
Technical cofounder wanted for disrupting the wedding industry - joshfraser
http://www.limedaring.com/technical-co-founder-wanted-for-disrupting-the-wedding-industry/
======
patio11
I wish you the best of luck, but considering that you will be up against the
bridal industrial complex in attempting to reach inexpert customers who are by
nature transients in the field, I would suggest rethinking the price. With the
average cost of a wedding in the north-of-$25k region, you might find that the
difference between $25 and $100 matters very little to the customer but very
much to your ability to afford advertising for it.

Also, talk to Andy Brice from Perfect Table Plan and pump him for information
on who the ultimate customers of his software are.

P.S. The fact that a particular woman is marrying a particular man on a
particular day is, in itself, worth more than $25. It can also be sold to
multiple people. Just throwing that out there -- lead generation often isn't
held in particularly high esteem, but it is _big money._

~~~
zeynel1
''With the average cost of a wedding in the north-of-$25k region, you might
find that the difference between $25 and $100 matters very little to the
customer''

i agree with this - her wedding is a special event that she will spend as much
as she can - she already has a mental budget calculated by a complex process
known only to her - some variables include -the cost of the wedding of her
best friend -average cost of wedding in her social graph -how much she can
afford to spend - then she will spend double of her budget so that she can
complain about how guilty she feels for spending soo much for a wedding --but
in no way-- her wedding will cost less than -and her planning process will
last less than- the wedding of her best friend - she will get the most
expensive of everything including invitations - she may buy groceries with
coupons to look chic but this is -her- event - she will not look cheap -
consider that even when she wants to -look- cheap she does not buy jeans and
rip them at home herself -no- she buys -branded- jeans already ripped with
style for her -also- it is a mistake to think that she is buying a -product-
when she orders invitations - she is buying a -story- presented to her as
-marketing- that she can share with her friends - for her to buy cheap
invitations that she will spend time to create manually herself - there better
be a -cool- story she can share with her frieds why she made this decision to
go cheap - this story the founder must supply to her through marketing
convincing her that buying cheap invitations does not make her look cheap -
this is more difficult than building the site -also- maybe more important -
she is -outsourcing- her wedding event - by definition she is the queen and
the center of the universe and she will not do anything herself -except-
giving orders - there is a lot of pride and competition involved in planning a
wedding - she will not condescend to do manual work for her own invitations to
save money - i think tracy in this case is thinking like the groom not the
bride - but the decision to spend is made by the bride - so i believe this not
to be a sound business model

~~~
patio11
Guys, take whatever upvotes you were going to give to me for my next 100
comments and give them to this line:

It is a mistake to think that she is buying a _product_ when she orders
invitations. She is buying a _story_ presented to her as marketing that she
can share with her friends. For her to buy cheap invitations that she will
spend time to create manually herself, there better be a _cool_ story she can
share with her friends why she made this decision to go cheap.

~~~
crpatino
Every idiot can _print_. What about _handwritten_ invitations? Well, not _all_
the invitation, just the name of each guest.(We had this in our wedding,
mainly because a very good friend with gorgeous writing was willing to
volunteer and do this as a personal favor).

In the context of Limedaring's business. How do you make something like this
happen? Unique typesetting? Outsource and arbitrage? Printing on a plotter
machine?

Maybe my example is not very practical... but the question is: what in your
product makes each guest feel special?

------
samstokes
We retained Tracy to completely redesign our website (Rapportive - relaunch
imminent, what's online is still the old site at time of writing). Her design
is beautiful, daring, and effective. She's gone above and beyond in responding
to our myriad tweaks and requests, given us great feedback, and been fun to
hang out with along the way.

I bet she would make a great cofounder.

~~~
shazow
+1

Tracy worked with us on <http://getupandmove.me/> and handled our really tough
design direction and came out with great creative solutions like a champ. More
importantly, she delivered reliably and quickly, unlike many who talk and talk
but never do. I would definitely bet on her.

