

A wedding gift for our co-founder became our startup's newest product. - hillel
http://www.thrilledforyou.com

======
callmeed
As someone who sells products to several thousand wedding professionals
(mostly photographers) and who has photographed plenty of weddings, here's
what I think:

\- Instead of a "bulk discount for professionals", you should just sell them a
$399 version that they can use to modify each title (looks like it's just a
PNG file in the resources anyway).

\- I can't see a bride and groom buying this very often–they are already busy
and budget-conscious ... but I could see a best man, parent or bridesmaid
doing it (assuming they had a macbook available). They often are bringing a
laptop for a slideshow anyway, so it could work.

\- I think the price might be a little high ... $49 to $79 seems more
reasonable to me–especially since I'm still doing all the
editing/uploading/sharing work myself afterwards.

\- Use wedding blogs to get the word out and offer up some free demos or
prizes. There are blogs for fancy weddings, green weddings, DIY weddings,
budget weddings, etc.–and they are very popular with brides. It's a good way
to get noticed.

\- I can probably help you spread the word among some wedding photographers
(including some who have well-read blogs). A lot of them are doing video too
(as many SLRs now do HD video) so they could easily incorporate these into a
DVD. Plus, several are doing photobooths or slideshows at receptions.

I'll blog about it too if you'd like–feel free to get in touch. I could get
some photographers using it this weekend and giving you feedback.

~~~
IgorPartola
I don't own a Mac and I'm married already so might opinion might not matter
that much, but if I was getting married, I'd want the videographer to set this
up. Somehow I don't feel comfortable buying this kind of a thing for $99, but
if a videographer charged me $99 to have a Macbook (better yet an iPad!) at my
wedding where people could easily record video messages, I'd feel much better
about it. The difference is that it becomes the videographer's problem if
something breaks. Otherwise, if I bought it and brought my own computer to set
it up I would (a) worry that somebody stole my beloved laptop and (b)
something went wrong and nobody is actually able to record the videos.
Targeting this at videographers might not bring in as much dough, but it seems
to me it would have a higher chance of having satisfied end clients.

~~~
thinkzig
This. I was worried about so many other things on my wedding day. The last
thing I'd want to fret over was doing tech support for a laptop and piece of
video software. Most of my groomsmen were top-notch tech guys and I wouldn't
even want them to worry about it. They were there for me, my wife, and our
wedding day, not to play help desk tech.

But if this was something our videographer or photographer had offered I
would've jumped on it in an instant.

~~~
frossie
The advantage of having a direct-to-consumer approach is that I can see a
market for non-wedding occasions, where there is no official videographer.
Baby showers, graduations, retirement parties, it wouldn't surprise me if some
people even wanted it for a funeral/memorial. It's a pretty neat idea.

[Edit: just thought of another one - military people posted overseas, I can
see people at the family gatherings like Thanksgiving wanting to send
individual video greetings]

------
Timothee
I really like the idea. And the design is very nice (be it for the site or the
app)

One thing though is that, from the site, I'm not really sure what I would get
and in what form: where are the videos? are you hosting them? how do I change
the settings of the app? do I get some kind of video album?

I see that the demo file left a couple of videos in my Movies folder, so I get
it: I pay $99 to have the custom software with the right names and date, and
it saves everything as local files in my Movies folder.

But, in that case, $99 is a lot of money! Correct me if I'm wrong but it's a
one-time use app, right? I only get that one customized version for one
wedding? That feels very very expensive… it's a nice packaging for PhotoBooth
pretty much. And yes, for a wedding, that packaging makes a big difference,
but I don't think I could buy it myself.

That being said, as Brian Cooley said, $99 is a drop in the bucket for most
weddings, so I think that you could make some money with that (as I said, for
a wedding the packaging is very important, thus the money will follow).

edit: to sum up, I'd say that it's a nice idea but to justify the $99 I think
it would need to actually produce some kind of "video guestbook", something
similar to an iMovie template, or what Animoto does. After the event, I just
get a bunch of video files that I need to do something with…

~~~
c3o
Regarding the Animoto proposal: You should look into the Stupeflix API
(<http://www.stupeflix.com/api>), which could easily automatically stitch the
videos together into something that looks impressive. Let me know if you would
like a personal intro to the Stupeflix guys.

~~~
Timothee
One issue is that you can't always expect an Internet connection at a wedding.
But interesting link nonetheless.

