PicPlum (YC S11): Beautiful Prints, Automatically Mailed for You

http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/12/yc-funded-picplum-beautiful-prints-automatically-mailed-for-you/

by canistr • 15 years ago

144 49 15 years ago

brlewis• 15 years ago

Has this sort of thing happened before? "PicPlum acquired the assets of a previous Y-Combinator company PicWing, and took over its printer relationship and initial user base."

bfung• 15 years ago

I was about to jump the gun and comment that YC backed a direct competitor to an older YC backed startup. This is the second startup to provide this service, how will it be different than the first? Maybe the approach to tackling this market is a bit off base...

jamesteow• 15 years ago

Very cool idea, though I'd be down for one that's aimed at the prosumer crowd. I've been wanting to print out 8x10 or larger photos for the last while but have been way too lazy.

chrisgoodrich3• 15 years ago

Interesting that Paul & Akshay decided to take over another YC company rather than run with their own idea.

pc• 15 years ago

Trivia: Akshay, one of the founders of PicPlum, previously built mugasha.com, to which I (and probably many others) owe a lot of our coding productivity.

damoncali• 15 years ago

I had this very idea a few years ago, and did nothing with it. Glad to see someone running with the concept!

blackboxxx• 15 years ago

This idea and business model fail to rock my universe, but it immediately rocketed to the top of the front page, so they must be doing something right.

qeorge• 15 years ago

The value proposition of "take photos of baby with iPhone; grandparents get them automatically in the mail" makes so much sense to me. Glad to see PicWing living on.

dkokelley• 15 years ago

I completely agree. Most of the web 2.0 picture world involves pictures sent digitally to all of the social networks and smart devices. I think this leaves out an important market or two in the photo sharing industry. Most notably, the technologically unfamiliar (grandma and grandpa), and the photo purists (people who want physical prints for display, but can't be bothered to print out inferior quality shots on inferior printers). Many popular photo sharing services degrade image quality for transmission and storage. (See: Facebook and iPhone)

abstractbill3• 15 years ago

Most notably, the technologically unfamiliar (grandma and grandpa)...

Actually I wouldn't be surprised if the strongest driver in motivating older people to learn about computers was the single use-case of viewing photos of grandchildren on facebook.

zokiboy• 15 years ago

I'm not in target market or I don't understand its benefits. If I have to choose photos and email it to them, how is that easier than choosing photos and uploading them to shutterfly?

lyime3• 15 years ago

Curation is still a chore (we are looking into ways where we can fix that). Where we come in is the automation when you send us the photos. Each month we will group these photos you send us and send it to your recipients (grand parents or other family) in a nice package. It is not a fun experience to upload your photos and get them printed through most other services.

canistr• 15 years ago

Will there be some sort of seasonal/occasions model in addition to the monthly one? Because I could see this being incredibly useful around Holidays (i.e. Christmas) and having an automatic Christmas card generated and sent out to all my family and friends.

lyime3• 15 years ago

At this point you can use the pay as you go option to send prints with flexibility. We are going to add a slick one-off printing and sharing interface over the next month. We are looking to experiment with ideas around the holiday season.

callmeed3• 15 years ago

I don't mean to be a downer/naysayer, but how can you argue that photo printing is a growth industry?

I run an ecommerce service for wedding photographers and know a lot of other people in the industry. From where we sit, the consensus is that people are ordering less prints. All the growth we're seeing is from album/book sales and digital file sales. 5-10 years ago, a portrait photographer could charge a $100 sitting fee but still make $1,000+ on print sales. That is now hard/impossible. Everyone simply asks "Can I have the files on a disc?".

I can't see how it would be any different for the general consumer and their images. People get their utility from seeing the image on Facebook. My mom is 63 and she looks at our family pictures on FB every day.

Wont the generation that is accustomed to (and prefers) tangible prints be dead in 30 years?

My $0.02

frossie• 15 years ago

People are ordering fewer prints, but which percentage of the prints they are ordering are pictures of kids for grandparents? A significant proportion, I bet.

Anybody who has walked into a relative's house and seen their gorgeous DSLR emailed baby picture printed on some crappy paper by some crappy printer proudly displayed has died a little inside.

The reservation I have about PicPlum (and, I suspect, why I never got around to signing up for its previous incarnation, even though I was interested in principle) is the fact that you still have to do the curation - a step that in practice I would forget. I would be interested to know from somebody who has signed up whether the service can be configured to remind you to send it some pictures).

