Why the co-founder of WeTransfer is creating another file transfer service

Naldenwho founded the file transfer service WeTransfer in 2009 together with Rinke Visser and Bas Beerens, is not happy with the direction of the company after the project. it was bought by Bending Spoon last year – and he doesn’t mince words about it.

“Bending Spoons doesn’t really care about people, and while I get that it’s their way of being independent, I feel that since I left (WeTransfer) in 2019, there were a lot of changes that killed the business, in my opinion,” he told TechCrunch.

After the acquisition, WeTransfer took a drastic step towards transferring experiences and laid off 75% of its employees. This year, the company was caught up in the controversy of using its users’ data to train AI models and had to do so. back to his change of heart.

Meanwhile, Nalden had developers reach out to share their frustrations with WeTransfer. He realized that he wanted to create an alternative to WeTransfer with a basic service culture around simplicity. The service is called Boomerang, and you can use it to transfer files without logging in.

“Why do technology companies always make things so complicated? I’ve been struggling with this, and I just wanted to provide another tool that is accurate, all about the user, it’s easy to use, it’s easy to share something quickly, and it just saves time.

For casual users, the default content may be sufficient, but it has limitations. You can have 1GB of space in total, and upload files up to 1GB in size and last for seven days. If you want more, you can choose to create a free account. This gives you 3GB of total space with a file upload limit of 3GB per file. You’ll also find your upload history, the ability to add and remove files at any time, and the ability to change emojis on the page and upload a file.

If you need more, there is a € 6.99 monthly fee, which gives you 200GB of space (folders) and 500GB of total storage with a file upload limit of 5GB per file. In addition, you’ll get location covers, file privacy protection, up to 90 days expiration, and the ability to invite unlimited users to access files locally.

Nalden is clear that with this new service, they don’t want to advertise to their users and keep a simple payment method. He sees that there are many problems in the advertising business, and with Boomerang, he wants to get as little money as possible from the users.

“I just want to give the user a tool that works. It’s like buying a hammer. Maybe you don’t want to buy a fancy hammer, but a hammer that works,” he said.

Boomerang’s location and features are barebones, and this is what it’s made of. Nalden also said that most of the designs are to please investors, and he feels that removing that experience is a refreshing change. While companies are looking to add AI features, Nalden said they are increasingly using AI to create products, but they don’t want to use things that focus on users.

Boomerang is available online, but the company said it plans to release a dedicated Mac app soon.