This is why we are building Notos[1], most of the photo sharing websites evolved in social networks (or died).
We chose to not make our user's album public by default, where most competitors are doing so and benefit from the SEO involved, but we want to focus on sharing with family and friends, not the whole world.
Now the elephant in the room is monetisation and getting people to pay for their usage, this is not easy but we firmly believe it can be done but probably not with a trajectory allowing you to raise VC money.
We chose to not make our user's album public by default, where most competitors are doing so and benefit from the SEO involved, but we want to focus on sharing with family and friends, not the whole world.
Now the elephant in the room is monetisation and getting people to pay for their usage, this is not easy but we firmly believe it can be done but probably not with a trajectory allowing you to raise VC money.
[1] https://www.notos.co/