[edit: grandparents might be online, but they seem to have a perverse need to stick pictures of their gene pool on the fridge anyway. Hell, mine have an Internet updatable LCD frame which sucks new pictures over all the time and still they print out for the fridge, handbag etc. ]

tptacek• 15 years ago

My kids grandparents are on Twitter and Facebook, as a data point. They are not especially technical (I'm the only one of their 4 kids to have a career in technology).

prawn• 15 years ago

They should have an optional curation step whereby the recipients choose their 15 (or more; upsell time!) themselves.

int3rnaut• 15 years ago

This is not directly correlated to PicPlum, which sounds like a really cool idea by the way, but from my perspective and what I'm seeing in terms of internet privacy--It wouldn't surprise me if people started taking a step back in terms of what they share on the internet and that includes photos. If that does happen I could see print copies coming back and speaking as a person who really doesn't have any prints of my own, there's something truly amazing about sitting around a home and passing around old pictures--you don't get that with facebook.

abstractbill3• 15 years ago

The first product launched by a company is sometimes intended mostly a way to gain initial traction and a loyal group of users to learn from, before launching the "real" product(s). That may be the idea here (if it's not, I would agree at least in my case - my mum doesn't want prints of her granddaughter, she wants the files).

PStamatiou2• 15 years ago

This is indeed just the first step.

My mom wants prints. lots of them. And I'm sure she's not alone. She actually sent me a massive email about what photo prints mean to her and wanted me to post it somewhere. So I did:

http://blog.picplum.com/post/8818368168/what-photos-mean-to-...

robryan• 15 years ago

The spaces that lead from this user base are pretty crowded though, personal photo sharing/storing wise.

I guess they could go further down the print path and look at high quality mail outs like wedding invites. I'm not expert in the area but I haven't seen anyone really using a fully online service to do those kind of invites.

fuzzythinker• 15 years ago

>> Everyone simply ask "Can I have the files on a disc?"

Unless you work for a big consumer printing service, how do you know "everyone" is not printing the files out themselves to bypass the "professional" printing cost?

callmeed3• 15 years ago

I don't. In fact, I'm sure that's part of the reason.

But the people that do that are getting their prints done at Costco where a 5x7 is $0.39 and an 8x10 is $1.49. They care about price more than convenience or quality. (or they wouldn't take the time to copy the disc to their PC, upload it to a printing service and navigate a clunky UI to order prints).

I don't think PicPlum's aim is to compete with large printers on price.

Also, don't forget that you (or a family member) can pick-up prints next time you're in Costco. And you can order prints of your Facebook photos and pick them up at Target.

todayiamme2• 15 years ago

Did mainframes die when PCs arrived?

Did stone tablets die after the invention of paper?

Did coins die after the invention of paper currency?

Did propeller planes die after the invention of the jet engine?

Did rowboats die after motorboats were created?

An entire technology tree doesn't die out just because a new one starts to sprout. The branches themselves may get pruned from time to time, but knowledge and knowhow tend to be valuable and sooner or later a new application is found. The tree just gets pruned, and spouts branches every now and then, as the new one takes root.

So, no photo printing itself won't die out. I have no doubt that the current paradigms we use this technology under will fade away, but I'm also certain that a new one will take its place.

abstractbill3• 15 years ago

Did mainframes die when PCs [arrived?]?

Of course not. But by the time the trend was obvious, I don't believe anyone was launching mainframe startups anymore either.

jschuur• 15 years ago

Exactly. Paul & Co aren't building an enterprise that needs to last decades. There just needs to be enough consumer interest in prints left in the next 2-5 years, until they move on to something else.

chrisgoodrich3• 15 years ago

I disagree with your assumption. You're saying that because people order fewer prints from professional photographers, that people don't prefer tangible prints.

I think this points more to the fact that consumers don't value a photographers copyrights. Consumers know that it doesn't cost $50 for a 5x7 print and thus they'd rather buy the digital copy to have more control over what they can do with their own photos. Photos are meant to be shared and it's hard to share photos that cost $50 each.

From the vantage point of the consumer with a smartphone, PicPlum offers a very attractive value proposition to share tangible prints with family members. I don't believe that the desire to have printed photos will go away anytime soon.

callmeed3• 15 years ago

>> I disagree with your assumption. You're saying that because people order fewer prints from professional photographers, that people don't prefer tangible prints.

Not exactly. I'm saying that (a) the preference for tangible prints is fading with every generation and (b) my experience in the professional space is one data point that supports this.

>> I think this points more to the fact that consumers don't value a photographers copyrights. Consumers know that it doesn't cost $50 for a 5x7 print and thus they'd rather buy the digital copy to have more control over what they can do with their own photos. Photos are meant to be shared and it's hard to share photos that cost $50 each.

It's harder to share a tangible/printed picture at any price, so how does PicPlum solve this at all? What you said above supports my thoughts more than it refutes them (IMO).

>> From the vantage point of the consumer with a smartphone, PicPlum offers a very attractive value proposition to share tangible prints with family members.

Maybe it does–I'm just saying the TAM is small is getting smaller. I personally don't build businesses around that.

>> I don't believe that the desire to have printed photos will go away anytime soon.

