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Comment by johns | Hacker News Reader

I gave out thousands of shirts during my time at Twilio and never once sold one. You got one because we met you or you did something cool and wanted to thank you for the modicum of attention you were able to spare us and for being part of our community.

Selling swag just rubs me the wrong way. Its elitism on the side of the company selling the swag that you would think so highly of yourselves that anyone would pay to promote your company for you. You should be thankful they even know who you are.

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I see your point but my experience has been different. I run a similar service (http://StartupThreadsMonthly.com) and I struggled with this point to start (we actually shipped out Twilio shirts as our #2 company). What I realized/decided on after running this for 7 months is that

A) People who are scattered around the world dont always get a chance to get startup tees at events. 40% of our shirts are shipped internationally. They love feeling like they are a part of the community even if they are overseas

B) We ended up trying to add more value to each package by adding in not just a shirt but stickers, discounts on services, etc, to make the value of the bag much higher than what they are saying. (Heck, I even lowered the price after I saw HN comments a while ago about another service that was similar)

C) We dont do any logo shirts, so that they were exclusive to the site and were interesting enough to wear outside of the startup context.

The combination of these things definitely helped me keep some of the subscribers we have had and they seem happy.

This is a cool idea, hope the YC tees takes off! I'm subscribing for sure :-)

Hey Frank :)

> They love feeling like they are a part of the community even if they are overseas

Companies that give out swag should learn from this: ship swag anywhere. If someone does something on their own to provide value to your community then $70 to ship a t-shirt to Lebanon is worth it.

Certainly! Working on a tshirt api (http://swagmate.startupthreads.com/) to do just this, since the hard part for companies I have spoken to seems to be the managing of this process

Is it still "swag" (stuff we all get) if you pay for it (and eventually for the shipping)? I bought a couple of tees and stickers from Github because I love everything about them and I thought it would be nice to support them - that was before that $100mm investment. I think people should buy merch from companies they admire and want to support even more. $15 bucks a month for a tshirt with the name of a service you don't use and might even never heard of seems a bit weird.

So would you NOT buy stickers from them post investment? Isn't the bigger point of stickers to show the world that you support Github, rather than to financially support them?

Saw the link, and expected it to be posted by you!

Startup Threads is a cool idea. If you're one of the people who is not interested in "swag" just don't sign up. I don't understand why people get offended by products. No one is forcing the "swag." If you've ever run your own startup, there is a certain thrill that comes from sticking your first stickers or wearing your first tshirt. The next greatest thrill is seeing your sticker in the wild on shirt on someone on the street. It's about pride. If people are willing to fund the spread of those feelings, then all the power to them.

I agree with you wholeheartedly. I get excited when companies I actually care about give me something. This just feels dirty. It doesn't even look like a choice of what company's tshirt. YC has what, 500+ companies? It seems silly to just want a tshirt from a company because they are in some funding group.

hides the old Twilio tshirts we shipped out during StartupSchwag ;)

Just to clarify, YC Startups are NOT profiting whatsoever from people buying their t'shirts from HN Tees. We have found in talking to countless startups that distributing merchandise to existing and potential supporters and appreciated customers is not something that they have a lot of time to handle while running their businesses. HN tees is providing a service to startups, so that people who follow YC startups WORLDWIDE, not just in the SV or SF area can sport a cool t-shirt. It's really meant to be a positive thing for people who like sportin a little tech wear now and then. For those of you who claim to never wear anything with a logo and/or brand name on it, this membership may not be for you.

The money isn't going to the YC companies, it covers shipping/handling/production. It was something we wanted so we thought others would like it too. Didn't mean to offend.

I'm genuinely curious and want to understand: why do you want this?

The concept of purchasing a piece of clothing with a brand (Lacoste, Nike, Polo, etc) is not novel. I'd rather sport a Dropbox tee over a Nike one.

This is what's interesting to me. The concept of advertising for other companies is something the majority of people do on a daily basis. There's not many name brands that hide their logo or name on clothing. Not sure why this is getting the response it is. Are people really serious that they think they should be paid to wear these, like they are doing some great service, but a company like american eagle is for some reason entitled to peoples $30 to have you advertise their line. Or do the majority of HN readers wear completely plain shirts day in and day out. I like the idea, i'm only having trouble pulling the trigger as I don't think I'd wear a shirt for a service i've heard little about or don't even like using.

I can confirm that John has given out thousands of Twilio shirts, because they now make up half my wardrobe.

But seriously, Twilio does a great job with swag, and everyone should steal how they bundle and label their shirts - http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4056/4598843343_07d33b5182_z.j...

Two things:

1. bitsweet, your post below in this thread seems to be marked as [dead]

2. If the cost is solely to cover shipping / production, it would be a good idea to put this on the main page. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't sign up if I knew people were making money off this, but if there's no profit involved, I'd be more interested.

I paid more than this to get a Twilio shirt from StartupSchwag when I was a subscriber.

Sadly the 'we don't sell swag' policy didn't last. I left right about the time that changed (unrelated).

Edit: looks like StartupSchwag was before I was there and I was not aware of Twilio's participation.

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