I disagree. People on HN won't even signup for Twitter because "reasons". I think gate keeping finicky people is fine, you should at least A/B test how likely you can encourage registration because building initial network effect for something like this is crucial.
I agree with this, don't get too bogged down by what people here think, focus on your target audience. This is the crowd that would have passed on Dropbox because it's so easy just to use rsync.
I'm aware of the benefits of rsync but you've sort of proven the point. Regardless of the niche concerns of the HN crowd Dropbox was an extremely viable product and the company went on to make a lot of money.