~~~
hillel
Right. That's why we made Thrilled for You as a client app that requires no
internet connection. Internet is still so flakey... it's the last thing anyone
should have to worry about.

~~~
c3o
True. I guess you could just do the conversion at some later date when the
computer is online -- that would still free the couple from the burden of
having to do any video editing themselves, but I suppose it would be a little
tricky to build.

------
briancooley
I like this so much. $99 is a drop in the bucket for most weddings, it's a big
market, and this seems so much less intrusive than the traditional "Aunt Ethel
with a camcorder" approach.

One thing that stuck out to me was that the guy in the purple tie was a little
out of frame. That would have made my wife object to this idea for fear that
everyone would end up with their heads cut off. FWIW, I'd maybe move that part
to the end or cut it altogether.

Like the music, too.

~~~
techiferous
"$99 is a drop in the bucket for most weddings"

Sad but true.

~~~
johns
It is sad. With how some weddings are you could probably get away with selling
them a $1200 iMac with this preinstalled and configured and people wouldn't
even notice the price.

~~~
yaacovtp
Adding an iMac to my registry right now...

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aantix
Photo booths have been mentioned and it's probably worth repeating. I've been
to a couple of weddings where they rented out a photo booth and allowed the
wedding attendees to take photos of themselves with their significant others.
Of course by the end of the night, they're really goofy. The bride&groom got
one copy of the photos, the picture takers got the other copy.

You should have a "photo booth" option where someone could just walk up, click
the photo booth option, and the system takes four timed photos (usually about
5 seconds in between poses). <http://www.rentphotobooths.com/>

You could then put those photos in the album.

Not everyone wants to give a personal video message (especially if you're shy
and in an open reception hall), but maybe more (especially if drunk) would
like to get a little crazy and contribute some goofy photos.

~~~
aantix
Oh, and allow them to type a little message to accompany their goofy photos.
:)

------
faramarz
What a fantastic Idea! This little innovation here will probably create the
most value the night of the wedding.. besides the obvious.

I got goosebumps watching the demo. I can see myself using this at my
wedding.. the next step now is finding a wife! haha

Intrinsic product! Please do all you can to keep your idea in publics eye. I
bookmarked your service, but i'm not sure I will remember the name when it
comes to actually needing it.

------
cschep
very cool!

The music on the video threw me a little bit, maybe I'm just too much of an
english centric guy. Also, I'd love to have heard the voices of the people
come through a little bit. Maybe as a sample, but maybe just because if
someone is talking at a camera I want to know it they are saying for some
reason?

Again, very cool!

------
otakucode
Great product idea!

But I have one recommendation that I think, though it would certainly take
effort, especially if your company is mostly Mac programmers, would pay off
bigtime. Offer hardware. Knock together an Atom-based system that comes
preloaded with the software (obviously this would not be an OSX machine, a
free stripped-down Linux distro would probably be a much better idea) that can
be sold to the professional videographers or photographers, or even venue
owners. This would open up the people that don't own Macs and, more
importantly, the market of people uncomfortable with computers who wouldn't
feel comfortable with investing this kind of money and importance in a
software product and their computer.

------
prbuckley
If you were to offer a hardware system a modbook might be a good choice...

<http://www.axiotron.com/index.php?id=modbook>

You could do the video and hand written guest notes on the same device.

------
almost
It's my parent's sliver wedding soon and they're having a big party. This
seems like quite a cool idea and I was considering setting it up for them.

I'm not having too good a time with the demo though. I ran the program and it
popped up the thingy with the video stream and the name box, but then keyboard
didn't seem to work. The record your message button just pops up the "whoops
you forgot to type your names" message and there appears to be no other way of
shutting the darn thing down. I was just about to switch off the mac (and lose
unsaved work in Photoshop) when the 10 minute timer kicked in and it shut
itself down.

Still, sort out that bit and I think it's a great idea.

------
ashishk
wow what a great idea! nowhere close to getting married, but i'd love to have
this at my wedding.

------
mcotton
I'm about to get married and I love the idea. I need to think about who I am
going to entrust my macbook to. I'll ask the mrs. and get her opinion on it. I
think this is a great idea.

------
yashodhan
I'd love to hear more, too. I wish I had thought of this!

------
spiffage
This is a good call. My buddy had me put together a system like this for his
wedding a few months ago. I was shocked that it didn't already exist.

------
ashishbharthi
I love the idea. You people might want to talk to wedding photographers or
planners to promote this idea.

------
jasonlbaptiste
very cool! can we get a blog post on more of the back story?

