

Outbox, The Startup That Digitizes Your Postal Mail, Raises $5 Million Series A - kevingibbon
http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/01/outbox-the-startup-that-digitizes-your-postal-mail-raises-5-million-series-a/

======
nostromo
I recently bought a house that was gutted and had no mailbox when I moved in.
I went for as long as possible without adding one. (It's 99% junk mail that I
just recycle immediately.)

Well, you can't actually get away with this for one reason: the government.
Specifically, the IRS, but probably the census too. (And they only allow you
to use a PO Box if you certify that you cannot physically accept mail at your
residence.) If they send you an important document, there better be a box for
the USPS to put it in, or you could end up in hot water.

I wish the USPS & IRS & Census would allow addresses to opt-out of mail
entirely. It's time to let people and companies go 100% paperless without
paying for scanning services.

~~~
eli
The Direct Mail Association has an opt-out (which is volutary, but _many_
mailers abide by it): [https://www.dmachoice.org/](https://www.dmachoice.org/)

The FTC runs a opt-out program for credit card and insurance offers which is
mandated by law:
[https://www.optoutprescreen.com/](https://www.optoutprescreen.com/)

------
krapp
I don't understand why anyone would think letting a company take your mail,
read it, make a database from scanning its contents, then decide what you get
to see from it, is preferable to the seconds it takes to throw a few envelopes
in the trash.

Ooh, here, let me give you my email passwords so you can delete all the spam
from my inbox too...

~~~
seltzered_
Ironically, I use unroll.me which arguably works like your last sentence -
while it's saves me only "a few seconds", it still saves me from having to
stare at the less-important mail when passively looking at my inbox.

Also, it's more than a few seconds depending on your situation. You have to
walk to a central mailbox for many newer suburbs. A rarer scenario, when I
lived in Tahoe I had to drive down the mountain I lived to a P.O.Box - usually
just to throw junk mail in the trash.

~~~
krapp
You can find a use case for just about everything. There's a use case for
PRISM but that doesn't make it a good idea.

The problem is, for added convenience (which might, like if you have to drive
down a mountain, be more than minor) you're giving a startup complete control
over your identity and just trusting them not to exploit that.

If Outbox decides one day to censor the content, or sell your data, or if a
third party pays them to get copies of your mail, what can you do if they
acquiesce? If the US Postal Service announced it was going to pre-screen and
digitize all outgoing mail, and only send people digital copies of everything
but the 'spam', everyone would be screaming bloody tyranny.

Admittedly, though, i've never had to drive down a mountain to get my mail and
I might just be too paranoid.

------
mratzloff
I'm going to re-post my comment from the previous thread because I think it
applies even more now. How did they get $5 million in funding? What is their
business plan? I would really like to know.

\----

1\. Collect mail door-to-door

2\. Scan each page of mail, including envelopes

3\. Post scans online

4\. Return requested physical mail

5\. Charge $4.99 for this service

6\. ...

7\. Profit?

Looking at their job postings, they have one person per city managing a team
of people working probably close to minimum wage going door-to-door. These
people most likely scan mail at their homes using a scanner provided by
Outbox.

Let's say they pay a City Manager $100,000, or $125,000 after taxes,
unemployment insurance, and benefits. An individual can take on 30 customers,
is paid above minimum wage (let's say $15 after taxes, etc.), and works 7
hours a day (or 35 hours/week, making them part-time employees). That's
roughly $30,000 per worker annually.

At $4.99 per month, none of the economics work. At 30 customers per part-time
employee, the break even point is $100 per month per customer. At $4.99 per
month each PTE needs to handle around 600 customers each to break even. 100
customers per PTE at $30/month also breaks even. But even 100 per PTE seems
unrealistic.

Unless I'm missing something very basic, it just doesn't scale at $4.99 per
month. At all. It's not even close.

~~~
danielweber
Do they really need to go door-to-door? Why can't the USPS just forward it all
to Outbox?

~~~
arbuge
I think they tried to set this up once, but the USPS is giving a partnership
with them the cold shoulder...

[http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/28/4039990/the-postal-
service...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/28/4039990/the-postal-service-is-
bad-but-outbox-is-worse)

"At the time of its announcement, Outbox suggested it had reached an agreement
with the USPS to allow it to intercept mail from ever being delivered to your
home, and that it would instead be delivered to its warehouse. This would have
made the service less wasteful, to be sure. From its description of the
service today, that no longer appears to be the case, and Outbox employs its
own "postmen" to pick up already delivered mail from your home mailbox."

~~~
beat
Could still happen in the future. Certainly, last-mile delivery is an
expensive pain point for USPS. But cutting that deal is going to be high-risk
and expensive.

