Fuckit, I'm launching | Hacker News Reader

Fuckit, I'm launching

colevscode.posterous.com

153 pointscolevscode54 comments

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Sign-up by email was among the worst decisions I made on a web "startup" years ago, because I was oblivious to how non-obvious this was for your average person. It's good that you seem to be aware of this barrier.

Potential users didn't understand the registration process at all when I told them to send an email to register. From talking to some of them later, many figured the sign-up email address was one that I was reading & acting on manually. Perhaps in the years since, average people are more at ease with the idea that a computer can just as easily process email as it can a web form. The lesson I learned is that there are some places where it's better to be conventional than clever, and on-boarding users is one of them.

Congrats on launching, and good luck.

OTOH, it worked great for posterous.

Very true.

Posterous executed amazingly. They addressed a large market with early adopters who were already primed by email-blog gateways & xmlrpc clients, and they had a great, repeatable message that was embedded in the email address: "oh you want to start a blog? just send your first post to post@posterous.com"

Posterous ended up de-emphasizing the email signup aspect of their service (it's no longer mentioned anywhere on http://posterous.com/ ) - I remember reading something about that decision somewhere, but I can't find it now.

I think the email signup actually works really well in this case, since it's not actually presented as 'email to signup,' the whole product is just 'send an email and have it turned into a physical card.'

As a user, you don't actually have to think about the drudgery of entering your password twice and pulling out your credit card until after you've already kinda committed to sending a card by actually writing it.

And it works pretty nicely as a really simple asynchronous interface. Instead of watching an animated gif spin while the proof of your card is generated, you just get something to aprove in your email.

That's a valid point. It could be a good fit for this, but it's not as clear as something like Posterous, which mikeklaas mentions. You still have to go to the website first to figure out what it's all about.

Congratulations!

I'm waiting for sendwrite 2.0 in which I can email you a photo and a message and you print a postcard with my message on the back and drop it in the mail for me.

Also, I dig the workflow of sending and email to signup. It seems to work well for tripit.com. If you commonly interact with your users through email, I don't see any reason against it.

Good luck!

Thanks for the encouragement! I like your photo printing idea!

I would definitely pay for this service, but might want to see a preview of the printed card. Can you email back a preview of how the text would look? You also don't mention (or make it clear) how much text is allowed: twitter size?

see http://hazelmail.com or http://postinoapp.com

Don't wait for 2.0, just send ASCII Art! I can't wait to see my coworker next week when he gets his card from me.....

....................../´¯/) ....................,/¯../ .................../..../ ............./´¯/'...'/´¯¯`·¸ ........../'/.../..../......./¨¯\ ........('(...´...´.... ¯~/'...') .........\.................'...../ ..........''...\.......... _.·´ ............\..............( ..............\.............\...

Thats the app I am working on http://www.picsicle.com . Should be out the first week in October for iOS

Check out http://postagramapp.com/ if you're an Android or iOS user. Only 99-cents per postcard.

so if I can send 3 custom photos AND messages for $2.97 (plus that have bulk sending prices that are even cheaper) , through Postagram, is the selling point of SendWrite that you can do it from any email app?

Must be an API / Webservice for Postagram that their iPhone / Android app uses. Can't find any mention of it on their site.

It'd be helpful to know how much it costs without having to watch a video. You know, like an upfront price or something.

Agreed. The price will be more transparent during the web reg process. I was really trying to keep it simple on the landing page since it's a bit confusing. Frankly I didn't want to hit people with an out-of-the-ordinary registration process and the price both at once. But I certainly don't want to lead people on. I'm curious, did you expect it to be free?

Without a price shown, I did expect it to be free. Except that I know a stamp costs something, so that was weird.

Pack of 3 cards for $4.99. He put it at the end of the video, but agree: it should be clear on the site.

Props to you for launching, knowing it's not ready yet and there will be pissed off people because of the bugs. That's a scary thing to do, no matter how easy it is for us all to say we would do it too.

More people need to do this. Like you said, without constant customer feedback, you're tweaking things because you think you should, not because it will improve anything necessarily.

