Comment by mratzloff | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mratzloff | Hacker News Reader

1. Collect mail door-to-door

2. Scan each page of mail, including envelopes

3. Post scans online

4. Return requested physical mail

5. Charge $4.99 for this service

6. ...

7. Profit?

Looking at their job postings, they have one person per city managing a team of people working probably close to minimum wage going door-to-door. These people most likely scan mail at their homes using a scanner provided by Outbox.

Let's say they pay a City Manager $100,000, or $125,000 after taxes, unemployment insurance, and benefits. An individual can take on 30 customers, is paid above minimum wage (let's say $15 after taxes, etc.), and works 7 hours a day (or 35 hours/week, making them part-time employees). That's roughly $30,000 per worker annually.

At $4.99 per month, none of the economics work. At 30 customers per part-time employee, the break even point is $100 per month per customer. At $4.99 per month each PTE needs to handle around 600 customers each to break even. 100 customers per PTE at $30/month also breaks even. But even 100 per PTE seems unrealistic.

Unless I'm missing something very basic, it just doesn't scale at $4.99 per month. At all. It's not even close.

After looking at their FAQ [1], yes they actually do collect mail. My initial thought was that they way to achieve this at a lower cost would be to redirect all mail direct to this company, who could then receive all customers' mail at one central office/warehouse which would lower staff costs massively.

I don't know if mail redirection is possible or easy to set-up in the US, but it is in the UK - although I just checked prices, and that alone would cost $6.40/month for each customer. [2]

> These people most likely scan mail at their homes using a scanner provided by Outbox.

If their FAQ is truthful, they will bring all mail back with them - as it says you won't get mail delivered unless you specifically request an item. Maybe they have clever machines to speed through the process of opening/scanning/filing? At the very least, this means drivers can just rush round collecting items, and the opening/scanning process can then be streamlined back at HQ.

[1] http://help.outboxmail.com/customer/portal/articles/984656-h...

[2] http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ZGsrC9z...

> My initial thought was that they way to achieve this at a lower cost would be to redirect all mail direct to this company, who could then receive all customers' mail at one central office/warehouse which would lower staff costs massively.

Yes, but Outbox actually prefers you don't forward your mail to them![1]

From their FAQ:

“Why on earth do you come by my house to pickup my mail,” we hear from thousands of people. ”Shouldn’t I just send you my mail?” Great question - and one we get a lot. In fact, we shared your belief for about a year… but after tens of thousands of mailbox runs, we’ve concluded that picking up mail at your house is the only way we can create the elegant user experience we demand.

[1] http://help.outboxmail.com/customer/portal/articles/984656-h...

Excellent, thank you. I was just about to start trying to guess at some calculations myself. Exactly the response I had.

Steps 2 and 3 could be automated.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com