------
qq66
This is the best "looking for technical co-founder" post I have seen here. It
explains your idea, the value you're bringing to the partnership, what you're
looking for, and your past work as evidence of your value. Also, the picture
helps me put a face to your name. Good luck!

~~~
limedaring
Thank you!

------
newobj
You say that the industry has "insane profit margins". Have you considered
what % of the revenue goes back into marketing? If you're trying to disrupt a
space by pricing, you better make sure you can still afford to market at your
lower price. If people are making a lot of money then you can bet that the CPC
for your keywords are going to be high. So high perhaps that your CPA could
exceed $25? At even just $1 CPC you'll need to convert at 4% or higher to turn
anything resembling a profit. And the wedding invitation business is
unfortunately not a repeat business. You may get referrals, but you'll never
get the same customers coming back to buy again.

Just food for thought. Good luck!

~~~
limedaring
Definitely keeping that in mind. "You may get referrals, but you'll never get
the same customers coming back to buy again." is a great point, and a big
hurdle I got to jump over. One way to get around this is
partnerships/licensing to the template makers, who are currently not taking
advantage of what happens _after_ they sell the template kits. Another is
community building, since people who are working on their invitations love to
show them off and critique others — keeping the people around longer than when
they finish their design.

Thanks! :)

~~~
smokey_the_bear
There are other similar products you could offer to happy users. I might want
to also make thank you cards, or come back a year or two after the wedding and
make birth announcements.

~~~
limedaring
Exactly. I don't want to plan too big just yet - get a v1 one out, start
making revenue, and find out _then_ where I should expand to because there are
tons of ideas and paths. One reason I feel so passionately about my idea is
because it as so much potential to build upon itself.

~~~
blantonl
Then get out in front of that potential. If you don't, someone better funded
will take your idea and immediately run past your v1.

------
dstorrs
I like your idea with the invites, but I'd suggest that you're only going
halfway with it.

1) Guide the customer through creating professional-grade invites. That part
is relatively straightforward.

2) _Print and mail the invites_

3) Provide an RSVP service available to the couple _and their vendors_ \-- the
caterer needs to know who wants vegan food but, honestly, the bride and groom
don't care.

Finally, if you REALLY want to provide something disruptive: take a
handwriting sample from the bride and/or groom, turn it into a font, and
produce the thank-you notes (they need to look hand-written). I have no idea
how you would do this, but having been through a wedding myself I remember
utterly loathing this part.

~~~
limedaring
My "WeddingType at its biggest" idea was Moo.com for wedding invitations — the
place to go if you're looking for professional invitations on a budget.
Printing and mailing has an interesting problem — would many couples mail the
invites without first seeing it? Would they prefer to have all the invitations
on hand to mail themselves, rather than the service mail for them?

Just thought of this: What if they went through the service, had a "sample" of
their finished invite sent to them, and once they approve, then the service
could send out the individual invitations. Printing just one custom invitation
for each customer might be problematic, though. But something to think about,
indeed.

~~~
jamesshamenski
Cocodot already does this cheap wedding invite idea well.

------
rjett
The market for this sort of thing strikes me as very similar to the market for
patio11's Bingo Card Creator: competitive adwords environment, heavy value in
A | B testing to get conversion rates as high as possible, a TON of single use
customers, and a slow, almost linear growth rate.

...he might be a good person from whom to ask an opinion.

~~~
limedaring
Will do, thanks for letting me know.

------
vital101
As someone getting married Saturday, I can say that this would be a GREAT
idea. The ridiculous amount of money we sank in to invitations really rubbed
me the wrong way.

Also, something I noticed when we were going through all of this was the RSVP
process is broke. Even if you provide a pre-addressed + stamped post card with
a checkbox on it, people still don't respond. I thought about some sort of
barcode that can read by smart phones, that auto magically directs to a web
site (or they can go to it manually). Either way, you get the idea.