"knowing it's not ready yet and there will be pissed off people because of the bugs."

I realize the conventional wisdom these days is to try to launch something earlier than you want to, but has the goalpost really moved back towards launching products that are "not ready" and full of bugs? I don't know how good or bad the OP's product is, I'm just commenting on the sentiment that its admirable if he did launch something that sucks.

I think there's a certain level of craftmanship and pride in your work that should override the urge to launch early for all the usual reasons echoed on HN. Launching too early can be as disastrous as launching too late, I think this lesson often gets lost in translation because the natural habit is to launch too late.

I think conventional wisdom is to cut features till you have a MVP and then you can release early, but have a product that doesn't suck.

Releasing early by skipping bug fixing you will make a bad first impression, and that'll pretty much destroy any benefit from launching early.

edit: Note - I am not saying sendwrite has lots of bugs, just commenting that launching with lots of bugs is a bad idea.

I'm definitely not condoning purposely launching with a boatload of bugs. Instead, I'm just complimenting the OP on launching knowing that it's not 100% perfect yet and welcoming any positive or negative feedback.

I agree that there is a sweet spot between "too early" and "waiting too long" to launch.

But I think people naturally tend to wait too long, constantly "perfecting" the design, the features, the code, etc, as if to almost ensure they always have something preventing them from launching. Because launching is scary.

Oh my god, this is awesome!

I would love it if version 2.0 would let me pick from a variety of hallmark type cards for various occasions.

Congrats on launching!

Massive congratulations on launching - and it's a great, interesting idea as well (I'd help test it out for you, but I'm in the UK).

Like a lot of people have said, the pricing should be clear without having to watch the video. Personally, I think the graphic at the top looks great, but I'm not 100% sold on the video - there's something about it that doesn't seem overly professional (sorry). I might be the only one that thinks that, but if not - you could potentially try to get the information you need to say put into a similar graphic as the one you have at the top, rather than have people watch the video at all?

Good luck!

Good luck, dude. An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory as they say.

Great idea! I think receiving a physical card does mean more to people. Down the line, maybe people can purchase credits. I wouldn't mind opening an account, putting in let's say, $30 worth of credits and then over the year send cards out using the credits I've already purchased. At the end of the year I can buy more. Heck you could go a step further and allow users to set up reminders for any special occasions if they want.

This is the right move for you. Most start-ups that fail never even launched anything at all. Some are trying to perfect their product before exposing it to beta users then they run out of money. This is a flaw. You can never achieve perfection but the pursuit of it will make one great product. You do this by letting people try them out and get feedbacks from it. Launch quickly and learn fast....good job and good luck!

Congrats on launching. Its refreshing and inspiring to see people who go from start to launch so quickly, rather than the examples of people in stealth mode for 12-18 months before taking on customers.

There are a couple of services that do similar things, but it seems like a couple possible differentiators would be keeping it dead simple, and perhaps eventually focusing on mobile users.

Good call on launching as soon as you can, but in regards to your startup, why are you trying to take the meaning out of physical letters? The splash page basically says, "Everybody loves getting cards because they mean something. We're trying to make them as meaningless as email."

"You agree to be responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of any passwords or other account identifiers which you choose or are assigned as a result of the registration process; and all activities that occur under your account or password. You further agree to notify SendWrite immediately of any unauthorized use of your password or account"

I like the idea of your service, however this part of your Terms of Use put me off somewhat. How am I responsible for my data if your site gets "liberated" of its data? If your site gets hacked the attackers do nefarious things under my account, am I still responsible for the actions?

I may be splitting hairs, but I am a tad confused by this statement.

I read it as him saying if your account is accessed using your email or your password you take full responsibility.

You should let me send the first card for free, but make sure I make an account and then follow up with it. Check out Touchnote, which is an iOS app that lets you send people cards using photos you take with your phone. They have a good startup experience that converts you into a return user pretty effectively.

It might be interesting to put a note in the card that tells mom that she can send a card back to me by emailing a special address as well. It would be nice if I could pick something for her that she feels is familiar, for instance myname@sendwrite.com, as opposed to the anonymous mail@sendwrite.com, which feels like I'm emailing a company.

