It's all started with trying to solve my own problem. As a parent, I always tried to record and share all the wonderful moments of my kids with our relatives and friends who live all around the world. I considered and tried multiple different options such as using social networks, sending photos individually via email and messengers, using existing photo hosting platforms. But all had issues such as not allowing to flexibly manage access permissions, not storing the original files, etc. Being a Software Engineer, I build my custom solution and shared access to our family and friends about a year ago.
However, recently I started receiving emails with photos of my kids sent by their new school teachers manually. That was the "Aha!" moment when I realized that my custom solution can be useful by other people as well.