have founders struggling with money. If your brain is too focused on the trivialities of life you can't invest yourself 100% in the company.

Re: Everpix was great. This is how it died

#255
post #100

Other People's Money. There's a reason they're all smiling in the final photo.

Frankly, thats what struck me the most- them smiling as if nothing happened.

Poor choice of photo, perhaps. This wasn't a posed photo originally intended for the article. We were just smiling to look good for the camera.

Re: Everpix was great. This is how it died

#256
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the article concentrated on the incomnig AWS cost, if you look at the infographic the expense of AWS is tiny compared to their overall expenses.

That didn't help them through

Tumblr has an AWS bill that dwarfs theirs, and did survive for 6 years without any income. It's mostly Everpix's failure to attract investments to blame here.

Re: Everpix was great. This is how it died

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even at 35k/mo, that's 420k/year. That seems reasonably low to me (in the sense of a fundamental operating expense, not in terms of the going rate for hosting, which I have no clue about). By contrast, look at their people costs: Total Salaries (between 6 people) $1,168,710.45 Total Payroll $1,298,819.67 Total Personnel Costs $1,411,513.53 That's about 10x their hosting expenses. Even if they had free hosting it seem…

Is this payroll over one year? If so, that's absurd. No one should be making $200k+ in salary at a startup that still has yet to turn a dime of profit. Just shaving 10% off that number would have covered their AWS costs for another 3 months.

The totals are all over 2+ years, not per year.

Re: Everpix was great. This is how it died

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does office space for 7 employees in SF really cost ~10K/month? I know in midtown Manhattan a previous startup I was at had over 5K sq ft for that price.

The totals are all over 2+ years, not per year.

Re: Everpix was great. This is how it died

#259
post #100

Other People's Money. There's a reason they're all smiling in the final photo.

Frankly, thats what struck me the most- them smiling as if nothing happened.

I remember when my business went bust, the amount of stress I went through in those final weeks was so intense that the sense of relief I felt when it was finally over meant I was smiling during the post announcement beers. And that was my own money as well. Trying to avert bankruptcy is a horrendous experience..

Re: Everpix was great. This is how it died

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this payroll over one year? If so, that's absurd. No one should be making $200k+ in salary at a startup that still has yet to turn a dime of profit. Just shaving 10% off that number would have covered their AWS costs for another 3 months.

The totals are all over 2+ years, not per year.

Still higher for a company with paltry traction and no hockey stick growth. Weren't the employees (including you) compensated with equity?
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