

Show HN: A Monthly Tee from your favorite YC startup - bitsweet
http://hntees.com

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johns
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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frankdenbow
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 :-)

~~~
johns
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.

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creativityhurts
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.

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zacharycohn
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?

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sethbannon
This seems really similar to StartupThreadsMonthly
(<https://www.startupthreadsmonthly.com/>), except that StartupThreads uses
higher quality American Apparel shirts and have both YC and non-YC startups
participating.

~~~
bitsweet
We choose Next Level over American Apparel because we found them to be a
superior fit & more comfortable.

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Smudge
I can't say anything about Next Level, but as a relatively short gentlemen who
prefers _Adult Small_ tees, my size in American Apparel seems built for
extremely tall, extremely skinny people. And the one time I was accidentally
sent an _Adult Medium_ it fit me a bit like a sundress.

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DIVx0
Most days I will wear a t-shirt that I have been given either though a
conference or other means. I wear them mostly because I like them and want to
be identified as a developer (by other developers or people who 'know').

So, I like these shirts and happily wear them to my co-working space or around
town and to industry meet-ups. I have never paid for one (outside of conf
fees) and probably never will.

I _might_ pay for a service that bundled up several shirts from companies I
cared about only to cover the cost of shipping and 'time.' But forking over
$15 for a single shirt from some random start-up does not make much sense to
me.

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Tichy
I'd be willing to wear them if you gave them to me for free :-)

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fourstar
Totally agree. I wouldn't pay anything to walk around as a billboard for a
startup/company. Then again my whole wardrobe is logo-less.

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driverdan
Why would anyone pay to advertise a company? It's bad enough people pay large
sums for clothing with their manufacturer logo (eg Nike clothing).

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olalonde
I would. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics)>. For example,
if I see someone wearing a YC t-shirt over here in China, I'd most likely
strike a conversation. I understand the signal isn't much needed or useful in
Silicon Valley though since basically everyone seems to be involved in a
startup.

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rrival
Take a look at www.StartupThreadsMonthly.com - they've been running for awhile
and do a great job. American Apparel, stickers in the bag, etc. They've taken
what we did with StartupSchwag to the next level.

Good luck to the hntees guys tho =) Really tight landing page.

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moocow01
"You pay us to be advertising for startups"... Im sure some will signup out of
love for YC but have you thought of instead paying people to receive the
T-shirts with the hope that they will wear them in public?

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creativityhurts
No, actually WE pay to advertise startups.

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jtees
YC Startup: Pays HN Tees for the cost of the T-shirts and for the service of
printing and distributing them to their followers/customers. (make no profit
off customers wearing shirts)

HN Tees: Provides the service of processing and distribution for the startup.

HN Tee's member: Pays $15 for a monthly HN Tee because its a high quality
t-shirt designed by an awesome Startup, they like and wear a lot of T-shirts,
and follow and support YC Startups.

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corin_
As commented by other people there's a few similar places to get this sort of
thing (a monthly start-up branded tshirt), but is there nowhere that maybe
releases a new one each month and you can check it out and decide to buy, even
if it's only available for a limited period of time (e.g. until the next one
comes out)?

Personally for me to want the shirt it has to have an OK combination of a.)
looking good and b.) I like the company - could be that it looks kinda alright
and I really like the company, or that it looks really nice and I kinda think
the company are OK... but I just don't really have any interest in getting a
tshirt that may or may not look terrible, for a company I may or may not hate
/ not have heard of / whatever.

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tudorizer
I see what you did there. A meta/piggy-back business on top of the YC buzz,
but i'm ok with it. As much as I stay away from wearing unknown texts on my
clothing, I'd be fully ok to wear these if they look decent and the quality is
ok. I'm fully happy wearing my Mailchimp t-shirt because 1. mailchimp rocks 2.
it's comfy and creative.

I wonder if the people who commented about free t-shirts do realize that the
money doesn't go to the YC companies, but to this other start-up.

There is one small reason why I'm here ranting and not actually signing up:
that credit card form. I see that you use https, but there's something I don't
trust about this "1 page, bam, give us your credit card info" bit.

~~~
bitsweet
It uses stripe if that is any consolation. It was meant to be simple & to the
point.

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citricsquid
Are you aware of <https://www.startupthreadsmonthly.com/>?

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__chrismc
Nice site. If I had to nitpick, I'd say put the FAQ above the order form, and
would've liked to get at least some sort of representation of what sort of
tees I'd be getting.

The idea reminds me a lot of Valley Schwag[0], which was doing something very
similar back in 2006... I got a few great tees out of being a member there,
and a tonne of stickers and other little promo items.

[0]:[http://techcrunch.com/2006/05/04/get-web-20-schwag-from-
vall...](http://techcrunch.com/2006/05/04/get-web-20-schwag-from-
valleyschwag/)

~~~
frankdenbow
That was my inspiration, along with Startup Schwag, which ran the same service
(with the same printer) as mine for a few years.

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manaskarekar
A t-shirt subscription service with a lot of text and not a single sample.

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whatshisface
I'd really like a gallery of previous tees so I can see what sort of thing I
would be getting. You say they won't be logo shirts, so what will they be? I'm
interested but confused.

~~~
kennywinker
Ditto. An example tee or two would do a great deal to convince me that I'd be
buying something I will want to wear.

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ricardobeat
The CC form should have a stripe badge or something, I don't feel like
entering my credit card info on a random website.

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twog
Beautifully designed site. Straight, Simple and to the point.

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mikerice
What if I get a tee from a startup of which I don't necessarily like? The only
tees of startups I wear are ones I use/really support. I don't want to be a
walking advertisement for a startup I'm not even using.

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rwolf
I never thought I'd say this, but that page is too orange.

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dougbarrett
I tried going to <http://www.hntees.com/> hoping it would redirect, but it
only redirect to <https://www.hntees.com/> instead of <http://hntees.com/>.

It really adds to what others are saying that this is a fly-by night
operation.

On another note, I get the men's birchbox for $20/month, and get at least 5
items, including a t-shirt once. This just doesn't seem like a good deal.

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dfc
Why were you hoping it would go to <https://www> ? If you knew the proper
landing URL was <https://hntees.com> why not just go there? I really do not
understand hoping; were you hoping to put down a start up on HN?

Its hacker news not hater news.

~~~
dougbarrett
I didn't mean to offend anyone by suggesting to do a redirect, but I know that
it's an easy fix to do so that's why I suggested it.

hntees is a business, and if I were running a business I wouldn't want my
clients to run into any warnings that could scare them away from using my
site.

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mstefanko
Is the first set of shirts shipping October 15? Do you have a list of some of
the startups you already have agreement with to do this?

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debacle
Where can I get a Matasano tee?

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tptacek
Mail me.

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debacle
I was kidding, slightly, but thanks for the offer.

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OoTheNigerian
Expand beyound YC and you might have a great business.

Allow me to pick a list of companies I like and use (very important)

So i will certainly be happy with the selection each month.

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grantjgordon
Any example shirts?

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dm8
While I admire the effort, however I have some complaints for you. Horrible
visual design (especially fonts) and screams skeumorphism done wrong. Why
every hipster designer wants to follow Apple?

EDIT: Dowonvoters, bring it on! You can't give critiques anymore?

~~~
wglb
Your unthoughtful comment does not add value to the discussion.

