The most failed good product--everpix the collapse of inspiration

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This two-day North American Science Circle is discussing the verge on the picture:why the world's best photo startup is on out of business, about Everpix how to invest in venture capital and VC , to make products that are favored by the market, and to the recent full story of the closure due to the financial burden. It's a bit long, but I suggest all entrepreneurs should read it once.

This is a very worthwhile case to discuss. In all respects, the Everpix team's success conditions are very good:

Founder

Everpix's main founder was Pierre-olivier Latour, who successfully sold the first company Pixelshox to Apple in 2003 and was responsible for several visual and imaging-related products after joining Apple. After leaving Apple, Latour joined Cooliris, the popular photo management software company, as general manager of the Japanese branch. Then in 2011, he decided to venture out. To an entrepreneur, Latour's experience is very complete, with large, small companies, engineers, management, exit and so on experience, and has been focused on the video-related areas, by him to do everpix This topic is very reasonable.

Team

On the other hand, Everpix's two co-founder Wayne Fan and Kevin Quennesson, a former designer at Facebook and an Apple-born Tech lead, are all very well qualified. Of course I haven't looked at the interactions between them, but it's a great team on paper, and the quality of the Everpix product is a measure of their ability.

Problem/Market

Everpix trying to solve the problem, almost every modern technology users have, that is too many photos, it is difficult to clean up the matter. Especially when smart phones, tablets more popular, each device has two cameras, and even support the functions such as continuous shutter, coupled with the original digital camera, each user will only face more and more photos, and will increasingly need software to help them organize.

Products

Latour and his team spent nearly 1.5 years perfecting Everpix, and by the end of this year they finally rolled out their 1.0 version of their satisfaction. But even as early as September 2011, with a very Beta appearance to participate in TechCrunch disrupt, they have been greatly praised by the technology media. Over the past two years, as the Everpix progress, the media's love for them has been continued, the TC almost every three month will appear a Everpix report.

Fundraising

Because the team's conditions are very good, everpix to get a startups of 50,000 U.S. dollars investment. Immediately after the TC disrupt blockbuster, and soon got the Index ventures the main investment 1.8 million U.S. dollars large seed round funds. The money is enough to support the team for 2 years, so they can focus on Everpix well.

Freemium Conversion

Everpix uses Freemium charging mode, free users can see the past 1 years of photos, if you want to see all the photos will pay 49 U.S. dollars annual fee. Two years has accumulated 55,000 members, of which 6,800 converted to pay users, free-to-paid conversion rate of up to 12.4%, which than the general game 1-5% conversion rate, or Evernote 6% conversion rate are much higher, also enough to prove that Everpix is a product that is quite popular with early adopters.

Turn

So in this year, with these good early results, Latour began to meet the Silicon Valley venture. With the Everpix team, and the support of the Index, almost all of the VCs are willing to interview them. The problem is Latour ran a lap, unexpectedly no venture to invest, and finally even Index himself is unwilling to continue to overweight.

As the bank accounts were about to end, they approached the buyer in an urgent attempt to sell the company. But these two years ago, both Facebook and Dropbox, have lost their motivation. Eventually they reached a preliminary agreement with path, but just before the signing, Path withdrew their offer, and then another day, Path announced a 20% cut.

At this time Everpix ran out of all the options and funds, faced with the upcoming AWS US $35,000 bill, they can only declare bankruptcy.

What's the problem?

Analysis of Everpix's doom, I think the following points are worth all entrepreneurs think:

Traction value and amount of balance ──everpix products have good quality, this point from the media comments, pay conversion rate can be proved that all VC also agree. But the product lacks significant user growth, so it is hard to prove that it has the ability to cross the so-called "chasm", the fault line between the early market and the main market, which has greatly increased the risk of investment, and therefore lacks the willingness to support investors even in the most developed VC valley.

Competition--in the past two years, whether Dropbox, Android + Google + or the IPhone + ICloud, have launched photos automatically upload backup, collation function, although these features are not everpix strong, but in their access to the advantage of the situation, it is difficult to prove Everpix had a chance to kill a way out.

The ──everpix rate of business model is high, but in fact it is based on a rather risky pricing strategy. Cloud storage is still a relatively high cost of services, such as Apple, Google, Dropbox also dare not launch unlimited storage scheme, not to mention that such products are set in the annual price of only 49 dollars. Evernpix currently has 6,800 paid subscribers, which generate about 28,000 dollars a month, but face a 35,000-dollar AWS bill. That is to say, the Everpix business model is now in a negative margin, and it is a question mark whether this can be improved by scaling up.

Time to raise money-sometimes the product in the market after a double stare, not necessarily the best fund-raising time, the team if the cash tight, it is not conducive to raising funds. In the case of Everpix, if they were to raise money at the end of last year, with the momentum of a complete product coming on the market, the imagination of VC may be higher than it is now. Moreover, if the resulting lack of user capacity will lead to additional difficulties, the feedback can also be adjusted in advance.

Of course, look at other people's case, can always cite many worthy of improvement. But when we look at ourselves, it's easy to be caught in a fog. Hope that today's Everpix analysis can give you some inspiration, but also hope you can try to look at the market, venture from the perspective of their Startup, learn to do a comprehensive first-class entrepreneur.