Google Photos Was Built From Scratch in About Nine Months
“Once we got the green light you know, it was a team of, like, 20 of us from Bump latched on to maybe a team of, like, a hundred people, core people from Google with access to all of this incredible technology, and we were able to build all of Google Photos bas…”
Google Reassigned the Acquired Bump Team to Google+ on Day One
“Then we showed up. To Google on the first day and there had been a reorg and all of the plans that we had agreed upon with our sponsor were out the window and we were tasked to go work on Google plus the social network.”
Acquirers Saw No Value in Bump, Only the Unreleased Photo Roll
“No one wanted bump. It was not valuable, but this idea of photo roll and the demo that we had built was something that several companies indicated, you know, you might be right.”
Bump Reached 150 Million Users
“We had a hundred and fifty million users of Bump.”
Bump Burned Up to $15 Million Before Pivoting to Photo Sharing
“We'd burned ten million dollars or more, probably, probably more, probably fifteen million dollars.”
Raising Too Much Capital Quickly Masked Bump's Core Business Problems
“We raised too much money too quickly because we could and it prevented us from realizing the real problems that we had in our business.”
Steve Jobs Featured Bump's Icon in an Apple Keynote Presentation
“Steve Jobs put our icon on a slide on one of his pitch decks.”
Lieb: MC Hammer invested in Bump
“MC Hammer invested.”
Bump Was the #2 App on the App Store by Demo Day
“Throughout the batch, the product kept growing, and by the time demo day came around in August, we were actually the number two app on the entire app store.”
Bump Received Just $16,667 in Initial Y Combinator Funding
“We got 16,667 dollars of funding, which in hindsight is pretty small, but it was totally sufficient to come out to the Bay Area, live on a friend's floor, and build Bump some more.”
Bump Launched on the App Store in 2009 With Zero Promotion
“The app went live at the end of March, 2009, and we did no promotion. It just went on the App Store, and some people found it.”
Lieb Conceived Bump During an Accounting Class at Chicago Booth
“The idea that you could
Share contact information by taking two phones and bumping them together popped into my head in an accounting class one day.”