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Picwing (YC S08) Reboots With An iPhone App That Prints Photos For Your Mom
- jl 17y agoI love Picwing! In fact, I was just uploading my latest installment of photos when I noticed this article came out. This is the only way my grandmother gets to see photos of her great grandson. I also have Picwing set to mail me the photos, so I actually have prints to frame or put in a baby album. Otherwise, it just wouldn't happen.
- edawerd 17y agoI'm glad you use Picwing just as we had hoped people would use it!
- brezina 17y agoFantastic gents! I've loved the promise of picwing from day one. There is definitely a large market for the problems you are solving. This was a great business pivot. I really hope it works out - and i think it will - you could be doing some serious revenue in no time.
- gcheong 17y ago"This was a great business pivot." Yes, indeed. Would love to hear more details about it. Mixergy interview maybe?
- edawerd 17y agoIt was actually a really tough decision to make. Having to let go of something you poured blood (literally), sweat and tears over. In the end, the decision was the right one. The business Picwing is in now is profitable, has a much larger market, and scales better. Plus, something about mailing baby photos to grandparents makes me feel good inside.
- dugmartin 17y agoIt was a very good decision. My wife will become a customer about 12 seconds after I tell her about it tonight.
- brezina 17y agothis is actually the #1 benefit of going after a large market and why VCs often invest (1) in the market (2) in the team and (3) in the current product (in that order). If you are in a good market, and spend enough time slamming your head against the wall, you'll probably find a way to make money.
- jackowayed 17y agoAlright, I have to ask. >blood (literally) Care to elaborate?
- edawerd 17y agoWe were manually putting together the Picwing frames, and drilling holes were involved. The spinning drill bit slipped out of the hole and went into my forearm. A trip to the ER, a few stitches and tetanus shots, and a couple thousand dollars later, I was good to go =)
- jackowayed 17y agoOuch. Yet another reason to use VPSes/cloud hosting :)
- banjiewen 17y agoThat's a nearly Reddit-level non-sequiter ;) The "Picwing frame" is/was an actual photo frame - http://www.picwing.com/blog/?p=22 http://www.picwing.com/blog/?p=22; I don't think edawerd drilled into himself assembling a server.
- jackowayed 17y ago
- yan 17y agoWow, as soon as I read the description of the service, I instantly saw a need for this and realized it hasn't been met. I'm not a parent, but I can definitely see the value here. Guys, I wish you all the best. P.S., this brings up the market for services that operate with the real world without your direct intervention. I'm sure there can be other uses for this.
- edawerd 17y agoThere definitely are other uses. We've had customers using Picwing to automatically send prints to soldiers deployed in Iraq, convicts in prison, and other interesting use cases. With that said, 95% of our customers sending prints through us are parents sending photos of their babies.
- pchristensen 17y agoI sense brlewis and ourdoings will be adding a new feature soon ...
- brlewis 17y agoHeh. I'm actually busy with features current users are asking for. But the "The reason this is so valuable" paragraph does sound like exactly the people we help. Some kind of integration is probably in our future. Of course, all Picwing has to do is pull from RSS feeds and they'll be integrated with everybody.
- edawerd 17y agoActually, we also just released an API so other services can send their photos to Picwing. http://www.picwing.com/apidocs http://www.picwing.com/apidocs Would love to work with OurDoings. Wanna chat about this sometime?
- brlewis 17y agoSounds intriguing. I'll get in touch...probably next week.
- jim-greer 17y agoI wish someone would run with the original business and fix digital photo frames... I've spent so much time on the phone with my parents and mother in law trying to keep their Flickr feed of granddaughter pictures working. The Kodak connected picture frames are god awful.
- callmeed 17y agoPerhaps devices like the iPad are making the original business irrelevant? Granted, $500 is a lot of money for a digital frame–but the iPad has a great digital frame mode, so I think its not too far off.
- jim-greer 17y agoIt's a good point, I'm sure it won't be too long before there's a $300 Android tablet that would do the job well.
- brlewis 17y agoWhat happens with the frame? Wifi connection problems?
- edawerd 17y agoYet another reason to use Picwing Prints. There's no tech support for opening photos in the mail =)
- rmundo 17y agoHave to say I love the title. "So what do you do?" "I print photos for your mom"
- mattmaroon 17y agoDo they do email distribution? I personally just throw out every non-digital picture I get (after scanning the ones I want to keep). I may be an anomaly in that regard now, but I won't be in 10 years. Either way, it would be relatively easy to add more digital methods of distribution if the market shifts that way.
- brlewis 17y agoYes, email distribution is way easier than prints, so I think you can count on them implementing that feature, certainly before you're a grandparent. :-)
- uuilly 17y agoI'm actually bummed they ditched the picture frames. I tried to order one from the first batch but they were out. My mom and dad would be stoked.