Our per-user income was above our per-user costs. But we hadn't yet reached the economies of scale where fixed costs were covered.

I always ask on question to every business, and nonprofit. How much were, are the founders of the company making per year? It's usually a lie. I've also noticed when young entrepreneurs are given a large amount of money; they don't quite realize that it's probally all the big money they will ever see. I know I didn't. I made a lot of money in my twenties, thinking it would always be this easy. Sometimes, the availability of money is just because you were at the right place at the right time; people underplay luck--especially people in their twenties, or rich kids. Rich kids have their parents to fall back on. Poor kids will never have that safety net. I don't know anything about this company, but their situation is not unique--it's the norm, that's why I cringed reading the article and looking at the pictures. I've seen it too many times before.

It is staggering to me some of the salaries that founders give themselves. I remember reading a tip for pitchdecks/term sheets that if you put your founder salary as anything above 150k that is slightly too high for most offers.

That is insane to me. I make less than 80k a year, in D.C., with a mortgage and two kids while I build on the side. A cursory glance tells me most founders aren't under such strict cost regimes. If and when I get funding and go full time I would take the absolute minimum to keep us fed and watered (~60k). How a founder could do otherwise to me is unconscionable.

70 k/year doesn't make a difference and it's not a good thing to have founders struggling with money. If your brain is too focused on the trivialities of life you can't invest yourself 100% in the company.

Apparently it would have in this case. That would have been two months of AWS for each founder, so saying it doesn't make a difference is clearly wrong.

I didn't say pay yourself nothing - pay yourself the minimum amount you have to in order to keep your life from impeding your work. If that means you need luxuries to be comfortable, then your lunch will get eaten by someone who is more spartan.

Thanks for the answer. It sounds like your per-user profit was insufficient.

Did you have intermediate milestones before reaching the "economies of scale" one?

I thought everpix was a great product and had my family using it (4 paid accounts). I'm very sorry to hear this, and I wish the whole team good fortune.

Would you mind sharing the P&L statement and/or pitch deck that the verge used in its reporting? The verge's article seems confused, and I think one of the best gifts you could make to the HN community is to teach us from this outcome with actual source documents.

Scale goes both ways. Costs can be reduced very easily these days.

Curious: how many TB where/are you storing and what was your bandwidth usage like?