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Kicksend (YC S11) Launches To Make Sharing Big Files A Breeze
- avree 15y agoDiscussion from when they announced on Hacker News as Receivd—they've pivoted quite a bit since then, but makes for an interesting comparison. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2352852 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2352852
- khangtoh 15y agoLooks like a take on Cloudapp, http://getcloudapp.com/ http://getcloudapp.com/, but free and supports up to 150MB transfers. Cloudapp is free with premium features that supports up to 250MB and is dominating the space.
- JshWright 15y agoThe 150MB limitation is for the web app. The desktop application supports larger files (though I can't find how much larger on the site anywhere).
- thisisblurry 15y agoHere's a summary of CloudApp's two account types: http://blog.getcloudapp.com/the-next-level http://blog.getcloudapp.com/the-next-level
- thisisblurry 15y agoCloudApp's approach to this is slightly different. It's more than just sharing files; they have an image viewer as well as a music player, with the ability to customize your own pages via the viso project (https://github.com/cloudapp/viso https://github.com/cloudapp/viso). You also don't need to know your recipients ahead of time. Just upload your file/bookmark, and share with anyone, anywhere. It doesn't look as though Kicksend is useful for URL-shortening as well, which CloudApp makes dead simple. I am curious, though, to see if/how the guys at CloudApp respond to this...
- khangtoh 15y agoWow.. why am I getting downvoted on this?
- neutronicus 15y agoHonestly, what's really missing from my life is a way to plug something into a USB port on my mac, plug something into a USB port on my friend's Windows computer, and give him 20 GB of pirated video. I would pay for that.
- trotsky 15y agoyou mean like a usb transfer cable?
- 1880 15y agoOr a cheap Ethernet cable. Windows Shared Folders are more or less crossplatform nowadays.
- sudonim 15y agoI used to have a crossover cable which is basically a single ethernet cable where the two connectors are reversed. You eliminate a switch / hub and it is a ridiculously fast way to transfer between two machines.
- pjackson 15y agoNice work, Brendan. Glad to see you changed the name. Good luck!
- techscruggs 15y agoIts no 'yappd', but still very cool!
- ragavan 15y agoGood work, guys! And congrats on the launch. Onward. :)
- bahman2000 15y agoI've been using Kicksend as beta. I transferred several gigabytes of data to a dozen or so people. The developers were always responsive to feedback and I am glad to have contributed to this project, if only in a way of feature suggestions.
- blackboxxx 15y agoOkay, let me preface the following question with the admission I'm a complete jerk. Now that's out of the way, I'm wondering what makes me want to use Kicksend over Ge.tt or the half dozen other file transfer services? WTH makes you so special? EDIT: Upvoting this comment will only encourage me. Stop it.
- abcd_f 15y agoAs per usual I guess - better user interface, better marketing, better affiliate programs, etc. Though it'd be nice to have a look at their YC application to know what they thought themselves :)
- wuster 15y agoI have to concur here... ge.tt is pretty great already, and requires no installs.
- skyfallsin 15y agoOur product is designed for non-technical users. We want to empower everyday people to do things that they weren't able to do before - namely send large files, big batches of smaller files, and easily receive and organize files sent to them by people they know and care about. Most of the work we've done these past few months was more user-experience than technical, and there's a ton more that we're going to improve as we move forward. Here's why we're special: Our desktop apps are killer. You can drag and drop a big batch of files in, and we take care of the rest. If someone sends you a thousand files, we make sure those are auto-downloaded, and display them in a way that's easy to browse. Since you're on HN and used to things like Dropbox, you might consider this trivial or solved, but our fleshed out desktop experience is highly visual and is something many consumers find very, very appealing. Our webapp has a 3-step interface for sending files to any email which was a direct result of hundreds of hours of user-testing. If you've never done user-testing, trust us when we tell you that it's usually a humbling affair. The last time we were on HN, our product was terrible compared to what it is now. It's only going to improve from here on out. The mobile apps that we're planning will change things. To date, nobody has a way to take a video on your phone, send it to a select group of people and have it downloaded on all the devices they have connected. Our backend infrastructure is a lot more generic than most other file-sharing services, which enable us to cook up slicker features faster than anybody else. People also seem to like our customer support. This was long, hope this answered some of your questions. FYI, we're still iterating on everything, everyday based on user feedback.
- ErikRogneby 15y agoPretty slick interface. Definitely a low barrier to entry for a new user. Great job! The dark grey top-nav is very Google 2011.
- cincinnatus 15y agoBeautiful implementation, but... This feels on the surface like we're deep into the sort of "feature as startup" territory that marked the worst excesses of the last dot com boom. Am I wrong? What makes this a big enough potential that it is in YC?
- callmeed 15y agoUmmm, what happened to Sendoid–which TC also covered and is a YC company? http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/21/sendoid-finally-sharing-big-files-isnt-a-huge-pain/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/21/sendoid-finally-sharing-big... Why is YC backing what seems like nearly identical startups (at least solving nearly identical problems).
- djm 15y agoIt's not really surprising. PG has said many times that they invest in people not ideas. I gather they also discuss ideas with founders and try and put them onto something other than what they applied with if it sucked. From YC's perspective investing in several startups doing the same (or very similar) things increases the chance that at least one of them might get somewhere with it.
