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

Naldenwho co-founded file transfer service WeTransfer in 2009 with Rinke Visser and Bas Beerens, isn’t happy with the company’s direction after the service’s launch. Bending Spoon acquired it last year -And he doesn’t mince his words on this subject.

“Bending Spoons doesn’t really care about people, and while I understand that’s their private equity strategy, I noticed that since I left (WeTransfer) in 2019, there were a lot of updates that were basically killing the product, in my view,” he told TechCrunch.

After the acquisition, WeTransfer made a confusing move regarding the transfer of link experiences and laid off 75% of its employees. This year, the company was caught up in controversy over using its users’ content to train AI models and was forced to resign Undo changes to its terms.

Around this time, Nalden reached out to creators to share their frustration with WeTransfer. He knew he wanted to build an alternative to WeTransfer with the service’s original ethos of simplicity. The service is called Boomerang, and you can use it to transfer files without logging in.

“Why do tech companies always make things so complicated? I’ve always struggled with that, and I just wanted to provide another tool that was fair, that was about user experience, ease of use, the simplicity of sharing something quickly, and that just saves time. You don’t need to sign up, you don’t need email verification,” Nalden told TechCrunch about the ethos of the service.

For regular users, the no-logging experience will be enough, but it has its limitations. You get 1GB total space, and upload files up to 1GB in size with a seven-day expiration. If you want more, you can choose to create a free account. This will give you a total space of 3GB with a file upload limit of 3GB per file. You’ll also have access to your upload history, the ability to add and delete files at any time, and the ability to customize emojis on the page while sending the file.

If you want more, there’s a paid tier for €6.99 per month, which will give you 200GB per space(s) and 500GB total storage space with a file upload limit of 5GB per file. Additionally, you’ll get custom covers for spaces, password protection for files, up to 90 days of expiration, and the ability to invite an unlimited number of users to access files in the space.

Nalden explains that with this new service, he does not want to serve ads to users and maintain a simple payment structure. He feels there’s too much complexity in advertising, and with Boomerang, he wants to get as little data from users as possible.

“I just want to provide a tool that suits users,” he noted. “It’s like buying a hammer. Maybe you don’t want to buy a fancy hammer, just a hammer that works.”

Boomerang’s website and interface are barebones, and that’s by design. Nalden noted that much of the design is aimed at pleasing investors, and he feels paring down the experience is a refreshing change. As companies look to add more and more AI features, Nalden said he largely uses AI to build the product, but doesn’t want to use it around user-facing features.

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