How David Lieb Turned a Failing Startup Into Google Photos

After studying engineering at Princeton and starting an AI PhD at Stanford, Lieb left for a job at Texas Instruments. An awkward effort to exchange phone numbers with classmates inspired Bump, an app for sharing contact information by touching phones together. Lieb and his cofounders built it as a side project, joined YC, and watched it become one of the App Store’s most popular apps.

Bump drew attention but people did not use it often enough for the value it provided. Lieb says the team hired too quickly, raised money before understanding the business, and lacked a credible plan to make money. User interviews revealed that people mainly used Bump to share family photos, prompting the team to build Flock, which also failed to gain regular use.

Paul Graham encouraged the team to rethink the phone’s Photos app. With only four or five months of runway, they built Photo Roll, a prototype that ran only on Lieb’s iPhone. Google acquired Bump, but after an internal reorganization Lieb’s team was assigned to Google+. He kept working on a Photos concept, twice lost his place on the team, and eventually secured approval to build it. Google Photos launched in 2015 and grew to more than a billion users in under four years.

During the COVID pandemic, after the birth of his first child, Lieb went to the ER with abnormal blood test results and was diagnosed with leukemia. He spent 38 days in the hospital and faced a year of intensive chemotherapy followed by three years of easier treatment. After recovering, he decided he wanted to build products with founders, left Google in 2022, and joined YC as a coach.