This podcast features Vishnu, who left a Google job in Switzerland to build Nday, a privacy-focused, open-source photo app. Driven by concerns about Google's data practices and a desire for a more fulfilling career, he created Nday to offer secure, end-to-end encrypted photo storage. The app, built by a small team, competes with giants like Google Photos and Apple Photos, focusing on user privacy and long-term sustainability over rapid growth. Nday is subscription-based and uses multiple geographically diverse data centers for redundancy. The speaker explains why the photo app market isn't overly competitive, highlighting the significant engineering challenges and the high user expectations set by existing giants like Google Photos and Apple Photos. This segment reveals the speaker's personal motivation behind building a photo app, emphasizing the potential for creating positive experiences and fostering gratitude through technology, contrasting the commercial aspects of the project. The speaker describes their ethical concerns about Google's involvement in drone strikes and how this fueled their desire to create a more privacy-focused alternative to existing photo storage solutions.This segment explains the speaker's frustration with the limitations of existing photo storage services, particularly concerning access and privacy, leading to the idea of creating a new, more user-centric platform.The speaker compares Google Photos with their own app, highlighting the complexities of providing features like search and discovery while maintaining user privacy and data security.This segment delves into the technical challenges of implementing features like face recognition and semantic search without compromising user privacy, emphasizing the significant R&D efforts involved.The speaker discusses the app's subscription-based revenue model, emphasizing the company's commitment to sustainability and the high costs associated with security audits and legal compliance.This segment explains the strategic decision to move the company from India to the US, highlighting the impact of perceptions and the importance of building trust with international customers.The speaker shares insights into the company's branding strategy, explaining the choice of a playful name and mascot and the considerations behind creating a wholesome and friendly image. This segment discusses the design process and the importance of user experience, highlighting the speaker's personal involvement and the evolution of the design team.The speaker describes their interactions with Google's legal team regarding potential conflicts of interest and the challenges of developing a competing product while maintaining a professional relationship. This segment underscores the technical hurdles of providing complete user privacy while delivering a user experience comparable to that of platforms like Instagram, explaining why few companies attempt this challenging combination.The speaker discusses the long-term vision for the photo app, focusing on its role in preserving memories across generations and the implications of this vision for the company's business model and growth strategy.This segment explores the rationale behind making the photo app open source, emphasizing its impact on building trust, ensuring longevity beyond the creator's involvement, and fostering a sense of community and shared responsibility. The speaker details their company's robust data backup strategy, emphasizing the use of three geographically diverse data centers and an underground bunker in Paris for disaster recovery, ensuring high data availability and resilience against various threats.This segment explains the company's security model, drawing parallels to Signal's end-to-end encryption, highlighting its resistance to illegal activities and the use of paid subscriptions as a form of KYC, reinforcing the platform's commitment to user privacy and security. This segment discusses the importance of data access for training large vision models, highlighting Google's advantage due to its vast dataset and the ethical implications of end-to-end encryption for user data, emphasizing the responsible approach of prioritizing user privacy. This segment discusses the company's successful hiring strategy, emphasizing the appeal of the project and the careful approach to team growth, highlighting the importance of attracting talented engineers and maintaining a manageable team size for efficient operations. The speaker shares insights into building the company's team, focusing on the initial core members' shared background, motivations, and the gradual expansion of the team, illustrating the importance of shared values and intrinsic motivation in a startup environment. The speaker reflects on building the initial version of the product, discussing technology choices, challenges faced, particularly in search functionality and AI integration, and the unexpected speed of development perceived by users, offering valuable insights into product development and user expectations.This segment explores the challenges and benefits of open-sourcing the product, highlighting the complexities of managing community contributions, balancing user feedback with the company's product vision, and the importance of clear communication in maintaining a healthy open-source community.The speaker shares their experience with community engagement on platforms like Reddit and Hacker News, discussing the evolution of their relationship with these communities, the challenges of dealing with online toxicity, and the importance of focusing on genuine connections with users and family.This segment delves into the strategies behind the success of their blog posts on Hacker News, emphasizing authenticity, relatability, and the importance of actively engaging with the community, highlighting the role of genuine interaction in gaining visibility and credibility.The speaker shares their experience with Reddit advertising, comparing its effectiveness to other platforms like Meta and Google, highlighting Reddit's cost-effectiveness and its suitability for reaching a niche audience interested in alternatives to established services.This segment discusses the speaker's vision for the future of AI, focusing on the potential of decentralized processing and edge computing, expressing skepticism towards centralized AI models and emphasizing the importance of user data privacy and control.The speaker discusses the company's funding journey, highlighting