

Kicksend (YC S11) Launches To Make Sharing Big Files A Breeze - brendanlim
http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/08/y-combinator-backed-kicksend-launches-in-beta-to-make-sharing-big-files-a-breeze/

======
blackboxxx
Okay, 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.

~~~
skyfallsin
Our 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.

~~~
rorrr
That is such bullshit. Ge.tt steps:

    
    
        1) Click on "Select files"
    
        2) Click on the files, press "Open"
    

That's all, you got a download link that you can paste in an email.

Now let's see how many steps your site takes:

    
    
        1) Click on "Sign up for Kicksend"
    
        2) Fill out the form (equivalent to 20 clicks I'd say)
    
        3) Click on "Sign Up and Continue"
    
        4) Click on "Send files to a friend's email address in the next 5 mins"
    
        4) Click on "Select Files"
    
        5) Fill out the email field
    
        6) Click on "Send Files"
    

(There's still no download link at this point, like if I want to IM it to my
friend.)

    
    
        7) The person who received the email, doesn't get the download link, but a "Friend request" link instead. Click.
    
        8) Click on "Approve"
    
        9) Click on "Inbox"
    
        10) Click on the file name
    

Finally the download link

~~~
dfc
What is bullshit is that you are being such a jerk to someone you have never
met.

Recently pg announced that the startups would be launching soon and he
said/asked:

    
    
        "Please be nice to them. For you their launch may be 'yet another YC startup,'
        but for each individual startup this is their big moment."
    	

If you think that is being nice I think I can explain why you do not have a
lot of friends.

~~~
tluyben2
You are right, however it is not bad to question a business model or the fact
why YC put money in this idea. There are 1000s of these kind of services and a
lot of them work really well and are very user friendly.

I do think there are valid questions here like; what is your USP and why did
YC invest in this dime-a-dozen concept if you don't have a USP?

You are right, however it is not bad to question a business model or the fact
why YC put money in this idea. There are 1000s of these kind of services and a
lot of them work really well and are very user friendly.

I do think there are valid questions here like; what is your USP and why did
YC invest in this dime-a-dozen concept if you don't have a USP?

Edit: you indicate non-tech usability as USP: a lot of others have that as
well as rorrr indicated. He only names a few but there are really 100s or even
1000s that are more user friendly than Kicksend seems to be at this moments.
So what _is_ your USP?

Edit2: Too much TL;DR from me I see :) The desktop apps. Ok, going to sign up
and check it out :)

Ah! Password picking is good! I get very frustrated when systems don't allow
my passwords (and there are tons of sites which don't); my password generator
is set to;

<http://o7.no/oEYcxp>

And by far most services complain about the length, the type of characters or
whatever. +1 :)

~~~
dfc
In re Passwords

Have you ever noticed many/any companies that just disregard the chars after 8
or 12 and or the unicode characters?

------
callmeed
Ummm, what happened to Sendoid–which TC also covered and is a YC company?

[http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/21/sendoid-finally-sharing-
big...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/21/sendoid-finally-sharing-big-files-
isnt-a-huge-pain/)

Why is YC backing what seems like nearly identical startups (at least solving
nearly identical problems).

~~~
djm
It'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
From the 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>

    
    
      By accepting these Terms of Use, you agree that all content ... 
      is the sole property of Kicksend

~~~
skyfallsin
ahh. thanks for bringing that to our attention, we'll get that taken care of
shortly - you own your files.

~~~
dfc
Was 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
This 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.

------
avree
Discussion 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>

------
neutronicus
Honestly, 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.

~~~
jroes
Why would anyone invest time selling things to people who regularly steal
things?

Seems like a safer bet to go after a demographic that you know typically pays
for things.

~~~
jroes
Interesting that a similar comment was made by patio11 and there was
intelligent discussion about it.

~~~
EliAndrewC
My guess is that the downvotes are from people objecting to the use of the
word "steal" to describe piracy.

------
cincinnatus
Beautiful 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?

------
dwynings
Kicksenders: Please let me unsubscribe from email notifications that I have a
new friend on Kicksend.

~~~
rokhayakebe
Most useful comment on this thread.

------
khangtoh
Looks like a take on Cloudapp, <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
The 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
Here's a summary of CloudApp's two account types:
<http://blog.getcloudapp.com/the-next-level>

------
rodh257
When 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.

------
dfc
From 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:

"Users 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 "Users
Materials" however neither of these sections actually exists.

------
arihant
Realtime? 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.

------
pak
Why 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.

------
mikeleeorg
How 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...)

------
bahman2000
I'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.

------
nopassrecover
I'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.

------
pjackson
Nice work, Brendan. Glad to see you changed the name. Good luck!

~~~
techscruggs
Its no 'yappd', but still very cool!

------
ApolloRising
One 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
Please shoot an e-mail to brendan[at]kicksend[dot]com and I'll take a look at
the issue.

------
mtogo
Wow, 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!

------
philf
If 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.

------
cHalgan
If 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?

------
ErikRogneby
Pretty slick interface. Definitely a low barrier to entry for a new user.
Great job!

The dark grey top-nav is very Google 2011.

------
ragavan
Good work, guys! And congrats on the launch. Onward. :)

------
mrich
ge.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.

