

Fuckit, I'm launching - colevscode
http://colevscode.posterous.com/fuckit-im-launching

======
jambo
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.

~~~
mikeklaas
OTOH, it worked great for posterous.

~~~
simonw
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.

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amoore
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!

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

~~~
frankacter
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.

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

~~~
colevscode
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?

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

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mikeocool
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!

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timjahn
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.

~~~
gfodor
"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.

~~~
zizee
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.

~~~
timjahn
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.

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illdave
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!

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

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jkeel
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.

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EREFUNDO
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!

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jefftougas
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.

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artursapek
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."

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ratecontrol
"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.

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

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primigenus
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.

~~~
colevscode
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.

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askedrelic
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?

~~~
thingsilearned
So 1.31 service and handling seems high?

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mahcode
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!

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madmaze
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"?

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intev
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

~~~
colevscode
Great tips. I appreciate them!

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egiva
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.

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sheraz
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!

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jmathai
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!

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hncommenter13
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>

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

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

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

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nirvana
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.

~~~
klaruz
You're in luck: <https://click2mail.com/>

They even have an API.

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

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EtienneJohnred
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.

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rshm
?? <\- ?? PROFIT

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figital
Link Title of the Year!!!! :)

~~~
colevscode
\m/