------
gaahrdner
What differentiates Outbox from
[https://www.earthclassmail.com/](https://www.earthclassmail.com/) or
[http://www.virtualpostmail.com/](http://www.virtualpostmail.com/) (besides
the price) that warrants a $5 million series A round?

~~~
rolandm
Earth class mail had exactly the same idea 2004 and got 21.4M funding [1]. A
documentary from 2008 about them: [http://www.hulu.com/start-up-
junkies](http://www.hulu.com/start-up-junkies) . They later fired the founder
and changed from B2C to B2B [2]: “As many a tech startup has discovered,
though, a great idea doesn't always make a good business. Digitizing all that
paper proved hugely expensive, and Earth Class Mail couldn't make its business
pay.” [1]
[http://www.crunchbase.com/company/earthclassmail](http://www.crunchbase.com/company/earthclassmail)
[2]
[http://blog.oregonlive.com/siliconforest/2011/01/earth_class...](http://blog.oregonlive.com/siliconforest/2011/01/earth_class_mail_attempts_rebo.html)

------
kmfrk
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5822052](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5822052).

Two important take-aways:

1) Your physical mail is destroyed eventually - not stored for perpetuity.

2) This doesn't have to be an alternative to your home-address mail; it can
also be used as a P.O. box.

------
rogerbinns
Why aren't the USPS doing this? They already have to process some addressed
mail specially (eg if you have them a forwarding address), so it would be
practical for them to deliver your mail virtually.

~~~
mratzloff
Selling a subscription service for something like this would be a great
strategy for the USPS, but it's a giant bureaucracy employing 8 million
people. Change happens slowly.

------
baran1
Given all of the NSA/PRISM revelations as of late, wouldn't you want exactly
the opposite of this?

~~~
greyman
Exactly my though. ;) I was thinking recently whether I shouldn't go back to
have my phone invoices and bank monthly reports to be delivered by snail
instead of email, like in those old times. ;-)

~~~
baran1
I take it back [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-
mai...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-
mail.html?hp&_r=0)

------
Svip
Post Danmark (Danish Postal Services) offer a similar service called
e-Boks.[0] The main drawback is that e-Boks is only available for senders that
are registered as e-Boks senders. Fortunately, these include all government
services (both local and national), as well as several private companies.

[0]
[https://www.postdanmark.dk/da/Privat/Modtag%20Post/Sider/e-b...](https://www.postdanmark.dk/da/Privat/Modtag%20Post/Sider/e-boks.aspx)

------
nedwin
As someone who has moved around a lot this is a great service. Setup one
address for all postal mail and no matter where I am I can get access to it.
When I move the address stays the same - I can easily update my email address
its sending to if need be.

Being able to search my archive of mail would also save me a bunch of time
though I can imagine I would be deleting the majority of it.

I'd prefer it if the service was based outside of the US.

------
joshuaellinger
In the short term, it is a waste to 'undeliver' mail so you can send it
digitally.

However, if they can get some traction, it would drive a lot of direct mail
advertising digital. I hope they make it work. There are still 80+ billion
pieces of junk mail sent in the US each year.

My company ([http://www.exemplartech.com](http://www.exemplartech.com)) is
working on this from the advertisers side but we need companies like Zumbox,
Doxo, Manilla, and Outbox to get the consumers to change behavior.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Or just let me opt out of your paper spam. If I want something, I'll go find
it on my own.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I was under the impression that spam was one of the bigger sources of revenue
for the post office...

~~~
joshuaellinger
About $17B out of $65B.

[http://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-facts/#H2](http://about.usps.com/who-
we-are/postal-facts/#H2)

89.5 letters * $0.20 = ~ $17B.

------
cuttooth
Why is this a thing? Are people so lazy to go through their own mail that they
need to spend money to have someone else do it for them? Even if you factor in
far-off edge cases, there is little to no money to made here except for the
most insane of people who are almost never at their home address, and that
number isn't all that large.

~~~
tptacek
Speaking for a family of four in Chicago: the amount of crap mail we get is a
constant chore, and we regularly miss important things amidst the piles of
upsell offers from the banks that own our mortgage, or the dealership that
sold us a car, or the store we mail-ordered a pan from once, &c.

I think you're wrong about the appeal of this service. I wish we had something
like it here.

Also, "laziness"? What does that even mean? There's a finite number of minutes
in every day. Make a case for why I should spend any of those minutes dealing
with paper mail. How many other goods and services do _you_ use that we could
interrogate as a facilitator of "laziness"?

~~~
timjahn
Speaking for a family of three in Chicago, we get a lot of crap mail as well.
Really, it's all we get.

But: a) my 3 year old has fun grabbing it out of the box and pretending it's
from various people. b) it takes literally a few seconds to just throw it out.

Now, if we were getting so much junk mail that it was making us miss our
actual, important mail, that'd be a problem.

But we don't get any actual, important mail. It's 99% junk.

Anywho. The Postal Service is going to disappear in my 3 year old's lifetime
anyway.

------
seltzered_
The other hidden use case: College students / Travelers that just want to keep
their mailing address at a 'home base' (e.g. their parents house or a close
friend).

This is way cheaper of an option than using earth class mail, and allows for
any super-important stuff to still get home quickly.

------
nawitus
Finnish Post Office has offered this for about 5 years already, it's called
'NetPosti'.

------
sunsu
I would much rather have an Outbox mailing address that I can give out. Would
be much easier for Outbox to manage as well.

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zallarak
This is like slapping a very insecure solution on a problem that will
eventually die (snail mail).

------
Raticide
Great, so now the NSA can harvest my post too?