- nillortpi 15y agoFrom the faq http://kicksend.com/faq http://kicksend.com/faq Who owns the files I send? You do. Your files are your own, we don't see them, we just deliver them to the people you specify. but from the terms http://kicksend.com/terms http://kicksend.com/terms By accepting these Terms of Use, you agree that all content ... is the sole property of Kicksend
- skyfallsin 15y agoahh. thanks for bringing that to our attention, we'll get that taken care of shortly - you own your files.
- dfc 15y agoWas the change made to read? "While you retain all rights in such communications or material, you grant us and our agents and affiliates a non-exclusive, paid-up, perpetual, and worldwide right to copy, distribute, display, perform, publish, translate, adapt, modify, and otherwise use such material for any purpose regardless of the form or medium (now known or not currently known) in which it is used." I do not understand how I retain all rights if I am giving you everything but exclusive use. Did you guys (i am assuming you are tech not law folks) change that or did your lawyer?
- jtheory 15y agoThis doesn't sound like it is referring to files uploaded, does it? "such communication or material"? I've seen many sites with similar clauses for communications with them -- mainly so they can use your email as a customer testimonial, I believe. I'm okay with that, but certainly if this applies to the files uploaded, that's a deal-breaker. Facebook's similar clause applying to uploaded content is why I don't upload photos directly, just links to albums I host myself. Edit: I looked at the terms more closely. Those sections just need to be rewritten; they seem to be cobbled together and not quite regularized to make sense. 6. Intellectual Property Information: defines "content" to include "message boards, chat, and other original content", then (huh) has this: "all content presented to you on this site is protected by copyrights, trademarks, service marks, patents or other proprietary rights and laws, and is the sole property of Kicksend, Inc. and/or its Affiliates." Well, no, that's a direct contradiction with the definition of content, especially since I assume people can share public domain material. 7. Unauthorized Use of Materials: much of this seems like a cut/paste out of terms I've seen referring to messages that users submit to a company (saw something like this on an Adobe site) -- e.g., feature ideas that you "transmit to us", NOT original or public domain content uploaded to a sharing service. These terms are a bit scary in the current context. HTH.
- ApolloRising 15y agoOne problem with your desktop app is that it is not allowing me to login. I am using the same password that i successfully logged into your website with and nothing...
- brendanlim 15y agoPlease shoot an e-mail to brendan[at]kicksend[dot]com and I'll take a look at the issue.
- pak 15y agoWhy would I "kick send"? Wouldn't I press send, or touch send, or maybe kick to send, or send a kick (violent)... is kicksend supposed to be a new verb? I can't get past the name. It sounds like a mispronounced "quicksand", a meaningless mash of two words. Neither the noun+verb nor the verb+verb interpretations are grammatically sensible, and the verb+noun meaning just doesn't feel right.
- dwynings 15y agoKicksenders: Please let me unsubscribe from email notifications that I have a new friend on Kicksend.
- rokhayakebe 15y agoMost useful comment on this thread.
- cHalgan 15y agoIf it actually had capability to share X GB files via Web for a small one time fee, then it will be really cool. Can you guys do that?
- mtogo 15y agoWow, ge.tt looks like a really cool service for sharing files. Kicksend is kind of okay too i guess, but thanks for submitting this, i had no idea about ge.tt!
- arihant 15y agoRealtime? I don't think it's realtime at all. The file has to be uploaded, my friend has to be on your site to even get the link to the file. Hows that realtime? Ge.tt is more realtime! You get the link even before your file is completely uploaded. You can share that link while things are still being uploaded. And here is the reason why I did not sign up - You ask me to sign up. You ask my friend to sign up. I still get spams from a million other similar services (YouSendIt, for eg.) who don't stop spamming me no matter what I do. When a file sharing service asks me to sign up, I see a big red flag instead of a homepage.
- nopassrecover 15y agoI'm sure the team is fantastic and will create a great and successful product leaving egg on my face, but aren't they attacking a problem solved by either DropBox or RapidShare et. al.
- dfc 15y agoFrom your terms of service: "While you retain all rights in such communications or material, you grant us and our agents and affiliates a non-exclusive, paid-up, perpetual, and worldwide right to copy, distribute, display, perform, publish, translate, adapt, modify, and otherwise use such material for any purpose regardless of the form or medium (now known or not currently known) in which it is used." How do I retain all rights If I am giving a ton of them to you? PS Your lawyers did a poor cut and paste job on the terms of use page. There is some unicode conversion problems: "Users Materials" (this is not the only time but you paid them not me) The terms of use mentions sections named "Use of Your Materials" and "Users Materials" however neither of these sections actually exists.
- rodh257 15y agoWhen I signed up and first arrived at the get started page that list of steps freaked me out a bit. I thought 'what the hell I have to do all this just to send a file?' I soon realized these were just ways I could get more quota, but perhaps the first page should be the send files page, rather than the how to get more bandwidth one, or redesign that page a bit.
- mikeleeorg 15y agoHow funny, when I first read about Kicksend.com, I thought they were Letscrate.com and wondered if this was just a big redesign. As a frequent user of these services, I admit the variety is a bit dizzying at times. But I welcome all the competition (and wonder what market consolidation will look like down the line...)
- philf 15y agoIf I drag&drop a directory into the browser window, the file size is NaN and clicking on Send will seemingly start the process but never finishes.
- mrich 15y agoge.tt does it all for me. Loved it when I saw it, don't see what else I need. I have no huge files on my mobile devices that Dropbox can't handle.