L012: Well Receivd, File-sharing Made Dead Simple

Receivd [ http://receivd.com ]
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LAUNCHERS:  Brendan Lim and Pradeep Elankumaran. Both are developers who became good friends while at Intridea, where they worked on Yammer-like Present.ly. Brendan specializes in mobile and desktop apps, Pradeep in real-time messaging.

WHAT: Beautiful and simple real-time, drag-and-drop file sharing via lists (e.g., friends, family, co-workers).

WHEN/WHERE: In beta, Silicon Valley.

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Walker Corporate Law Group is proud to sponsor LAUNCH
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WHY:  No easy way to share files with parents, despite the seemingly drop-dead simplicity of Dropbox. Managing photo privacy and a large number of files on Facebook is time consuming, and frankly just not possible.

Pradeep tells LAUNCH: "At Intridea we've seen all the facets of building products, and we've been part of products that didn't go anywhere, products that had moderate success. We're determined to make this one work so we brought everything to the table."

SCREEN SHOTS: Receivd uses the same layout as iPhoto while Dropbox uses file folders.








WHO BACKED IT:  Bootstrapped so far. Brendan and Pradeep make enough money with part-time dev work to finance Receivd.

LAUNCH Analysis: No disrespect to Dropbox, one of the tech darlings we selected and prepared for TechCrunch40 (R.I.P) back in 2007, but Receivd is so dead simple we could see it doing a better job getting laggards to the cloud.

ONE MORE THING: While this app might be designed for their parents, you know college kids are going to use Receivd as a private file-sharing network. There's nothing that says you can't dump your entire MP3 collection into the product -- in fact, who wouldn't? Brendan and Pradeep know it too, but for now they're happy that people are using the product, and they're actually encouraging people to share large files.

AND ONE MORE THING: We would steer these guys into TechStars or Y Combinator, but they're way too far along. If you're a VC playing catch-up in the cloud space, ship these kids $1.5M and do monthly board meetings.


FURTHER READING
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1. Intridea Insider blog: Interview with Brendan Lim

2. Federal rules on campus file-sharing kick in today (CNET July 1, 2010)


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================================SPONSOR====
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Walker specializes in the representation of entrepreneurs.
www.walkercorporatelaw.com
=============================================

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