
Show HN: Veropost – Charge people to send you email - agora778
http://www.veropost.com
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agora778
Hi people, project developer here

I built this to solve a specific problem. Ordinary people cannot cold email
someone that is "out of their league". My vision is to have someone like
Angelina Jolie responding to emails for a $200 donation to Unicef for example.
How to actually make it happen is another subject but the implementation is
here :) Bitcoin currently solves complexity, I hope to expand it to fiat soon.

P.S I get questions about 21.co, my site was up on September 2016...

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19eightyfour
It's really great because "vero post" in Latin means "after you". Like a
courtesy, or good will, which is sort of what this site is facilitating.

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agora778
to be honest I thought vero means true from verus so the meaning is true mail
:) I like your interpretation too though

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19eightyfour
haha glad you like it but yours is maybe more appropriate. mine was just from
Googling for "vero post" noticing latin results then doing a Google translate
on it. :)

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joepie91_
I guess it's time to dig out the good old spam solution checklist
([https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt](https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt))
again.

I've already filled it in for this case:
[https://gist.githubusercontent.com/joepie91/d06939ead53bba9f...](https://gist.githubusercontent.com/joepie91/d06939ead53bba9f8dab6791df68faf2/raw/ed8b09589fdaad9f8aa10e301089e64768b1b966/gistfile1.txt)

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rustyhacker
This is interesting, but I'm a bit confused as who the target audience is,
general public or famous celebs.

In terms of general public use, usually we cannot afford to discourage people
from sending us emails. Automated emails are also caught by spam detectors.

In terms of VCs, if they charge money, it would feel like an admission process
and I'd prefer it to be a more formal process rather than an email which they
might or might not read/reply to. Same applies to lawyers. Also usually cold
emails would be read by assistants/receptionists, so not sure if this model
would fit them.

In case of famous celebs, it could be a great way to raise money for great
causes while managing your fans.

Personally I'd rather it somehow address my issue of handling emails coming
into my inbox. But that's in a different nature, usually emails I get aren't
spams and they are real emails which I need to actually respond to, but the
priority is not clear.

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jkbbwr
To be fair, this might be an actual use case for proof of work. Do some CPU
work that is trivial to check but expensive to compute. Set the difficulty of
your inbox and just have your SMTP server bouncy any email without an attached
bit of "work". I can wait a few minutes for an email to send.

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tuxxy
Something like this was already done with hashcash.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash)

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jkbbwr
Oh look. A good idea.

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jlgaddis
Ahhh, yet another "Final Ultimate Solution to the Spam Problem" [0].

[0]: [https://www.rhyolite.com/anti-spam/you-might-
be.html](https://www.rhyolite.com/anti-spam/you-might-be.html)

~~~
agora778
I think maybe the word spam is not what I should be using for this project as
if I write a message to Elon Musk asking him something I am not spamming but
my email will not get through as if I donate let's say 1K first to his org of
choice he will read it. Any ideas of how to rephrase it?

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zoidb
I think what "spam" means to most of us is automated mail that we don't want
to see. I remember in the days before gmail I saw people set up auto-
responders with captcha-like replies. Even that tiny extra validation step was
too much friction. So I guess the people who will find this useful are those
that are getting too much mail that an actual human is spending to time to
write? Definitely not for me, I could see a business mail, HR/recruiting or
something similar but you will probably lose them all unfortunately as soon as
they see "bitcoin".

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anotheryou
With the explanation about high profile people it makes sense. For the rest of
us there is the chicken-egg problem. I can't afford to deny all emails not
send through that system. I whished I could charge a micro-payment for it,
like 3 cents, just to keep spam away.

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agora778
Why not charge a very small amount like $1? Do you see any problems with that?

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anotheryou
Depending on your financial background $1 could already be quite a bit. I'd
prefer to charge just "not nothing" which should be below 50c for me.
Preferably below the costs of a text (costs ~9c here).

The bigger problem however is what ever the procedure for signig up is. Even
if it's just paypal and a webform for the mail.

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milliams
I signed up but the email verification link
([https://api.veropost.com/fn/emailVerify?token=58e6...](https://api.veropost.com/fn/emailVerify?token=58e6...))
gives a "Server not found" error.

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agora778
wow thank you will solve it immediately

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jordanwallwork
Is the video cut off? It ends quite abruptly and sounds like there should be
more to the question

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touristtam
So for a company, you redirect all the incoming emails under an alias for cold
emails to your service and then get them back filtered?

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agora778
yes exactly. you set the price you want. I guess big Venture Capital firms
would set it pretty high and a kind of famous lawyer would set it also high.

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benedictlewis
Is it possible to view emails that haven't been paid for so you can check
whether there's something important?

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agora778
Currently no, that would be an idea though I can implement it if there is
interest.But then why would you give out this account and not your gmail if
you want to manual go through them? Kind of defeats purpose?

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benedictlewis
I don't give out my email at all really, but still some stuff arrives so it
would be good to be able to see whether I want to read it anyway, even if the
only preview is the from address.

~~~
agora778
I have it shown as xxx@xxx.xx currently so you can see that you have unpaid
emails, I can do it like you propose sure good idea.

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djyaz1200
This is THE BIGGEST MONEY MAKING IDEA IN TECHNOLOGY full stop. The money that
will be made around this will make Adwords look like a cute hobby. Messaging
on all channels needs to be assigned a variable cost. ...and this
implementation is thoughtful/interesting, as is 21.co... Google, Facebook and
Microsoft have understood this is coming for a long time. That's why Microsoft
bought Linkedin, and FB bought Whatsapp. Companies are spending billions to
prepare for this future, but I have yet to hear anyone elucidate how this paid
communication future will actually work. Further, since the patent system has
been eviscerated there isn't any incentive for an entrepreneur to solve the
whole problem... and Google and many other tech companies only know how to
copy good ideas... not generate their own. So your reward for starting a
company that solves this will likely be lawsuits, poverty and personal and
professional devastation. Who is gonna step up ;)

