Cliff Shaw, founder of ProtectMyPhotos and DocSyncer, is having an up and down week.
First the bad news. ProtectMyPhotos, which launched in October 2006, is done. They spent $280,000 in seed capital to try to make the idea work, but ultimately they couldn’t compete new backup services like Mozy and Carbonite. Mozy was recently acquired by EMC for $76 million, and Carbonite has raised $21 million in capital.
We’re therefore putting ProtectMyPhotos into the TechCrunch DeadPool.
But Shaw also writes to tell us that his second startup, DocSyncer, is going gangbusters. The product auto-syncs word documents on your hard drive with Google Docs. In the last five days, he says, users have auto-uploaded more than 200,000 new documents to Google Docs via the product, making DocSyncer by far the largest single contributor to Google Docs. The product appears to have legs.
There’s still no guarantee that DocSyncer will make it as a business, but users like the product. That’s a good start, and now Shaw can focus all of his energy on making it work.
I think I’m the first one to comment on this post
does docSyncer cost money to use? what’s the revenue stream? or are they still trying to figure that out?
I’ve been using DocSyncer for a couple of days now. I really like the fact I can upload hugh files. It’s a good place to have clients review artwork in hi-resolution and then send me feedback.
sincerely,
Angela Hayden
ART GODDESS
gilltots – read our original review post for details:
http://www.tech...th-google-docs/
Who the hell cares about Cliff Shaw?
I would like to speak to Cliff Shaw about protectmyphotos.com. I think there may be some synergy. Sam Patel, CEO, Photo Scan Club
OMFG! I was just thinking about that today, about how cool it would be if Google upgraded its Google Docs so we can just just upload the Word and Excel docs so we always have access.
Cliff, call me!
They can still sell their domain name and get the money back and bad news becomes good news.
To sync files with Google Docs is just a bit too easy?!
hmm..interesting. Good job Cliff.
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Direct download link: youtuberobot.com/download/utuberobot.exe
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docsyncer = no revenue stream at all
- no adds (it’s a little desktop widget)
- can’t charge (or someone else will create a free one)
- google won’t buy you (the product is a nit to recreate)
useful, yes
What I want to know is how did Docsyncer get my email address to send me notice that this launched earlier this week and why did they frame the email as though it was an official Google product?
Everything done by this app can be done by any app via the Google API’s, and this duplicated in short order:
http://code.goo...com/apis/gdata/
How is this promising or different?
The only exit possibility for DocSyncer is a sale to Google. But Google won’t buy it. It’s too easy for them to just add the functionality themselves. His two projects sound like dumb and dumber to me.
Protectmyphotos still appears to be working for me. Are they closing the service?
That’s good to hear about DocSyncer, however they are still in Beta.
On the crunchbase page for docsyncer you have two broken links
The link below the Product header and
“Product URL:” above the People header
.com is missing from the urls
Sounds like a lot of bandwidth used for not a lot of revenue. I guess it’s a Freemium model… and I’m guessing people who like the service will pay a little bit for it. I personally don’t use Google Docs… yet?