the initial reliance on personal funds and support from friends and family, the significance of Mozilla's investment, and the company's commitment to open and accessible technology, drawing parallels to Mozilla's impact on the browser market. This segment details the challenges faced by the speaker's company, based in India, in securing capital from VCs due to their location and the market's price sensitivity. Despite these challenges, the speaker prioritizes building the company over solely focusing on raising capital, highlighting their commitment to long-term vision and impact over short-term funding goals. The speaker describes their evolving role in the company, focusing on team management and ensuring a positive work environment. They discuss their preferred productivity tools, including note-taking apps and email clients, emphasizing the importance of usability and cross-platform compatibility. The segment also touches upon the development of a new email client.This segment focuses on the company's marketing strategy, which leverages open-source tools and community engagement. The speaker details their authenticator app, highlighting its cross-platform compatibility, open-source nature, and encrypted backups. They emphasize the app's superiority over alternatives, particularly in terms of security and data privacy.The speaker explains the security benefits of using an authenticator app over SMS OTP, citing the vulnerabilities of SMS OTP to SIM swapping and social engineering. They highlight the inherent security of hardware keys and the future trend of moving towards device-based AI for enhanced security.This segment discusses the speaker's use of various tools and resources for information gathering, including YouTube, Reddit, and Hacker News. They highlight the advantages and disadvantages of using different platforms for learning and problem-solving, emphasizing the accessibility of information in the digital age. The speaker discusses their approach to work-life balance, emphasizing the importance of relationships and mental well-being. They describe how their close relationships with family and friends, many of whom work with them, contribute to a positive work environment and a sense of community.This segment details the speaker's experience leaving Google, focusing on the reactions and support from their family. The speaker highlights the initial stress and apprehension of their family, but also their eventual understanding and appreciation for their decision.This segment focuses on the company's approach to AI and on-device processing. The speaker discusses their commitment to privacy by processing data solely on the user's device and their long-term vision for the future of AI, anticipating a shift towards more powerful on-device processing capabilities.The speaker explains their decision to remain in India despite potential advantages of relocating. They weigh the pros and cons of different locations, emphasizing the importance of personal preference, family ties, and the unique cultural aspects of Bangalore.This segment focuses on the speaker's views on privacy and the importance of open-source browsers like Firefox. They discuss the ethical considerations of data privacy and the potential dangers of relying solely on large, closed platforms. The speaker advocates for supporting open-source alternatives to maintain a healthy and competitive internet ecosystem.The speaker discusses the importance of open web standards and the role of competition in preventing anti-competitive practices by large tech companies. They highlight the precarious position of Mozilla and the potential consequences of its decline for the openness of the internet.This segment concludes the interview with the speaker's final thoughts and reflections. They express gratitude for the community and the support they have received, emphasizing the importance of paying it forward and contributing to the broader community. Google Photos & Apple Photos: The podcast discusses the challenges and triumphs of building a photo storage app, comparing it to Google Photos and Apple Photos. Open Source & Transparency: The speaker emphasizes the importance of open-source principles, transparency, and trust in building a sustainable and long-lasting product. This is contrasted with Google's approach. Building Ora: The core of the discussion revolves around the creation of Ora, a photo storage app prioritizing user privacy and data security. Privacy & Encryption: A central theme is the ethical dilemma of balancing user privacy with the potential for data exploitation, particularly concerning AI training data. End-to-end encryption is highlighted as crucial. AI & Machine Learning: The use of AI and machine learning in photo search and organization is discussed, along with the challenges of implementing these features while maintaining privacy. Team Building & Growth: The speaker shares insights on building a small, efficient team, highlighting the importance of hiring the right people and avoiding overgrowth. Challenges in India: The podcast touches upon the unique challenges and advantages of building a global consumer app in India, including access to capital and market sensitivities. Long-Term Vision: The speaker's commitment to building a company for the long term, focusing on user needs and ethical considerations, is a recurring theme. Personal Growth & Gratitude: The journey of building Ora is interwoven with personal reflections on career choices, the importance of gratitude, and balancing personal and professional life. Productivity & Tools: The speaker shares their productivity tools and habits, emphasizing the importance of maintaining focus and a healthy work-life balance. Here are some of the technical challenges and design choices involved: Complexity: Building a photo storage service with high expectations is a hard problem from both engineering and product/design perspectives. Benchmarking: User expectations are benchmarked against services like Google Photos, Apple Photos, and Instagram. Privacy: The service operates in a "hard mode" where the data is private, and the company cannot see user photos. End-to-End Encryption: Delivering an Instagram-like experience within the constraints of encryption is difficult. Generational Use: Photos are often meant to be passed down to the next generation, adding to the complexity. Advanced Features: Enabling features like search and discovery are some of the best parts of such a service, beyond just backup.