Companies I'd like to Profile (but don't exist).
There
are companies I review every day that I don’t write about. Reasons vary
– it’s been done already and the product isn’t even as good as what’s
been done, its a mostly or totally one-way application, or it isn’t
consumer focused (or have implications for consumer focused
applications). Even with this filtering, I get flame comments on some
of the stuff I do choose to write about as “not worthy”.
But
there are a number of companies and/or products that I would like to
write about but don’t exist. I’ve been keeping a list over the last few
months and I am posting it now.
Some of these are big ideas,
some small. Some could potentially receive venture backing, most
wouldn’t. But I believe that a viable business could be built by an
entrepreneur around any of these, and I will be happy to profile them
if and when someone builds them. In a way, this is number 11 in my
previously post “Top Ten Things You Can Do To Get Blogged“, but its also much more than that.
And let me know if and where these should fall in Nivi’s matrix.
1. Better and Cheaper Online File Storage
Photos,
movies, music and important files take up a ton of hard drive space. I
recently purchased a new desktop computer with a 250 GB hard drive, and
the hard drive is full from recorded television shows that I haven’t
watched yet. Yeah, I can buy a network drive for my house, but they are
expensive and if the house burns down I’ve still lost everything.
It’s
amazing to me that all of us aren’t backing up our important files
online regularly. As far as I’m concerned, the only reason is because
no product has emerged to fill this tremendous demand, with the right
features and at the right price.
We need a good product.
Something as easy to use as the Flickr uploader on the client side, and
easy web access. These tools need to go a generation or two beyond what
xdrive is offering.
Features I’d like to see: drag and drop
file adding and removing, an rss feed for my files, tagging of every
file for easy search later, easy sharing, and the ability to publish
files to the web with permanent URLs. And off location backups in case your building burns down.
Pricing
needs to be dramatically lower too. Find a way to make this cheap.
Include ads or whatever, but this needs to be very low cost (remember
that Google offers over 2 gb of mail storage for free). Xdrive is
currently $10/month for 5 gigs. Even Godaddy, at $10/year for 1 gb, is way too costly.
I
have no idea what the cost economics for a business like this are, but
plan for scale and give some amount, at least a gig or two, permanently
free. No 15 day free trials – we see right through that. Give me a lot
for free and let me scale up to, say 500 GB for $20 per year. . . . [TechCrunch]