7 ms·

That is a tremendous amount of money relative to the market opportunity. Displacing existing providers is necessarily going to be crazy difficult. I would love

by sp527 10y ago

That is a tremendous amount of money relative to the market opportunity. Displacing existing providers is necessarily going to be crazy difficult. I would love to hear the VC insight on this one: why do they think Upthere will actually manage to capture consumer mindshare? Advertising what distinguishes it from related services in a way that consumers will care about is a challenge.

api 10y ago
The pedigree of the founders probably factors into it. Many VCs take the "we invest in people first" idea very seriously. For them a super-impressive team sells itself, while a less impressive team could only get funded with a ton of traction and proof. It's just reality. That being said, it's not a terrible idea for a certain customer base. I am disappointed at the apparent lack of first class security features though. That would be a differentiator. But I haven't looked hard... maybe they are below the fold. They talk about securing their platform but not about how I might secure my data. Edit: why do none of the big cloud drive and sync providers offer basic symmetric local encryption of data? This is easier to implement by far than sync and I for one would pay for this.
- roymurdock 10y ago
  Seems like they're taking Dropbox a step further and creating an OS-like application that will run across most types of machines, rather than just a web service/finder plugin. Which is an interesting idea given the advance of thin clients/chromebook-like devices, but will require cheaper and faster internet connectivity, and as you point out, security. I guess I can see this working in the corporate environment where the client machines will always be connected to the internet, and will really only be used for web browsing, word, excel, and ppt (a few 10s of gigs), but I'm very doubtful on its ability to penetrate the personal market. Personally I have absolutely no reason to spread my 100s of gigs of docs, music, and photos across yet another set of servers...and pay a yearly fee for the convenience of having a slightly thinner laptop and not having to plugin my time machine backup every week while opening myself up to trusting another third party service?
- jasonsync 10y ago
  We're building a secure cloud storage, sync and share Dropbox alternative with local, end-to-end encryption built in: https://www.sync.com https://www.sync.com > Why do none of the big cloud providers offer local encryption? - They want to police your files - Free services typically monetize you through data mining your files (eg. Google Drive) - It's difficult (not impossible) to build in usability features that might need to access, scan or manipulate your file data, when you don't have access to the file data server-side in the cloud (everything has to be pulled down locally first which adds overhead). - Browser support for local HTML5 saveAs() etc. handling is still all over the map (Safari is almost a showstopper). - Easy account recovery options are limited The tech is getting better though, and there's certainly a number of good options in terms of cloud storage with local encryption built in, including Sync!
  - IanCal 10y ago
    > Free services typically monetize you through data mining your files (eg. Google Drive) Do you have a source that Google drive is mining my files? Free vs paid vs business?
    - jasonsync 10y ago
      Sure, from Google's TOS: https://www.google.com/policies/terms/ https://www.google.com/policies/terms/ Our automated systems analyze your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customized search results, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection. This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored.
      - IanCal 10y ago
        https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/drive/HgAeG7ljlZA;context-place=topicsearchin/drive/advertising https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/drive/HgAeG7l... > As with Google Docs previously, we do not target ads to you based on the content of your files. Our servers index the files you put into Drive in order to provide features like fast search, virus detection and optical character recognition.
flylib 10y ago
the company started back in 2012 and raised most of that money then, the market probably looked more attractive at that point to VC's (Dropbox valuation was shooting up) but they took awhile to release anything as it's now 2016. While at the same time, the market outlook has soured in general for file storage companies is the narrative at the moment, Dropbox has now shifted most of it's focus it seems to it's enterprise offerings as the consumer side isn't a sustainable revenue model to get to an IPO.
- sp527 10y ago
  Where did you read that? Crunchbase is suggesting they've only had the one $77M round that they just raised (at least amongst large/recorded fundings). https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/upthere#/entity https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/upthere#/entity
  - flylib 10y ago
    the 77 million round was done in the past (it might of been over multiple rounds grouped up into one number with part of the amount being more recent) some of the same backers in the round announced "officially" today are also mentioned in this article in 2012 as backers http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/11/14/site-live-for-ex-apple-os-x-vp-bertrand-serlets-new-cloud-startup-upthere-funded-by-kpcb-elevation-and-google-ventures/ http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/11/14/site-live-for-ex-ap...

