

Thoughts on Picplum Automatic Photo Prints - PStamatiou
http://paulstamatiou.com/picplum-automatic-photo-prints-parents

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rstocker99
Picplum reminded me of picwing which I believe is another YC company.

I had a chuckle when I noticed that they both have the exact same testimonial
from Jessica Livingston, modulo the company name.

I'm not quite sure how both can be true:

 _"Picwing is the easiest way for me to get digital photos printed. I just
email pictures to my account and never have to think about it again. With
Picwing, I can be sure that my family back East receives photos of my new baby
regularly. They couldn't be happier!"_

 _"Picplum is the easiest way for me to get digital photos printed. I just
email pictures to my account and never have to think about it again. With
Picplum, I can be sure that my family back East receives photos of my new baby
regularly. They couldn't be happier!"_

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3637134/quotes/jl_picplum_quote.png>
<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3637134/quotes/jl_picwing_quote.png>

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timdorr
Picplum bought Picwing and is essentially a rebranding of the same service,
along with improvements. The testimonial holds because it's the same thing,
just with an updated name.

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blakeperdue
I'm confused. If Picwing was acquired, why is their site still active? Was
something licensed?

UPDATE: from [http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/22/a-woman-a-cupcake-a-bank-
an...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/22/a-woman-a-cupcake-a-bank-and-a-square-
why-credit-card-companies-are-scared-of-change/)

PicPlum acquired the assets of a previous Y-Combinator company PicWing, and
took over its printer relationship and initial user base. The company
currently has $150,000 in funding offered by SV Angel and Yuri Miller to all
Y-Combinator startups earlier this year. The founders say they are beginning
their fundraising now, and will be looking to hire soon.

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PStamatiou
We haven't migrated the users over yet so we're keeping picwing up in the
interim. Picplum was created-from-scratch with no code from picwing but we
find value in their current userbase.

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blakeperdue
Nice use of qq.FileUploader. What are you using for those floating (top right)
user notifications like when I delete a photo?

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peteforde
Congrats on the new startup, Paul!

My only caveat to you is that you're flat out wrong that film is dying.
Compared to the now-exploded market for entry-level and above pro-sumer SLRs
like the Canons, film is tiny. However, the actual _market_ for film has
stayed pretty steady, thanks to new players like Lomography introducing medium
format cheaply to a new generation of artistic kids.

I'm actually sympathetic to your outlook because when I was your age I used to
roll my eyes at the idea of film. I had my 5D tricked out with a 14L/35L/85 II
L/200L kit in my bag. Eight years later I'm shooting almost exclusively on a
Hasselblad, but my Mamiya 7 and Mamiya C330 and FujiFilm G617 are all well
loved (and I still have fun with a Holga).

Here's my suggestion to you, one photography obsessed startup guy to another:
set aside a weekend to bike around with a rented Hasselblad 503 or Mamiya 7.
You'll need three rolls of film: Ilford FP4 Plus 125, Kodak Portra VC400 and
FujiFilm Velvia 50.

The first thing you'll notice is that with 12 shots on a roll, you have to
exercise constraint and make every shot count. You'll start remembering _why_
you took a photo, how you were feeling. Suddenly the shots that you'd discard
on a 5D II are some of the most charming of the lot. You learn to appreciate
that turning your most interesting creative decisions to a mass-produced
autofocus IC is kind of a drag. Happy accidents abound.

I'm warning you... it's a rabbit hole, and you might never come back out (but
you'll be very happy there).

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natgordon
I think this is a killer idea. I have a 6-month old and the only picture we
have of him on the fridge is an ultrasound picture.

I would recommend making this as easy to gift as possible. A subscription like
this might be more popular as a shower gift than something new parents
purchase themselves. (Citrus Lane does an excellent job at this.)

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PStamatiou
"I would recommend making this as easy to gift as possible"

That has been the most requested thing in the past week. I think we'll have to
make a splash with some kind of gift card come Holiday 2011!

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natgordon
People want to give gifts, not gift cards. :) Make sure that it's a stand-
alone product (eg. a 6-month subscription) that can then be extended or
upgraded, not $50 towards a membership.

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waterside81
Let me chime in and add to the argument of paper vs. digital. We sell
personalized kids books. Now you'd think, who in the heck buys books still?
I'll tell you who: grandparents, aunts & uncles. While our eBook sales have
risen steadily and with our iPad app coming up, I'm sure eBooks will take on
an ever larger share of sales, people of a certain generation with spending
power still love to touch paper.

