More on Picaboo

So, yesterday I visited Silicon Valley startup Picaboo. They are doing a photo sharing and book making service. Their first office is the famous office on University Ave where Google, PayPal, Logitech, and a few other famous companies started up.

They showed me their next version. It was most impressive. Fun, easy to use, graphic, creative.

One of the naysayers in my comments yesterday made the point that having a download and install app is “so yesterday.” Yeah, that certainly is a belief that’s very popular one here in Silicon Valley.

But, sorry, you simply can not do what they’ve done on the Web.

What I find interesting is that they do both an application for creating photo experiences, and they have a Web component for sharing those experiences.

That’s very powerful. Use the right tool for the job.

By the way, they are already heavily using Visual Studio 2005 (which isn’t even released yet). They said that’s their competitive advantage because they can add more features faster than their competition can.

For a Silicon Valley startup that’s very important. Why? Cause startups don’t have unlimited cash. They have a small window in which to get a product out or they go out of business and join the pile of many many Silicon Valley failures.