I like your second idea about the email addresses.

WRT price. I just can't afford to offer the first card free. I've received nearly 200 cards in the first hour. Once I get going though, I'll definitely consider promotions like this.

Great Idea, Ive already sent a card from my Ego to my Self. I second the request for sending "special occasion" requests. Also how about international mailings and mass mailings, I have lots of family in Germany and they need christmas cards/thankyou cards.. and I am the lazy type so only 20% of my family gets a card, this would help lots

Also in your Proof email it is not apparent whether I need to take any action if there are no issues, wording changes perhaps? Maybe also on SendWrite "stationary"?

Great, I just signed up and sent a letter to my mom!

I've been meaning to look more into a good service like this, because I hate "writing" letters. I would love to keep in touch with my relatives and send out updates, but I am quite lazy. Photos/postcards aren't quite what I want either.

I hate paying through Paypal though :(

The $2/letter price point for the 20 pack still seems high. Care to comment on the pricing? I know I am inaccurately spitballing, but $0.44 postage and then $0.25 maybe for letter+envelope in bulk?

So 1.31 service and handling seems high?

Congratulations - Posts like this are inspiring, I'll be working hard this weekend to finish my own project and launch early next week - will keep you updated.

Brilliant concept by the way!

Goodluck - others have experimented with this but I don't know of any existing service right now. There's a great novelty factor involved with a "email-to-signup" flow but I agree that that's a bit awkward for many users. One cool idea is a twist on that - use an OAuth signup process with FB/Twitter and send a cool confirmation postcard to the user's address they have listed on FB, etc - depending on how to word it there's a viral element to it.

Cool Idea. Congrats on launching. Some feedback:

* Increase the quality of the video you have, and please show the control bar. It feels weird when I can't go back and forth.

* The black background on "your message here" icon looks out of place. Sticking to the blue theme might help

* login button is way too far to the right. Have another wrapper div, and keep the width somewhat narrow. Feels weird when I have to go all the way to the bottom right to login.

Just my $0.03 :D

Great tips. I appreciate them!

Good luck, brother. I had the same moment this week and launched an idea this past Monday. I didn't get much traction here on HN, but I did in other places. The response was overwhelming, and we raised some seed money last night over drinks. hmmm...maybe I should write that story up for HN? "From fuckit, I'm launching to seed capital in 4 days!"

Cheers, and good luck!

Very cool. I love that it's not an established work flow but you're willing to play with it. I sent an email and signed up but stopped short of where I'd have to pay (I don't have a real card to send atm).

Considering the flow starts with an email and ends up on the web (odd!) ... it was as smooth as I could expect!

Best of luck and congrats on launching!

How does this compare with what PostalMethods[1] offers? They have an email interface as well an API, and their prices appear to be slightly better.

[1] http://www.postalmethods.com

Wow, what an awesome response. And such great ideas and feedback. I'm ecstatic.

This service looks similar to various 'MMS postcard' offerings that many telcos have for their subscribers.

that's an awesome way to streamline the onboarding workflow of ubiquitous email-as-identity.

Glad to hear you're launching. Good luck!

I don't need to send a card to my mom.

I do need to send mail pretty regularly when I'm out of the country, but dealing with businesses that don't do the "online thing" very well, or at all.

I'd love to have a service where I can, say, email, or via a web form, create a letter, have it printed and mailed, and have it sent using specific mailing methods such as certified mail, or return receipt.

If there were such a service, they'd get all of my mail business.... because there's nothing I like less than going to the post office, even when I am in the country.

You're in luck: https://click2mail.com/

They even have an API.

(Disclaimer: I used Google, I've never heard of them before now.)

See postalmethods.com

Big-ups to you for knowingly launching a half-baked, half-assed product. Judging by the number of "hackers" you've inspired here, I feel great knowing that the main goal nowadays is to simply set the bar lower. Maybe even stick some ads on it if you're looking for other ways to "improve" it.

?? <- ?? PROFIT

Link Title of the Year!!!! :)

\m/

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