

ZumoDrive (YC 07) Lands $1.5 Million For Cloud Storage And Syncing Application  - raghus
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/14/zumodrive-lands-1-5-million-for-cloud-storage-and-syncing-application/

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breck
> ZumoDrive mimics a standard hard drive but saves content in the cloud and
> then streams it to each device instead of saving local copies, making it the
> killer app for the netbook and other devices with limited storage.

Nice. This is exactly what I need for my Netbook.

Versionate was a great product too :)

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mattiss
Not to detract from this business, but couldn't this just as easily be a
checkbox on Dropbox?

Suppose Dropbox wanted to do this, how does YC react? Although I suppose there
is lots of room for competition in this space...

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e1ven
It certainly could be done on Dropbox, their services have been growing more
close over time. Zumodrive only recently added linked-folders, which are
basically a copy of the Dropbox model.

That said, they are both YC companies, and it's good to have competition in
this space.

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callmeed
I don't understand why these cloud storage companies aren't targeting more
verticals/niches with their offerings. It seems like there are endless (B2B)
places where ZumoDrive's offering would solve real problems that people would
pay for.

I know in our industry (pro photography), having cloud storage that mimics a
local drive has big potential. To be able to work in Lightroom or Aperture
from multiple machines and know images are safe in the cloud would be huge.
That's just 1 small example ...

Why the focus on consumer music and photos? Seriously, I don't get it.

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betterlabs
I couldn't agree more. B2B can also be a lot more profitable in the long run
and there are clear differentiators that can be built with a focus on
vertical/niches.

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nixme
I'm actually working in this space... stay tuned.

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DenisM
JungleDisk should also be mentioned as a competitive offering.

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rg
Indeed, JungleDisk appears to offer a very similar service. I back up my
entire main computer to JungleDisk (automatic incremental backup every
midnight). On my minimal laptop for travel is a "Drive J:" which gives me
access straight from Amazon's cloud for all the data on all the drives backed
up from my main computer without local storage. One charge for the software,
no extra cost for any number of virtually sync'd machines. Works great for a
travel machine where you want access to all your data but don't want to carry
it around with the risk of losing it; there's even a password to gain access
to "Drive J:", so a lost computer contains no private data and also can't be
used to access the cloud copy at Amazon.

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perneto
I've long been thinking that something like Coda (the distributed filesystem
from CMU) would be the best option in this space. Coda keeps the data, but
lets nodes locally sync some of it for offline use. It's been around ages,
too. Has anyone thought about it too?

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lux
That's pretty much what ZumoDrive is doing too. It's offline, but you set how
much of a local cache for recent/frequently used files you want, which makes
it feel local for cached files (because it is :).

