Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Not building software feels terrible, but it's better than building something that's not needed

In the short span of our startup's life, I've seen new companies formed and other companies shuttered or acquired.  The consumer photo space moves very fast.  Researching companies that are out there and understanding better the competitive landscape has led us to Product building inaction.  It feels like no progress is being made.  It is not something I'm comfortable with.  But it's probably the right thing to do.

The scope of what I've focused on with regards to consumer photos includes:
1.  Finding the best photos from your collection and keeping them in a secure folder.
2.  Have photo specialists create photo books for you using your pictures.
3.  Subscription service for consumers to help them manage their photo collections.
4.  Use photo book creation to understand the content and metadata patterns of how people choose pictures for photo books, with a future intent of better automating the process.

The list of companies who play in the space is very long, and new technologies are coming online all the time to aid in the effort.  Through the continued research, I've put Product building projects on hold and limited the scope of some product that we have built, mainly because I've found there are overlapping products that are already built.

Rather than rebuild those products, I'm looking for ways to reuse what they've built.  It's not as satisfying, but it saves a ton of capital - important for a bootstrapped startup.

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