Q+A: Rrripple Shares Digital Media with Groups Privately

CEO & co-Founder of Rrripple, Heather Hiles

Heather Hiles is the CEO and Co-Founder of Silicon valley based media sharing site called Rrripple.  Before you think of it as another social network don’t.  In our interview with Heather she explains how her platform is used to share digital media to groups privately.  The service also boasts touch screen capability and already has an iPhone App.  You get about 3GB of space with a free account.

What is Rrripple and how did you start it?
rrripple is a lifeflow™ (digtial media) sharing platform that provides people full control over curating and sharing. I started it with my co-Founder, Andres when he asked me what site I use to share all of my photos, files, videos with groups privately and selectively. I told him I was using Sharepoint to manage a group called Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund (SV2) and it did not serve my personal needs well at all. I had been an advisor to Andres’ first tech company and have known him for 10 years. Andres was at Palm at the time and he said “let’s build the perfect private group sharing web app together,” and I agreed.

What did you do before launching Rrripple?
I ran my own consultancy managing the philanthropy of many technologists, and improving the philanthropic performance of other large foundations. I have organized groups throughout my life. I served as the Communications Director for Gavin Newsom when he first ran for Mayor. I served as a School Board Commissioner in San Fransisco. As an example, I now serve on the boards of Leadership Public Schools, Alonzo King LINES Ballet, and Social Venture Network and I need to communicate and share all types of media privately within these groups.

How did you all come up with the name?
rrripple is a symbol of sharing and spreading, like the multiplier effect. The 3 rrr’s is a way of expressing that notion in a word.

How is Rrripple different from what is out there now?
Currently, there is no place to go and create various groups/networks that you proactively create and share with privately in a user-friendly, group-oriented way. For example, on Facebook (which we love) people are constantly asking us to be be friends with people we do not know, and this is dangerous. On LinkedIn (which we also adore) algorithms recommend people to me to the point of distraction.

At rrripple you only invite friends you know to join groups that you create and this preserves the safety, security, and privacy of each group you create. It also means you are only sharing relevant media to each group/person. So, what I send to my mom is very different than what I share with my girlfriends, and now it is easy to share with both groups. This provides 100% signal, 0% noise.

Also, we are built on a timeline that allows for each user and each group to chronicle all of their media and sharing automatically. Moreover, the interface is built for touch screens so that you have the entire cloud of activities at your fingertips.

Finally, with the iPhone and other mobile device apps, you can take a photo or a video from anywhere and send it safely to your groups.

Are you all Bootstrapping or have you raised venture investment?
We have been bootstrapping and raised a small amount via angels (under $200k) to get to the point of releasing our beta (www.rrripple.com, please check it out). And we are now in the process of raising a seed round of funding so that we can implement all of the engineering we have planned to make the site awesome!

What growth strategies are you all using?
We are seeding ourselves in various networks–including high schools, non-profits, governmental agencies– as well as the early adopter community. We are also relying on press to get the word out about us and we are optimizing our site for searches by people who need our solution.

What does the future look like for Rrripple?
Looking to 2010, we will be releasing many new features that will make importing contacts (from your address books, Plaxo, gmail, etc) and importing content (e.g. photos, videos) from sites like Picasa, Flickr, etc, easy and fun. We will also offer new functions like filter and search that will make it extremely fun to view all videos from your family group, for example, on the timeline.

We look forward to having many partnerships with companies that print photos, produce albums and more and we also think we will make the ideal interface for a large media management company and will explore such opportunities. Don’t be surprised to see celebrities using rrripple to share their media privately with the people and groups in their lives.