
Tout – How My Weekend Project Turned into a Real Lean Startup - Tawheed
http://www.tawheedkader.com/2011/03/tout-how-my-weekend-project-turned-into-a-real-lean-startup/
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Jebdm
This is something of an aside, but: if you're blogging about your product, put
a great big highlighted link to it front and center. There is a link to it in
the sidebar, but it could be way more noticeable.

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citricsquid
Yeah, I went to another blog post just to find the app. He kept saying "tout"
and never linked it. I didn't think to check the sidebar.

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snitko
I think I'm gonna be your customer, this seems to be exactly what I need, but
it somehow escaped my attention before. Two things that are not clear from the
screencast: do I reply to emails through Tout or through my gmail interface
and does Tout automatically detects replies from people I emailed, stores them
and archives them in Gmail?

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Tawheed
You reply through Your email client (for now). We focus on your outbox. As for
replies, we'll be releasing a gmail integration.

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bryanhun
A great story (thanks for sharing) and product. I look forward using it to
tout my startup.

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hemancuso
Odd question, but is tout incorporated? Wondering about your transition from
weekend project->taking money. Presumably you need bank accounts/merchant
accounts/gateway accounts and so forth. Seems like the step of incorporation
alone could eat a big chunk of time.

And there is no about/company page anywhere on Tout. Which seems a bit suspect
[FWIW].

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roryokane
I don't understand why Tout has the feature to send emails later. You say you
can send your emails so they only arrive at a time convenient for the
recipient, but isn't receiving an email always convenient? The recipient
doesn’t have to do anything when they receive it, it just goes into their
inbox for them to read whenever _they_ decide it is convenient. That’s one
advantage of email vs. instant messaging: the conversation can be delayed
until the other person has time to continue. Or are most people so bad at
reading their email that the only way to get them to read it is to email them
at a time when they will hear their smartphone or computer chiming, if they
have that set up?

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blrgeek
Some folks I know found that the best time for an email to reach someone's
inbox to give it the maximum chance of being read was 8am Tuesday. Then it'd
be at the right place in their inbox to get read! Wanting to catch execs for a
sales pitch in the morning when they are fresh, rather than at 5:30pm when
they're likely to just bin your mail.

Second, perhaps you don't want them to see it now, or reply to it now, but
after some other event.

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dr_
Pretty cool. I like this part from the FAQ regarding phone support: " We do
not outsource our support overseas or employ low paid, unqualified support
staff."

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devmach
Not so important advice: Please don't put your picture on every page
(braintrust.co). It's kind of disturbing : it's company's web site not yours..

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iaskwhy
I'd love you to A/B test the solo pricing between $30/month and $1/day. When I
went to the plans' page I saw the $30 price tag and thought it was kind of
expensive for what it does. Then I read the "Tout costs about a $1/day out of
your marketing or advertising budget" line and I thought of how cheap it
actually was.

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artmageddon
Tawheed: It doesn't take away from the coolness of the product or your blog
post, but I wanted to point out that you used the word "Still" twice in a row
when you wrote "Still still kept costs less than..."

Just wanted to bring that to your attention :)

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doctororange
Great write-up. I expect to be using Tout in the future.

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ianhawes
Can someone give me a tl;dr for this article?

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dools
<http://toutapp.com>

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newchimedes
Great job with Tout. As someone who has emailed a lot of people it's nice to
have the ability to have templates for different groups of people. I watched
the video and was curious if there is a way to bulk message again a pre-
defined a group of people. For example let's say I messaged the "bloggers"
group about a product launch. Then 3 months later we do a big update and I
want to message them again.. can I just message that group with a different
email? Without something like Tout the process is pretty annoying (going
through individual email address and crafting a message and then sending off)

