I thought perhaps they were imprints of the same things but it looks like they're entirely different start-ups since they are from two different YC seasons.<p>Both Picwing and Picplum send printed photos to recipients on a monthly or bimonthly basis.<p>http://www.picwing.com/<p>https://www.picplum.com/
"PicPlum acquired the assets of a previous Y-Combinator company PicWing, and took over its printer relationship and initial user base."<p>(via <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/12/yc-funded-picplum-beautiful-prints-automatically-mailed-for-you/" rel="nofollow">http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/12/yc-funded-picplum-beautiful...</a>)
Aren't these the same company, with two different branded services? Didn't Picplum acquire Picwing some ways back?<p>Also, Picwing didn't start as an online photo sharing service. It was, if I'm remembering right, a hardware product. The service there now was a fallback for them.
They also funded competitors in the email CRM space as well.<p>They even say in their FAQ that they will - <a href="http://ycombinator.com/faq.html" rel="nofollow">http://ycombinator.com/faq.html</a>
Why <i>not</i>? Isn't competition supposed to be a <i>good</i> thing? Also: if you're convinced an idea is going to be big, why not bet on a few companies at the same time? This is not a horse -race.