Just some thoughts, but I would most definitely look at the RSVP industry too.

~~~
techdmn
I agree that the RSVP process is broken, nobody responds! Short of actually
going to their house and putting the card in the mail, I don't think we could
have done anything to make it easier for people. My other thought here is more
of a life-hack. Put a meal choice on the RSVP card. Nobody cares if you know
they're coming, but they'd better get that steak they ordered! :)

------
limedaring
This is Tracy (@limedaring), if there are any questions, can also let me know
on here. If you're interested, I'm in the Bay Area and will travel to meet
people over coffee/lunch!

~~~
apsurd
People really use wedding invitations printed from their home printer? I would
think no girl would stand for that =x

I probably don't know what the hell I'm talking about, but wouldn't it be a
better play to integrate (somehow) with a printing company? Or offer an export
option that they can take to a local printer (as in the correct file format
.eps, pantone color numbers, or what not).

Sorry if I am completely ignorant to the wedding invitations scene but I would
think every girl deserves nice invitations _and_ the _convenience_ of a one-
stop-online-shop.

Hmm maybe crowdsourced invitation designs.. ala threadless.com ?

~~~
wvenable
As a technical person who spent too much on wedding invitations at the last
minute, I do think that integration with a printing company would be the
killer feature.

Without the printing I would think of this as more of toy than something that
would be truly disruptive. One could charge much larger prices for this
service with printing and still be competitive especially when factoring in
design selection and ease of use.

~~~
frossie
_As a technical person who spent too much on wedding invitations at the last
minute, I do think that integration with a printing company would be the
killer feature._

Moreover, I worry that launching _without_ a printing service would be a
business-killing misfeature. It sets the wrong tone (nobody wants to have
their own invites printed) from which it may be hard to recover.

I recognise the founder's desire to handle this in small chunks, but
printing... I dunno, I wouldn't look twice without it.

~~~
araneae
Picwing might be able to help on advice for this. Their photo quality is
AMAZING. Anyone know how they did it?

------
ericingram
We had similarly high aspirations when launching our wedding business,
<http://trulyweddingfavors.com>. Your post brings me back to the enthusiasm we
had for disrupting the wedding industry. As a web application developer
myself, I was looking for an industry that I felt we'd have an edge in, and
wedding products/services seemed to be dominated by the technical and design
challenged.

We have been successful in a general sense, generating about $350k in revenue
at the end of our first year. After reaching this point, we realized the
marketing game was where the real successes and failures were determined. In
the wedding business, your customers won't look for you until that very moment
they need your product, during the planning stages of a wedding. If your ad or
search listing isn't in the top X, all the creativity in the world won't
matter.

We continue operating <http://trulyweddingfavors.com> at a healthy margin, but
are focused on innovating in other markets with more viral potential.

If there's one tip I could offer: read "the e-myth" ;)

[http://www.amazon.com/E-Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-
Abou...](http://www.amazon.com/E-Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-
About/dp/0887307280/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1280308366&sr=8-1)

------
aaroneous
Interested in your idea, but having zero experience with that market, I did a
quick google and it seems like there is a lot of competition (10+ in <5min of
searching) with your exact idea.

Other than your competition not having you as the designer, or appealing to
the tiny budget crowd (though, several did look similarly priced) - how would
you stand above the existing options?

~~~
limedaring
Can you post the competitors, so I can explain how I am different?

------
markintx
I'm not looking to shoot you down, but I have some thoughts you might want to
consider.

You are not going to disrupt the industry by providing a pdf for a cheap
price, you are going to be working twice as hard for half the pay. Right now
you may have 25 design templates ready to go, how many will you need next
month?

How many hours will that take?

Are those billable hours?

You are making the design choices easy. Concentrate on that.

Instead of looking through a huge binder of printed samples, the bride to be
can look at a website and get a design made simply, without the usual
headaches to the designer.

Hopefully the pdf you provide will be easy to preflight and prepress, because
a lot of your customers are going to end up taking it to a real printer after
they see the results they get at home. That can be an additional profit center
for you, if you are willing to charge what your time is worth for anything
other than what gets generated by the templates.

