

Picwing (YC S08) Reboots With An iPhone App That Prints Photos For Your Mom - jasonlbaptiste
http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/29/picwing-reboots-iphone-mom/

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brezina
Fantastic 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
"This was a great business pivot."

Yes, indeed. Would love to hear more details about it. Mixergy interview
maybe?

~~~
edawerd
It 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.

~~~
jackowayed
Alright, I have to ask.

> _blood (literally)_

Care to elaborate?

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edawerd
We 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
Ouch. Yet another reason to use VPSes/cloud hosting :)

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banjiewen
That's a nearly Reddit-level non-sequiter ;)

The "Picwing frame" is/was an actual photo frame -
<http://www.picwing.com/blog/?p=22>; I don't think edawerd drilled into
himself assembling a server.

~~~
jackowayed
Oh, ok. I hadn't heard of it and wasn't reading carefully, so I was thinking a
server rack

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jl
I 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
I'm glad you use Picwing just as we had hoped people would use it!

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yan
Wow, 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
There 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.

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jim-greer
I 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.

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callmeed
Perhaps 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
It'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.

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mattmaroon
Do 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
Yes, email distribution is way easier than prints, so I think you can count on
them implementing that feature, certainly before you're a grandparent. :-)

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pchristensen
I sense brlewis and ourdoings will be adding a new feature soon ...

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brlewis
Heh. 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
Actually, we also just released an API so other services can send their photos
to Picwing.

<http://www.picwing.com/apidocs>

Would love to work with OurDoings. Wanna chat about this sometime?

~~~
brlewis
Sounds intriguing. I'll get in touch...probably next week.

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uuilly
I'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.

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rmundo
Have to say I love the title.

"So what do you do?"

"I print photos for your mom"

