At some point, 100 megabytes is just not enough to handle the delivery of big files. That's the typical file you can upload onto YouTube to share with the world. With YouSendIt, a file sharing site that recently received $14 million in new funding, you can send files (privately) that are up to four gigabytes, if you have the application on your desktop. Through the Web browser, it's more like two gigabytes. It's not free, mind you. YouSendIt, which has 7 million registered users, and adding 200,000 more each month, charges minimal amounts. So popular is the site, it's on a run-rate of $10 million in sales this year.
But under 100 megabytes, you can send files for free. And, it literally takes seconds.
The service is designed mainly for "creative professionals," such as videographers or producers, and small businesses, said Ranjith Kumaran, CEO and founder, who stopped into the Vator offices recently. The target market is for people who want to send files to five or 10 people. It's not like other file-sharing services, like Pando, that are trying to help media companies share huge files with millions.
And, unlike other file-sharing services like Box.net (which I occasionally use), YouSendIt doesn't focus on storage. And, unlike Drop.io, YouSendIt doesn't focus on creating shared spaces.
"We're focused on important IP, mission-critical documents," said Ranjith. In many ways, YouSendIt is like FedEx, which has its own service called Launchpackage, but better.
To that end, it's not surprising that YouSendIt sees a potential partnership with the delivery service that is still very much focused on offline delivery.
So, what's the exit? I think probably a sale to FedEx. Watch the interview, and you'll see why YouSendIt is a complement to the old ways of delivering packages.
Founder and CEO of Vator, a media and research firm for entrepreneurs and investors; Managing Director of Vator Health Fund; Co-Founder of Invent Health; Author and award-winning journalist.
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Steven Loeb
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Pando Networks is a small company on a big mission; to establish a new Internet infrastructure standard for efficient, secure and commercially viable rich media delivery. Our passionate staff loves new media and shares the belief that current Internet protocols need to be re-thought and re-defined to accommodate our insatiable demand for rich media, particularly high quality video online. We have the expertise to do something about it.
In the summer of 2006 we launched the free consumer service Pando to accomplish a few things; First we wanted to give our friends and family an easy way to use our powerful content delivery engine to move their own large media files. Secondly, we wanted to test and optimize our unique Managed Peer-to-Peer (P2P) technology in thousands of difficult networking environments around the world. Lastly, we wanted to deploy our software on millions of desktops to showcase Pando's massive scalability, reliability, effeciency and ease of use.
Since that hot summer of 2006 over 18 Million of our friends and family in over 150 countries have installed Pando, we've optimized our highly effecient networking technology and we've been humbled by exceptional peer and industry recognition of our best-of-breed managed P2P content delivery solution. We are now bringing the power of our platform to publishers with the Pando Content Delivery Suite. Commercial content owners can now seamlessly add secure Peer-Assisted Content Delivery to their existing CDN to unleash the breathtaking impact of their highest quality streaming and downloadable media (e.g. HD Video) at a fraction of the cost typical of server-based content delivery alone.
Pando Networks is backed by Intel Capital, BRM and Wheatley Partners.
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Founded in 2004, Hightail was working in the cloud before the term was even coined. At first the service was a simple way to send the large attachments that email couldn’t process, but has since grown to offer robust online sharing, storage and file management capabilities. Today, the company serves more than 40 million registered users across 193 countries and 98 percent of the Fortune 500.
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Drop.io enables you to create simple private exchange points called "drops."
A drop is a ‘discrete’ chunk of space you can use to store and share anything (pictures, video, audio, docs, etc) privately, without accounts, personal registration, or an email addresses. Drops are not ‘searchable’ and not ‘networked’, they just exist floating in space, as points for exchange for individuals or groups.
Create as many as you want in as little as two clicks and set things like a password, whether others can add to the drop, and how long you want it to exist (you can renew later). Drops are a simple platform for sharing which are by default private, but can be flexibly used in a range of ways from sharing family photos and videos to collaborating on work documents.
Each drop has four primary input methods – the web, email, voice, and fax – and a few secondary ones like ‘widgets’.
Anything you input into a drop can then be retrieved on the web at the drop location (with ancillary features to help you keep track of updates via email or rss), downloaded in original form, or even faxed out - you can zip files together to get the whole drop. There is more to come on both the ‘Input’ and ‘Output’ sides, but everything in keeping with our two core principles: simplicity and privacy