by sp527 10y ago

api 10y ago

The pedigree of the founders probably factors into it. Many VCs take the "we invest in people first" idea very seriously. For them a super-impressive team sells itself, while a less impressive team could only get funded with a ton of traction and proof. It's just reality. That being said, it's not a terrible idea for a certain customer base. I am disappointed at the apparent lack of first class security features though. That would be a differentiator. But I haven't looked hard... maybe they are below the fold. They talk about securing their platform but not about how I might secure my data. Edit: why do none of the big cloud drive and sync providers offer basic symmetric local encryption of data? This is easier to implement by far than sync and I for one would pay for this.

roymurdock 10y ago
Seems like they're taking Dropbox a step further and creating an OS-like application that will run across most types of machines, rather than just a web service/finder plugin. Which is an interesting idea given the advance of thin clients/chromebook-like devices, but will require cheaper and faster internet connectivity, and as you point out, security. I guess I can see this working in the corporate environment where the client machines will always be connected to the internet, and will really only be used for web browsing, word, excel, and ppt (a few 10s of gigs), but I'm very doubtful on its ability to penetrate the personal market. Personally I have absolutely no reason to spread my 100s of gigs of docs, music, and photos across yet another set of servers...and pay a yearly fee for the convenience of having a slightly thinner laptop and not having to plugin my time machine backup every week while opening myself up to trusting another third party service?
jasonsync 10y ago
We're building a secure cloud storage, sync and share Dropbox alternative with local, end-to-end encryption built in: https://www.sync.com https://www.sync.com > Why do none of the big cloud providers offer local encryption? - They want to police your files - Free services typically monetize you through data mining your files (eg. Google Drive) - It's difficult (not impossible) to build in usability features that might need to access, scan or manipulate your file data, when you don't have access to the file data server-side in the cloud (everything has to be pulled down locally first which adds overhead). - Browser support for local HTML5 saveAs() etc. handling is still all over the map (Safari is almost a showstopper). - Easy account recovery options are limited The tech is getting better though, and there's certainly a number of good options in terms of cloud storage with local encryption built in, including Sync!
- IanCal 10y ago
  > Free services typically monetize you through data mining your files (eg. Google Drive) Do you have a source that Google drive is mining my files? Free vs paid vs business?
  - jasonsync 10y ago
    Sure, from Google's TOS: https://www.google.com/policies/terms/ https://www.google.com/policies/terms/ Our automated systems analyze your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customized search results, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection. This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored.
    - IanCal 10y ago
      https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/drive/HgAeG7ljlZA;context-place=topicsearchin/drive/advertising https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/drive/HgAeG7l... > As with Google Docs previously, we do not target ads to you based on the content of your files. Our servers index the files you put into Drive in order to provide features like fast search, virus detection and optical character recognition.

flylib 10y ago

the company started back in 2012 and raised most of that money then, the market probably looked more attractive at that point to VC's (Dropbox valuation was shooting up) but they took awhile to release anything as it's now 2016. While at the same time, the market outlook has soured in general for file storage companies is the narrative at the moment, Dropbox has now shifted most of it's focus it seems to it's enterprise offerings as the consumer side isn't a sustainable revenue model to get to an IPO.

sp527 10y ago
Where did you read that? Crunchbase is suggesting they've only had the one $77M round that they just raised (at least amongst large/recorded fundings). https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/upthere#/entity https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/upthere#/entity
- flylib 10y ago
  the 77 million round was done in the past (it might of been over multiple rounds grouped up into one number with part of the amount being more recent) some of the same backers in the round announced "officially" today are also mentioned in this article in 2012 as backers http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/11/14/site-live-for-ex-apple-os-x-vp-bertrand-serlets-new-cloud-startup-upthere-funded-by-kpcb-elevation-and-google-ventures/ http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/11/14/site-live-for-ex-ap...