Noticed a comment about the Picwing acquisition stating that the printer
relationship was one of the aspects of the deal. You can't imagine how
valuable that relationship is. We went through 4 printers before finally
getting one who had the quality we wanted, turnaround time we wanted and price
we wanted. From our first printer to our current printer, our cost per book
fell by over 400%.

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frankdenbow
Big fan of physical printed objects. Interested to know how you guys differ
from what the guys at Sincerely are doing and if you plan on opening up an API
for prints.

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twidlit
An API for prints and can deliver worldwide. Now THATS a business!

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lacker
We're finding Olark really useful as well. It's easy to set up and ensures
that every day we chat with users. People are willing to chat about a product
with less friction than they would send an email to a feedback address.

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hnsmurf
I feel like selling printed photos is a lot like selling CDs. You know at some
point nobody will ever use these anymore. You don't know when, exactly, and
they'll probably outlast the CD, but I personally already get annoyed when
someone gives me a non-digital version of a photo. If I like it enough I scan
it and throw it out, if I don't I just trash it directly.

Every day a bunch of people who want printed photos die, and a bunch of people
who will never want one are born. That's not a good spot to be in for the long
term.

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cschmidt
My parents would greatly disagree with you. They're fairly computer literate,
but for them photos don't "count" unless they're on paper. I always feel
guilty because they never get to see many of my good photos locked away in
Aperture. I think that's exactly the market here.

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ugh
Exactly. Your parents. Not you.

(That said, there’s plenty of time for this startup to thrive. I wouldn’t
worry about it.)

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jordanlev
Well we're obviously just talking about anecdotal evidence here, but I'm a
young-ish hacker-news-reading programmer, and I am really excited about this
service because I love having prints. I also want to sign my brother up for
this so I can get pics of my nephew but only 15 per month, not the usual
150-per-facebook album.

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chopsueyar
I think you are on to something there with the 15 prints a month limit...

Figure out some way to create a scarcity of images, so only the worthwhile
pictures are used/shown, not the 150-per-facebook album, as you mentioned.

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chopsueyar
Thanks for the olark.com link. That is an impressive service.

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rorrr
There are tons of competitors with much lower prices. They will need a lot of
luck.

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lyime
There are tons of competitors in every market. We are not competing on price.
We are a premium product and we offer a much better experience and a higher
quality product than most of our competitors.

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rorrr
I doubt your "higher quality" product claim. Most photo printers today use
pretty much the same machines, give you many paper options.

"Much better experience" is just a speculation.

You are a premium product indeed, price-wise.

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lyime
Well why don't you try us and our competitors and let us know what you think.

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jordanlev
Hmm... I'd like to try you, and don't have time to try a bunch of other people
as well. Would you mind explaining in your own words what is better about the
quality of your prints (or service in general) than the others?

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lyime
@jordanlev So we have tried ordering prints from a few other big digital photo
printing sites. First thing that you will notice is that everyone uses much
thinner quality paper then we use. We use heavy Luster Fujifilm photo paper,
much thicker than many others. Our photo process is lightjet chemical process,
most other companies use either a digital or inject process which is not as
good as chemical photographic process. We are also putting in a lot of effort
in package design and are going to be experimenting with designs over the
coming few months.

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rorrr
_Our photo process is lightjet chemical process, most other companies use
either a digital or inject process which is not as good as chemical
photographic process._

I bet 99.9% of customers cannot tell the difference between prints made by a

1) lightjet

2) Fuji Frontier

3) Noritsu

4) $500 inkjet printer

According to your FAQ, you are using "Fuji Crystal Archive" paper, which many
of your competitors use (Snapfish, for instance).

It looks like you are targeting yourself to a high end market, while your
print sizes are 4x6", which is very strange.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want you to fail, I'm just surprised with your
business model, it's really confusing.

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PStamatiou
I need to update the FAQ but we have since switched to lustre paper which is
not crystal archive (that is only glossy).

One customer told us: "Shutterfly was really disappointing: pixelated, poor
colors, and just a cheap feel - we'll never use them again." I quoted him in
my post. Feel free to reach out to him to confirm.

As I mentioned in the post, 4x6 is just the start. We've only been working on
this for 2.5 months :)

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rorrr
You're not answering the questions, but rather reply with a ridiculous
testimony of some random person (even if it's true, it's one data point).

