SmugMug on Dow Jones MarketWatch

DavidTO · September 25, 2006

docwalker · September 25, 2006

Very cool. So when are you going public? The IPO on a profitible company that I love would make me want to get back into the market.

windoze · September 25, 2006

docwalker wrote:

Very cool. So when are you going public? The IPO on a profitible company that I love would make me want to get back into the market.

Actually ive been waiting for the day they go public. My last pick was WorldCom....

troy

mcgil · September 25, 2006

Very interesting discussion with Bamby ... Go Smugmug !!!

80% growth a year
Average user has 3000 photos (around 3GB?)
Subscriptions are high-margin and renewal rate is great.

Sounds like a good business to be in

One thing though ... I pay $60 a year which means that if I pass 33GB of photos, Smugmug is going to spend more in Amazon S3 than what I give Smugmug (treshold is 22GB for the $40/month subs).

I'm at 27GB so I don't feel bad for Smugmug ... yet

Dna · September 25, 2006

mcgil wrote:

One thing though ... I pay $60 a year which means that if I pass 33GB of photos, Smugmug is going to spend more in Amazon S3 than what I give Smugmug (treshold is 22GB for the $40/month subs).

I'm at 27GB so I don't feel bad for Smugmug ... yet

So whats the limit for $150 ?? around 82 Gb ?

Dna

SteveM · September 25, 2006

Great job on the interview, Chris! I've been expecting great things from Smugmug since I signed up a couple years ago, when I had the "too good to be true" mentality and I haven't been disappointed yet. I'm glad I took a chance with Smugmug having never heard of them before finding the site through Google or whatnot. It feels like the better Smugmug does, the better off we as customers are. Now if you decide on a merger or outright sale of Smugmug we will thrash you with USB cables. But remember, it's because we love you.

Baldy · September 25, 2006

Thanks! I'll let Oprah answer for us on the going public question:

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=televisionNews&storyID=2006-09-25T195809Z_01_N25293138_RTRIDST_0_TELEVISION-MEDIA-OPRAH-DC.XML

Our economics are based on the rental car model: you might drive unlimited miles, but most won't. And in photo sharing, the people with the most photos are also our biggest evangelists, a fair trade.

mcgil · September 26, 2006

Baldy wrote:

And in photo sharing, the people with the most photos are also our biggest evangelists, a fair trade.

Good point ... I did not think about that ... you gain in free marketing what you lose on those heavy users

I like the Oprah answer too, control is important, the same way we love smumug for the control.

System · September 26, 2006

Where's the real cost, in storage or bandwidth? I'd imagine BW is more of a cost than the hard drive space. A pro account could easily eat up it's price in BW while barely storing any photos right?

As for going public. Avoid it as long as you want to be involved in the company. When you want out pull the rip cord and sell shares. Sticking around once you give up control will gnaw at you.

Baldy · September 26, 2006

truth wrote:

Where's the real cost, in storage or bandwidth?

In the beginning, it was bandwidth, which has the associated costs of servers and network hardward to serve up all those images.

In a few user's case, like Rafael Nadal, bandwidth still dominates, but for most users and especially working pros who shoot events, it's storage.

SmugMug on Dow Jones MarketWatch

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