~~~
hillel
Here's the announcement blog post:

[http://www.jacksonfish.com/blog/2010/02/07/thrilled-for-
you-...](http://www.jacksonfish.com/blog/2010/02/07/thrilled-for-you-wedding-
video-guestbook-kiosk-software-for-the-mac/)

Basically, a year and a half ago we decided to focus more on software we could
charge for (vs. ad/sponsorhsip supported). At the top of our list was a
storytelling app called A Story Before Bed (www.astorybeforebed.com) which we
shipped this past November. But Jenny (our co-founder) was getting married
last August so we paused our development on our primary product and spent some
time developing Thrilled for You - a video guestbook for Jenny's wedding
reception.

Things have calmed down a little since we shipped A Story Before Bed, and we
realized we still have the app we wrote for Jenny. With wedding season coming
in a few months we did some more testing, tweaked the UI, came up with a bunch
of themes, and put together the website for Thrilled for You
(www.thrilledforyou.com) and offered it for sale as of yesterday. :)

There are so many things we love about having our own startup... the ability
to do things like this is definitely one of them. We feel the software we make
is so personal when it comes out of a need we had ourselves.

Thanks for asking for more details. :)

~~~
gridspy
What a cool story. Thanks for sharing it. Sounds like you followed the ideal
from the SvN post on reusing your own 'by-products'
<http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1620-sell-your-by-products>

Talk about a nice pivot - Wedding software is a great niche. Once your
software is in the reception, it could do lots of other cool stuff. Guest
lists, aggregation of iPhone / photo content from guests and speech programs
come to mind.

It could even live-blog the content it gets into a timeline online during the
reception. You could have a stack of 100 cards with a key on them next to the
PC, accessing the online site requires a card as the login for privacy.
Purchasing 100 more cards is a $10 transaction online and covers the timeline
service.

------
fname
make it work for Windows?

~~~
hillel
If there are enough requests we'll definitely consider making a Windows
version. :)

~~~
Frazzydee
Keep in mind that many of your potential customers will see that it's Mac-only
and just move on. Windows is still by far the market leader, and you're really
limiting your potential market by not having Windows support.

That being said, this seems like the type of product that Mac users would be
more likely to go for, so you could just hold off on a Windows version until
you know whether the product is viable (based on sales)

One more thing: The "buy" button is not obviously for that purpose, and I was
about to comment asking whether you can only buy from within the demo.
Consider rewording the button to make it clear that that's where you buy the
product from.

~~~
acgourley
But what does the market look like for "laptops with webcams"? Windows might
still be winning, but I bet its not by much.

~~~
karanbhangui
What? Most windows laptops i've seen in stores have webcams.

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winter_blue
imho $99 is a bit too steep..

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howcool
Great idea, but you should make one for plain and simpel "parties" and not
just limit it to weddings IMHO I would buy one for my Bday party probably for
example

~~~
hillel
Agreed. With enough demand... we'll add more versions. :)

------
dpcan
I'm going to be synical first, and it may come across as mean, but it's the
honest truth in my opinion...

Yes, if there's one more thing I wish I had to do at my wedding, it would have
to be tech support for the web cam that wasn't working properly on the
Guestbook Mac.

I also wish that every one of my guests put their hands all over my computer
as they walked in and out the door.

Also, when they get drunk, I don't want them trying to film something for me
while they stumble over my expensive computer with an open container.

Now, enough being a jerk.

I think some kind of mashup between live streaming and wedding templates is
more appropriate since people already have video recorders in their pockets on
their phones now.

Why not setup a public DropBox folder that everyone can drop their iPhone
photos into while at the wedding?

I just don't think this idea was very thoroughly thought out. Putting your
expensive Mac at the front door of the reception hall just seems ridiculous.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I hate to be that guy...

... but my mac's camera has always Just Worked.

~~~
dagw
Even after someone poured a glass of wine over it?

