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Dropbox acquires Loom (YC W12)

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Re: Dropbox acquires Loom (YC W12)

#91

Post by anon808 »

paulbaumgart wrote: post #86
calinet6 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm tired of this "they worked hard for that" BS with acqui-hires and shutdowns. Yeah, sure, they worked hard, but in the end they get a big fat F for the end result. Services don't last forever, but I'm not gonna congratulate someone who runs around in circles for 3 years purporting to deliver a product of value, and then gives up when offered a better deal for themselves. They didn't build a product, they built a n…

They proved that they can build products. That makes them very valuable to companies with more money than time. It's a significant career success, if perhaps not quite a business success. And we can congratulate them for that.

sure, if the product they made wasn't depended on by people. these kind of acquisitions seem to always leave the product customers in a lurch. and for that we don't have to congratulate them.

Re: Dropbox acquires Loom (YC W12)

#92

Post by zheshishei »

calinet6 wrote: post #71
kylec wrote: post #44

This is really disappointing. I have been a paying Loom member since shortly after the service was released, it's too bad it wasn't enough to keep it an independent company. After DivvyShot, Everpix, Snapjoy, and now Loom, I don't think I can trust another photo management startup again.

This is a huge problem with SAAS in general. The ephemerality not only of our data, but of the entire service, is highly disturbing. Next time I buy a tool, I'm going to look for something I can hold in my hand (metaphorically speaking), and use until I decide not to.

I guess it's time to go back to standalone desktop apps?

Re: Dropbox acquires Loom (YC W12)

#93

Post by cschmidt »

innonate wrote: post #61
bjeanes wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very very very happy Picturelife user here. Your S3 support is the icing on the cake — but please charge me a flat fee for using your software with my own storage. I want to pay for this great storage but your pricing model only prices on usage. You're not selling me a utility — you're selling me your fantastic product. Let me pay for it!

Ha! Thanks -- love that you're asking to pay for it. For now our custom S3 support is a gift. In the future we may change that (and grandfather folks in). In any case, thanks for being a fan.

I'm sure he is serious, and I'd actually take him up on it. That's out of self interest - if people can freeload, then it means you are less likely to survive in the long run. So how about a license fee? Maybe $39-69?

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).

Re: Dropbox acquires Loom (YC W12)

#94

Post by hrktb »

kingnight wrote: post #34
Roedou wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you find Dropbox works for you with a giant library? I have ~1.5Tb of photos at this point, which seems too big for any of their accounts. How do you have it set up?

Ha, is "giant" relative or what... I am currently at ~98% of my 215GB Dropbox account and am stressing about what to do. The next tier doesn't seem cost effective for me and I don't have much room for clearing house. One thought I have is converting a sizable portion of old Canon CR2 raw files to adobe DNG since I've noticed that reduces filesize by roughly 20% for the files that I have. This isn't really a long term…

My library is not as big as 1.5T but it won't fit in any standard cloud offering as well.

One of the advice I received was to batch export to JPG to have a small and easily sharable copy, and keep all the originals in Glacier or other cost effective backup that doesn't need to be accessed too often. I haven't done it yet but it seems to be a reasonable approach.

Re: Dropbox acquires Loom (YC W12)

#95

Post by Einstalbert »

calinet6 wrote: post #68
sidcool wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They worked hard for that, didn't they?

I'm tired of this "they worked hard for that" BS with acqui-hires and shutdowns. Yeah, sure, they worked hard, but in the end they get a big fat F for the end result. Services don't last forever, but I'm not gonna congratulate someone who runs around in circles for 3 years purporting to deliver a product of value, and then gives up when offered a better deal for themselves. They didn't build a product, they built a n…

Agreed 100% It's like selling someone a rubber balloon. We're buying services and products, not party favors. We expect balloons to pop.

