A Letter from Our Founder

In the early hours on a chilly March morning in 1998 my first child was born. He was adorable, a little peanut, he was unbelievable. Hi, I'm Paul Nealy, founder of Shotdrop. When our son was born, my wife and I were alone in Minneapolis with no local family to share our bundle of joy. After searching high and low for a way to share photos with our families while not plastering pictures of our new little guy all over the internet, I finally gave up and by May 7, 1998 I had created and launch familyphoto.com. Looking back, it wasn't pretty, but for 1998, it sure was functional.

In 2019, sharing photos online has become second nature to all of us, but in 1998 there weren't a lot options and I found nothing that addressed concerns of parents sharing photos for the entire world to see. If I remember correctly, there was GeoCities and Angelfire, but I would rather stick a needle in my eye than try to navigate those interfaces. I created familyphoto.com so I, personally, would have a way to share photos privately and securely, but it seemed silly to create something for just myself and I came up with the idea of a private and secure destination for sharing photos with family and friends. Well sure, that sounds a whole lot like Facebook, Instagram or Flickr, but remember, those didn't exist in 1998 and the first iPhone wouldn't be launched for nine more years.

It was an interesting time. My wife and I were recently married, we bought a new home, we had a new baby and we were both managing our careers with a large advertising agency in downtown Minneapolis. This thing called the Internet was taking the ad industry by storm and no one knew what to do with it. I was in the right industry at the right time. The birth of our daughter followed in 2001 and life became about living each day; wash, rinse, repeat. Needless to say, we were busy; quite busy. Soon the novelty of our little photo sharing website turned into a burden to squeeze in, an expense that competed with other expenses, and more trouble than it seemed worthy of at the time. Of course hindsight is twenty-twenty and as social networks took off, I looked back on familyphoto.com with both pride and regret for not having the stamina to follow through with the vision. Did I mention how busy we were?

The next twenty years were equally hectic, leaving the security of the large agency, starting two succesful digital marketing agencies, serving up campaigns for national and global brands, but familyphoto was ever present, just sitting there in the back of my mind like when you know there is something you forgot to do, but you can't quite remember what it is. Oh yeah, that's right, "revive that photo sharing site, you idiot."

If I had a dime for every time I heard "That ship has sailed", "You missed the boat on that one buddy", or "There is too much competition now"; I wouldn't need to start another business. I could be sitting sipping cocktails on a remote beach with my bags full of dimes, but then I would want to share my beach photos using an amazaing interface, so here we are, reviving fanilyphoto.com in the form of Shotdrop, learning from our competitors that came after familyphoto and believing that there is always a better mousetrap to be built.

Ladies and gentleman, allow me to introduce you to that better mousetrap, Shotdrop!

Thanks for listening and enjoy yourself. Don't forget to Share Your Happy,
Paul J Nealy,
Founder

Media Relations

Media Relations
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Saint Cloud, MN 56301
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