Replace 1 word and this sounds like a quote from a newspaper executive 10 years ago :)

---

(Let me be clear that I wish PicPlum the best of luck. I wouldn't invest my own money in the startup but I hope they can pull it off or pivot successfully.)

uladzislau• 15 years ago

Totally right, prints are just as obsolete as desktops from other today's front page thread. Especially now when you have iPads and other tablets with outstanding picture quality.

apinstein• 15 years ago

I don't disagree with the macro trend, however there will be some market for printed photos for at least a generation. For those of us that grew up with printed photos, we will always appreciate a printed photo a touch more than an electronic one, especially in small doses. This is doubly so for my parents, and grandparents. The digital generation may also appreciate it as a novelty.

So, even though the macro demand will continue to shrink, there is still a market for printed images. I would be curious to know from the founders if they have any real numbers as to the market size. That'd be the first question I'd ask them to see if there is any real play here. I would guess there are around 50m printed images still made every year in the US alone.

At a profit of 25c / image it might be possible to get revenues of several million dollars per year. Sure, it's no Twitter but it's a an easy business to build and test. With around $50k or so they can find out within 6-12 months if there is a path to significant returns.

That's a decent business risk IMO.

johnl• 15 years ago

Seems like there are a lot of directions these guys could go if the original direction doesn't take off. Might try downloadable-auto updated scrape books. Also know of a few companies making a living off of renting and selling copies of photos/artwork to businesses, could go in that direction.

btucker• 15 years ago

So is this basically a relaunch of PicWing? It seems like pretty much the same thing, just more expensive?

One other point. Isn't it a little odd to use a testimonial from the lead investor of the service in such a prominent way without designating them as an investor?

adamgray• 15 years ago

Doesn't Shutterfly already offer this service?

rorrr• 15 years ago

Shutterfly and 20 other photo printing companies, and much much cheaper too.

PicPlum charges $7/month for 15 4x6" photos (that's 46c per photo).

PePhoto or PhotoCheap charge 6c per photo, which makes PicPlum 7.7 times more expensive.

Seriously, what kind of idiots are willing to pay that much?

Would not invest a dime into this.

Daniel_Newby• 15 years ago

Seriously, what kind of idiots are willing to pay that much?

The same sort of "idiots" who pay for Guiness instead of Colt 45. Market uptake comes exclusively from perceived value. Penny pinching only matters insofar as it affects perceived value.

inmygarage• 15 years ago

Congrats on your launch!

Do you have plans to integrate with services like Flickr, Instagram, etc?

lyime3• 15 years ago

Yes we do! We want to make it super easy to get your photos into Picplum. Stay tuned.

badclient• 15 years ago

My grandma doesn't have an email address. Why do you require it for recipients?

jhawk28• 15 years ago

You just need to select "Print Only" and then no email is requested.

tednaleid2• 15 years ago

My parents (my children's grandparents) are moving away from physical photos. The thing that pushed them over the edge was us starting to use an EyeFi card (http://www.eye.fi/).

It's an SD card that can wirelessly transmit pictures and upload them automatically to designated endpoints.

All of the pictures we take are automatically uploaded to my flickr account that my parents have access to. When we talk regularly on the phone, they've already been out to flickr to see the latest photos.

For the few pictures that they think are good enough to have physical prints of them, they can order them from snapfish directly from flickr.

Previous to owning an EyeFi, it'd be weeks or months before I got a chance to manually go through and curate the photos to find the "best" ones actually worth sending to a service like PicPlum and I'd always get complaints from my parents about the delay.

PStamatiou2• 15 years ago

We are trying to separate the culling process from the uploading process. Doing some of the culling bit by bit instead of having this one big overwhelming "ugh I need to connect the camera, import 200 photos, go through them and find which ones to print" task. We've got a few ideas we're going to be testing in the coming months.

tednaleid2• 15 years ago

The biggest pain for me was the uploading process. Once they're on a website (like flickr) viewing and selecting good ones is easy and relatively quick.

If you can become a target for an EyeFi uploads (I think they have 20-30 built in so that doesn't seem like a stretch for them to add one more), I think that'd be a good consumer story and would decouple the uploading (the real pain) from the culling.

pnathan• 15 years ago

Interesting!

I do like having selected photos printed out for non-computer viewing. :-)

jseliger• 15 years ago

I just signed up: my girlfriend moved to NYC, and when I was there visiting her I kept meaning to go to one of the drug stores and make prints. But I never did.

EDIT: I realize that this thread is likely to devolve into, "I'd love to see obscure feature X," so let me contribute: I'd love to see larger sizes, especially 8.5 x 11".

bostonvaulter2• 15 years ago

Where's the pricing page on the main website? The learn more page said the pricing was on the FAQ (which is odd) and then the FAQ doesn't make it that clear and introduces terminology like batch in an adhoc fashion. Also I can't easily see what services it integrates, I'm personally interested in Google+/Picasaweb, Facebook, and Flickr.

PicPlum (YC S11): Beautiful Prints, Automatically Mailed for You

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