

Chirply (YC S10) is Threadless for Paper Goods - transburgh
http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/09/y-combinator-backed-chirply-is-threadless-for-paper-goods/

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euroclydon
This will be a winner because:

1) Targets women, so leverages 50% of patio11's awesome advice.

2) Unlike the similar product I'm working on, solves the huge problem of
content creation.

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maayank
forgive me for my lack of knowledge of HN lore, but what was the advice? (a
link/keywords for searching would be good :)

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patio11
Give the Business of Software guys a few months and there will be a video
which answers one of these questions in an amusing fashion.

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maayank
In the meantime, to build upon euroclydon's summary, do you have any
recommended articles about catering to, um, middle aged women? (software! I
mean software-wise!)

On your blog I found only something about abusive customers :)

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patio11
I have quite a few HN comments about it. Most of them boil down to "You should
try selling software to women. Women pay money for software, unlike
20-something white and Asian males. You are more likely to sell software which
solves a pressing problem for her than to sell software which solves a
pressing problem for him like 'How do I steal music more efficiently?' Also,
since the industry spends a disproportionate amount of time and effort on the
needs of techies, the software currently available to her largely sucks, and
fairly few competitors are in any given niche relative to the market
opportunity. This is profitably exploitable: make something that she wants,
charge money, she will happily pay you money."

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drpancake
This is a slight tangent, but my dream service - and sadly I'm only half
joking - would be:

* Enter in a list of all those family members I'm obliged to send birthday and Christmas cards to, including some basic demographic info

* Upload an image of my handwriting

* I'm reminded at the appropriate times to pick from a filtered selection of cards and enter a personalised message

* Printed & sent (bonus points: handwriting looks real)

Someone build this please!

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gaganpalrecha
haha, everything you just said is already in development! great minds think
alike :)

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pasbesoin
Possible variant: Accept a picture/image of a handwritten message, and apply
it (cleanly) to the card / piece to be mailed.

EDIT: I'm thinking of e.g. an image from a cell phone, if you can get
sufficient quality. Not something that becomes significant effort for the
user. Bonus points if, or necessary that it looks (fairly well) handwritten.

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gkoberger
The logo, sketch-y theme and use of birds and clouds is strikingly similar to
the Chirp conference website.

<http://www.chirply.com/> <http://chirp.twitter.com/>

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MisterMerkin
I dare you to make a logo for any org with the name chirp at the root of its
name with anything other than a bird.

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prawn
The link, in case people try .ly first: <http://www.chirply.com/>

A few things I noticed:

    
    
      - front page looks very different from the voting index, as though they're very different sites
      - front page lacks focus
      - index mentions tacky greeting cards but only shows blank white line-art empty cards rather than actual examples/previews (even if they're not real yet). I'd cut back (or shrink) the front page text and put some designs to vote on there too.
    

Hopefully the front page is just temporary until winning designs are chosen
because all the best stuff is hidden behind it.

Related: Someone should collate "Threadless for x" and FML clone sites so
people can see what openings are still available in the market.

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catshirt
i actually owned the domain chirp.ly back in the day. got an inquiry of
purchase sometime that would fall in line with the conception of this company.
though lost contact with the inquirer.

possible it wasn't the yc company, but i only bring it up because i've seen
this happen several times on hn and hey, small world.

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swombat
So, that's like <http://moonpig.com> then? What do they do differently?

Edit: Nevermind, answered it myself. Chirply does all paper goods, whereas
moonpig only does cards, flowers, gifts, and bottles.

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gaganpalrecha
and it's crowd-sourced design, so the designs are better. Whereas moonpig is
mostly about customized text.

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adityakothadiya
Probably the more appropriate question is - how it's different than
<http://minted.com>? I know TinyPrints is not crowd-sourced, but Minted is.

Please note, I'm not trying to demean your service or existence by any means,
but just trying to learn how you're distinguishing and plan to compete with
this super growing startups?

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pomfreyblack
This is really neat! I just heard about this on Twitter and can't wait to get
these cards out to the family next holiday season.

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crcarlson
The site looks great guys, can't wait until I can order my cards and wrapping
paper from chirply.

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nopassrecover
Greeting cards have needed fixing for a long time, but the traditional card
brands have tended to pay for fitting/fixtures etc. to have a monopoly in
stores (at least here in Aus). Always good to see more competition in this
space.

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shaggyfrog
On my Mac, Safari & Firefox, the "Shop" links on the front page do nothing.
Also not sure why the links there aren't seasonal -- the Christmas Cards link
is useless, but a Valentine's Day link would be useful.

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gaganpalrecha
sorry about that! The shop isn't active so those links are empty links. Right
now it's all voting and submissions :)

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steve-howard
It may be a good idea to let the user know that if they click the links.

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bioh42_2
Wow, I'm bachelor dude and I don't care for stuff like this and even I want to
order from them. If this is how I feel, I can't even imagine what... this is
going to be HUGE.

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kdivvela
Awesome designs + Easy UI = Totally looking forward to ordering cards to send
my mom :)

Congrats Gagan and Neel!

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francoisdevlin
So... how do I actually BUY these cards? I WANT TO GIVE YOU MONEY.

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npalrecha
The cards go on sale after the first contest is over, at the beginning of
March. :)

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dtran
Congrats Gagan, Neel, and the rest of the Chirply team!

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gustaf
Congrats on the launch Gagan! Great piece!

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gaganpalrecha
thanks gustaf!

