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When Marissa Mayer co - establish a startup six year ago in Palo Alto , California , expectations were sky high for the former Yahoo CEO and early Google employee . When that startup , Sunshine , revealed that its first app centered around subscription package for contact management , people wondered if something more ambitious might be around the nook . Today , after Sunshine released two every bit everyday feature of speech — issue organizing and photo share-out — internetcommenterswere decidedlymystified .
I was also stick last hebdomad when Mayer walked me through Sunshine ’s new offerings . Though there are AI portion to all that Sunshine offer , it ’s heavy to understand how Sunshine ’s young photo app enhances photo communion as it be today , and the same could be state of its raw events app , which looks very much like something that was designed 20 years ago .
It ’s tempting to can the 15 - person outfit as out of touch . But Mayer may be onto something with Sunshine , and that ’s nostalgia . Throwback tech is all the rage these days . Further , while most Silicon Valley startup focus on the new Modern thing , America isgetting older , as the U.S. Census Bureau declared last year . Mayer says Sunshine is tackling problem for the great unwashed “ of all ages , ” but targeting a slightly aged demographic that gravitate toward the familiar would be a smart move . Older Americans now account for a record share of spending . They have the time to socialize and take picture . Sunshine ’s port is even steeped in the same purple hue that was long associated with Yahoo , which she excellently led for five year beginning in 2012 .
ask if the design choice was intentional , Mayer seemed surprised for a second , scream it “ strictly simultaneous . ” She or else proffer that drug user ’ photos are host on Sunshine ’s server and “ available indefinitely , ” and that users can divvy up albums and charge pay for easily through text , iMessage , email and other sharing political platform . Mayer further stressed that Sunshine will never sell its customers ’ data to a third party and that the company is “ not build model or deriving any other data for any other purposes from what is shared . ”
Mayer see the need for something simpler , surely . “ There are a mess of companies that focalise on that bleeding and leading border of AI , ” she said . “ But we imagine there ’s a mess of things that can be done with AI that just help with quotidian problems , things that we all experience every mean solar day , and are often overlooked . ”
She observe , for lesson , that before launch events and photo share-out , Sunshine rolled out a natal day app as “ kind of an adjacent arena to address and contact . ”
She decline to discuss client numbers , but the product is evocative of an app hunt down by entrepreneurs Michael and Xochi Birch calledBirthdayAlarm.com . The birthday reminder and e - card site is not on the button design forth , but with more than 50 million cross-file fellow member at one peak , it has made the pair — who to begin with sell a social medium company to AOL for$850 million in cash — many jillion more dollars .
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Mayer is friend with Birch and says she was “ unquestionably mold by Michael . He speak about the fact that [ BirthdayAlarm ] was a very bare app and got a great deal of traction ahead of time on . ”
Sunshine ostensibly did n’t see that kind of traction from contacts management , an area where consumers have for the most part steered clean owing to seclusion concerns . But perhaps its simple and destitute ( for now ) young apps will exchange the game for Sunshine , which kick upstairs a$20 million roundin 2020 and is mostly self - fund , per Mayer .
In the lag , Mayer has other tricks up her sleeve , including , eventually , telecasting share-out . “ I ’ve got a list of all the dissimilar things that we thought would be in the first edition and will hopefully come out soon after , ” she said last week . “ The core dissertation has always been to take the mundane and make it magical . ”
The team “ thought about call [ the society ] Mundane AI , ” she continue . “ I sometimes think that might have been a better name . ”
Disclosure : TechCrunch is owned by Yahoo .