There are not huge profit margins in most printing, even though letterpress
commands high prices, the process is very labor intensive, and that wonderful
Crane Lettra paper is expensive.

Don't forget that part of the final price of an invitation set is how much of
a bridezilla the designer and printer had to deal with.

Finally, take a look at etsy, lot of wedding invitations there for cheap
prices.

Not to be self promoting, but I am in the printing industry, digital, offset,
and letterpress.

Good luck, I think you have the germ of a good idea, but you will have some
refining ahead of you.

------
maxklein
The biggest question is this: Have you actually done a calculation to see if
your market is big enough? Will you reach enough wedding people, particular
considering that people only wed once or twice in their lifetime?

~~~
hugh3
Good question. With a birth rate of about 3.5 million people per year in the
US, assuming everyone gets married once (a rough estimate), and there are two
people per marriage (a less rough estimate), that should work out at 1.7
million marriages a year. Even if you can charge every one of 'em twenty-five
bucks for printing then that's only $45 million a year. At more realistic
market shares you're not looking at huge money.

But I guess you could easily expand horizontally into _other_ parts of the
wedding-planning process once you get your foot in the door with the
invitations thing. That's where the big money starts flowing.

~~~
limedaring
Yes, exactly. Moving into Moo.com like printing, offering templates through
the site, licensing or partnering with template makers should increase the
revenue available.

~~~
maxklein
But there are only 2.1 million events, and you'll only reach a small
percentage of these. Even if you maximise the revenue you receive from each
marriage, it won't be much unless you absolutely and totally dominate the
wedding scene, which will be a difficult thing to do because your
recommendations path is poor.

I.e, if you randomly get a customer, he cannot recommend you because he may
not know anyone getting married at the time, and when another person gets
married, it may be too distant in time for him to remember you.

Your biggest problem is market, and you should explain it properly.

~~~
hugh3
2.1 million events per year. The average cost is something like $20K according
to five seconds' googling (sounds high for an average, but let's go with it).
That's a $42 billion a year industry. There's a _lot_ of people already making
a _lot_ of money by servicing this industry.

Oh, and there's a whole publishing industry devoted to bridal magazines and
websites, so it's _reasonably_ easy to reach your target market if you have an
advertising budget. Difficult to bootstrap though.

~~~
dagw
Given that I know several people who spent less than $1K on their wedding (and
indirectly one who spent by all estimates over $200K) imagine that that $20K
number has pretty huge variance. The really interesting number I'd want to
know is how many weddings cost more than, say, $15K.

------
sunir
I cannot contradict the naysayers' warnings about marketing costs. However,
the cost to build, launch, and test the marketing of this project is absurdly
low. You're only generating a PDF! So, the warnings are meaningless.

I support you to build and launch the thing and then see what works! Go for
it! And best of luck. The wedding industry deserves a good thumping.

------
seregine
My fiancee and I are technical, and almost all of our guests (of all ages)
have email, so we chose to use Paperless Post:

<http://www.paperlesspost.com>

I think paper invitations will start losing market share to email - it's more
convenient, and spreads virally to your unmarried guests.

~~~
limedaring
A small portion of people might start going to email, but paper post still has
a lot of value. I love receiving letters and cards from friends, and wedding
invitations are a piece of art to announce an important celebration. They're
valuable, and will continue to be in a way that email will never replicate.

------
nradov
Our wedding invitations were the cheapest part of the whole project. We hardly
gave it a thought.

If you really want to disrupt the wedding industry, make a search engine for
the venues. My wife and I spent weeks driving around the Bay Area looking at
restaurants, wineries, and meeting halls to find out open dates, prices,
menus, restrictions, etc. I would have loved a single site listing
_everything_ and searchable by all those parameters.

BTW, make sure to use non-toxic adhesive on the envelopes.

