Interview with Bryan Kennedy, co-founder of Likebetter

Below is an interview with Bryan Kennedy, co-founder of Likebetter. We hope you find the interview informative and useful. Please visit their website and check it out! http://likebetter.com/.

TechAddress: Tell me a bit about your company, what it does and what’s your value proposition?

Likebetter: I don’t know about you, but I take a ton of digital photos. I literally have ten thousand photos on my hard drive, just sitting there in folders. No one besides me has ever seen them, and really, I only saw them when I took the picture in the first place. This shouldn’t be.

We want to help you dust off those monster collections of photos, by acting as a “goodness filter” that only the best photos can pass through. You upload your collection to likebetter, send a link to your friends, and within minutes you have a list of your best photos – which you can then do cool stuff with, like exporting them to flickr, printing them, or posting them on your blog.

TechAddress: What makes your company stand apart from your competitors?

Likebetter: There are a ton of companies in the photo space. No one that we know of has tackled this particular problem in the way we have.

A lot of companies have adopted our lovely interface though. Which we take as a compliment, and then we make catnip voodoo dolls of their creators, and introduce them to Felix.

Likebetter.com stands out from other photo-centered sites like Flickr because it’s all about helping you find your best photos. Since finding your best photos is hard, and Flickr isn’t helping much, we’re fixing it ourselves.

TechAddress: What are some of the main features?

Likebetter:

* It’s much easier to upload tons of photos at once here than there.

* Social editing features – your friends sort and rotate your images for you.

* Photo viewing and voting are the same – whenever someone views your photos, they’re giving you feedback. Everyone participates in some small way.

* Exporting to other photo sites (soon): no one we know does/allows this. Most photo sharing sites don’t allow sharing in this way, which sort of defeats the purpose. You own your photos, so we’re going to help you do what you want with them.

* Our interface is super-simple and really, really pretty.

TechAddress: Who’s your target customer or audience?

Likebetter: Anyone with a digital camera, really. Since that list now includes my mom, it must be really, really big.

Our power users are photographers, graphic designers, web designers; anyone who works with visual information, and needs to evaluate it in some way. There’s nothing stopping you from finding your best logo designs, web site layouts, or whatever you want. We’ve kept likebetter general on purpose.

TechAddress: Any new things in particular that you’re working on right now?

Likebetter: Lots of stuff. Right now we’re fleshing out the flickr/smugmug/etc integration. That’s coming soon.

TechAddress: Where do you see your company heading in the future?

Likebetter: Likebetter should be the place you put your pictures as soon as you plug in your camera.

TechAddress: Any negative feedback or criticism regarding technology and services?

Likebetter: No, none really (hurray!). Some people complain about a lack of so-and-so a feature, but we just add it and they’re happy.

Scaling was a hard problem to lick, and will likely continue to prove difficult in the future. It’s just one of those things you need to deal with.

TechAddress: So what would you say is the guiding principle behind your company?

Likebetter: Make something that people want.

TechAddress: What is the mission of your company and what are you bringing to the market that is innovative?

Likebetter: Wait, is this a trick question? Are you trying to get me to change my story? Likebetter is going to revolutionize the telecommunications industry, of course.

TechAddress: Where are you in terms of funding and your lifecycle?

Likebetter: We were funded by ycombinator.

TechAddress: If your technology or service is not formally launched yet, when’s the launch date? If you have already launched, when was your launch date?

Likebetter: October 2006. Digg was very helpful.