Re: Dropbox acquires Loom (YC W12)

#96

Post by kingnight »

georgemcbay wrote: post #80
kingnight wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha, is "giant" relative or what... I am currently at ~98% of my 215GB Dropbox account and am stressing about what to do. The next tier doesn't seem cost effective for me and I don't have much room for clearing house. One thought I have is converting a sizable portion of old Canon CR2 raw files to adobe DNG since I've noticed that reduces filesize by roughly 20% for the files that I have. This isn't really a long term…

This may or may not be relevant to you but for a long time I was auto-converting my CR2 files to DNG during Lightroom import (without embedding the original CR2 in the DNG since I was doing it for space savings as you are thinking of doing) and now I kind of regret it because the "Digital Lens Optimizer" that ships with recent versions of Canon's DPP is actually really good at pulling out image detail that Lightroom…

Very relevant. Thanks for sharing that.

I definitely had bought into the adobe dng idea of it being the superior format for compatibility, but didn't consider there might be situations where something could read CR2 better than dng.

Re: Dropbox acquires Loom (YC W12)

#97

Post by funkyy »

0161 wrote: post #6
swanson wrote: post #2

In case you're playing the Acquisition Post Drinking Game: "It’s been a long road and we feel that we have come a long way in solving this problem. We are elated to announce the next step in this journey" "It’s been an immensely exciting journey and we are humbled by the support we received along the way." http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/

"We couldn't be happier." "We look forward to this transition as the next step." "As of today, we are no longer enrolling new users. " "Existing users can continue to use our service until ..." "We want to do whatever it takes to make any transition as smooth as possible." "We have worked hard on our product and feel that our vision aligns perfectly with ..."

"We didnt expected that being a startup is so hard. We worked for 2-3 years 10 hours a day 6 days a week and it brought us to barely breaking even. We just cant do this anymore, living in uncertainty is killing us. We have failed to pursue our dream but we hope that we can just shut down this part of our lives, move onwards to working for large company that will care for us and hopefully our skills, pain and experiences will help us to achieve something that we couldn't do alone - create revolutionary product or feature, but under bigger brand."

Re: Dropbox acquires Loom (YC W12)

#98

Post by eertami »

smrtinsert wrote: post #81
SixSigma wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My virtual server costs $200 per year and has 50gb of virtual disk space. I can run whatever I like. What does buying saas really give me that a whole server doesn't? Obviously one needs to be a Unix hacker to make it do anything but I've got that covered.

Where? fixed cost?

You can get 500gb for <100 EUR/year on those cheap OVH dedicated servers.

Re: Dropbox acquires Loom (YC W12)

#99

Post by paulbaumgart »

anon808 wrote: post #91
paulbaumgart wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They proved that they can build products. That makes them very valuable to companies with more money than time. It's a significant career success, if perhaps not quite a business success. And we can congratulate them for that.

sure, if the product they made wasn't depended on by people. these kind of acquisitions seem to always leave the product customers in a lurch. and for that we don't have to congratulate them.

Assuming this was a smart acquisition by Dropbox, they'll be able to create more value now than they were before the acquisition. Unless you're arguing that the acquisition is actually wealth-destroying, it seems pretty selfish to oppose it.

Re: Dropbox acquires Loom (YC W12)

#100

Post by sitkack »

funkyy wrote: post #97
0161 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We couldn't be happier." "We look forward to this transition as the next step." "As of today, we are no longer enrolling new users. " "Existing users can continue to use our service until ..." "We want to do whatever it takes to make any transition as smooth as possible." "We have worked hard on our product and feel that our vision aligns perfectly with ..."

"We didnt expected that being a startup is so hard. We worked for 2-3 years 10 hours a day 6 days a week and it brought us to barely breaking even. We just cant do this anymore, living in uncertainty is killing us. We have failed to pursue our dream but we hope that we can just shut down this part of our lives, move onwards to working for large company that will care for us and hopefully our skills, pain and experien…

If this startup hadn't panned out, I don't know what I was going to do. Thinking about having a staged breakdown so I could live off my parents money while still raging in Mission and eating burritos and Thai. Longer term goal, channel that startup burnout into something more meaning-full like opening some profitable franchise, like yogurt or cookies and doing rails gigs on the side.

god I feel sorry for the poor saps still in the grind.

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