------
huhtenberg
I'm sure there is a niche for this service, but this is a disruption of a do-
it-yourself (cheap but ugly) wedding invitation kit market rather than "the
wedding industry".

------
mattmcknight
I wish someone would disrupt the wedding industry itself and offer really
nice, all-in-one, low price wedding services (including banquet hall, etc.)
There is really no need for all of the insanity that goes on around planning a
wedding. You should just be able to pick a date, food options, a decor scheme,
music, and clothes to rent in an afternoon for a range of prices (with
financing). I've seen some Korean wedding places like this, but nothing big.
While there are many people that wouldn't appeal to, I would think there are
many more for whom it would appeal to in the disruptive innovation sense.

~~~
nickpinkston
They'd probably call it a McWedding and not authentic. Look at the diamond
people - the whole thin is a racket around this "love" thing.

~~~
tomjen3
Damn, how do you disrupt the diamond industry. That would be awesome.

~~~
bhickey
If murdering children across two continents doesn't do it, I don't know what
will. For my part, the only diamonds I'll buy will be on a saw blade or drill
bit.

~~~
tomjen3
Ha, the truth is you can murder as many people you want, as long as it happens
far away so that the average consumer can forget all about it.

If not the chocolate companies would have had to stop by coca from farms with
child slaves, and people would have to stop visiting trafficked prostitutes.
Hint: they won't.

------
shinyorb
Fascinating thread. As a co-founder of a company in the wedding space
(shinyorb.com) and having gone through the wedding planning process myself, I
think there is definitely a need here!

Thought I'd throw in my $0.02 about customer acquisition to address some other
people's points about this space. While it is true that consumers in the
wedding area are one-time consumers, there are plenty of ways to market
besides AdWords. You could easily offer incentives to your current customers
for referring friends. For example, marking up a product by 2x and giving
people a 50% cut or rebate for referring a friend works wonders for many
businesses.

Echoing someone else's concern though, I'd be worried about how much I would
need to fight with my printer. Certain kinds of card stock would probably be a
nightmare to deal with. Not knowing much about printing, are there certain
things that can be done to make the DIY printing process easier? E.g. Limit to
8.5 x 11 PDFs to make printing easier or recommend certain kinds of card stock
or brands of paper that would work best? (heck, that could even be another
revenue stream: either affiliate or selling actual paper/card stock) Etc...

I applaud you for going for it -- it's a good idea. I signed up for your
mailing list. Let's see if we can work together...

------
ju2tin
It's already being done. I got an invitation to a friend's wedding via this
service:

<http://www.paperlesspost.com/>

~~~
ju2tin
Actually, those guys send virtual invitations; you are going to print them
out. So not the same thing. But similar in trying to undercut high-priced
competitors.

------
bootload
_"... My goal is to get this out really fast and start making revenue from the
start ... The wedding industry is huge, overpriced, and with insane profit
margins. I’m looking to disrupt it with WeddingType ..."_

In a startup I've worked in they had a _"wedding"_ section to the sight
allowing guest lists, gift ordering, vouchers and the like. Some of the things
I observed that seemed to matter included:

\- reputation: nobody wants to be screwed around on 'their' one day

\- reliability: as above

\- customer service: tech must have a human face as that's what is expected
(or if things get screwed up you need to be able to re-assure by person -
somehow)

\- design: high quality design (visual & user) is expected

It would be good to think of it this way. If you are building a service users
expect a level of experience. When they walk into a physical store supplying a
service, there is a high level of kerbside appeal. [0] Failure in appearing to
be able to do a good job & doing a good job will quickly kill your user base.
No bride wants something that appears cheap, rather something that looks &
behaves greater than the value paid.

Making the experience for the user good, making money fast is one problem to
overcome. I also question the "insane" profit margins assumption. Test it.

Observations: Having said that there is plenty of areas in the wedding
industry to interrupt. You can try from the person angle - ie: registry and
associated people (social) or the services angle (the stuff people having
weddings want to do). Matching the wedding to service is something I see a lot
online albeit using blogs. Having said that it's the services that are making
the money - but is it what people need?

[0]
[http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/spycatcher/201003/your-n...](http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/spycatcher/201003/your-
nonverbal-curbside-appeal)

------
awa
Sounds Interesting, have you thought about making an arrangement with some
printing service to print the cards so the users can basically design,
checkout and order professional printing at low charges from your site,
although keeping it optional for users.

I would go a step further and outsource the printing, take for instance Indian
wedding cards, they are elaborate and usually have multiple pages and cost
less than a dollar.

------
esschul
A homeprinted card will still have to be decorated and perfectioned beyond
death by your soon to be wife.

You might save a buck. We made all our card by hand. I still hate myself for
doing that. But I still don't really see what you're providing here? A design
for the cards? Suggestion of text?

I have openoffice and the interweb full of fonts, and I googled much of the
text.

------
ryanwanger
As a point of reference, I did print-your-own wedding invites. Bought them at
Michaels. Just use a text editor and a swirly font, then run them through your
home printer. We actually got compliments on them and I think they were less
than $1 per...plus about an hour total to write up the invite and print it out
60 times.

------
ivan_ah
The simplicity of charging someone for a PDF is beautiful!

The pdf file really has some value in it (content, layout, typography,
instructions for printing?, etc.), but ultimately boils down to a scalable
automated process.

How much would Moo.com charge us if we were to use them as the \to paper
backend?

------
starkfist
You should focus on having the coolest invitations, rather than focusing on
having a lower price.

------
oneten
We used <http://www.weddingpaperdivas.com/> and while it was higher than your
price point, they have a great app and quality finished product. You could
probably learn a bit from what they're doing.

------
sriramk
This is an interesting concept since my fiancee and I have been working on our
invitation for our upcoming wedding. Its a hard task but it is actually kind
of fun.

Our design discussions revolve a lot around what Jobs/Ive would do if he had
to design it :)

------
abrudtkuhl
The wedding industry is ripe for disruption...

My thoughts were more on the registry side of things - a $12 Billion industry
=> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1541767>

------
mgkimsal
Almost completely OT, but looking at limedarling's linkedin, I was pleasantly
surprised to see 'Grails' referenced as something she's working at bring
proficient in. Thanks LD - you made my day :)

------
mildweed
If you're not aware of minted.com, look into them. They'd be a competitor.
They run a similar service, but they require you use their printing services,
rather than just releasing it as a PDF.

------
amccloud
Have you seen <http://scrapblog.com/>

It's essentially what I imagine your idea is, but across many verticals,
including wedding prints.

------
plnewman
Good luck. If there is an industry out there that deserves to be disrupted,
it's the wedding industry.

------
DanielRibeiro
Nice idea. We can never have too much disruptive ideas. Wish you find your
cofounder.

~~~
limedaring
Thanks! <3

------
icefox
Being more disrupting, What about doing wedding invitations entirely online?

------
tomwalker
This is a fantastic idea and I love disruptive companies.

I wish you all the best.

------
callmeed
Email sent (from San Luis Obispo no less)

------
GrandMasterBirt
Cool stuff. But seriously I need you to move to new york :) So few startups
here, I blame you, the people coming up with ideas in California.

I worry about your business model though. It seems nice to be able to safe a
thousand or more dollars on wedding invitations BUT here are the problems:

1) When a wedding costs 25k, saving 50-500 bucks on an invitation is going to
be looked at as stupid, and cheap. You want the one that takes the most hassle
out of it.

2) A big part of the invitations is the printing/mailing. If only the design
was the only factor.

3) Often catering halls (im from new york) will do everything from getting the
place, getting the catering, getting the flowers, getting the invitations and
sending them out, its a full-blown package.

The real way to go about this is to have people design their invitations in an
awesome way quickly before their wedding, get hooked to it, and already have
that in mind. Makes it less of a headache for them, and sells your product.

