Ask HN: Review my startup: Send Handwritten Thank You Notes to Your Customers

10 points by kstealth25 15 years ago | 12 comments

I'd really appreciate your feedback on my project, ThankThank Notes. http://www.thankthanknotes.com/

What, Why and How

ThankThank Notes help businesses send handwritten thank you notes to their customers efficiently. Customized, handwritten notes are truly remarkable in this age of IMs and emails. But who has time to sit down and write them? ThankThank Notes physically handwrites your notes and mails them out. Using a web app, you dictate a message and who you want to send notes to. An army of staffers then handwrites, hand-addresses, stamps and mails out your handwritten notes.

Where We Think We're Going

An API or plug-in that will automate the sending of handwritten thank you notes within your current workflow More information is here: http://www.thankthanknotes.com/recurring-notes

In trying to stay lean, we're looking for 10 lighthouse customers that will say "Yes, I want an API/plug-in from ThankThank Notes; I’ll spend 30 minutes telling you what I want; and I’m willing to pay $3 a note to send notes to my customers for 3 months" before we actually build the technology above and beyond the minimum viable product that we have out there today.

Specific Questions

1. Would you use an API/plug-in to automate the sending of handwritten thank you notes to your customers? A "no" won't hurt my feelings.

2. If yes, what features would be absolutely critical to you (i.e. I'd have to be able to indicate the gender of the handwriting or I wouldn't use the service.)?

thetylerhayes 15 years ago |

1. An API/plug-in: no. A service where you do most of the work: yes. I.e., I upload a spreadsheet and you make the magic happen. I don't want to have to do any extra work than I have to, especially since I'm paying you money. Still, this would be very valuable (akin to Shoeboxed entering all my receipts digitally for me).

2. There's only one feature that is important to me: there must be no doubt whatsoever that this letter was sent by anyone but me. I'd expand on this but I think you already have a pretty good idea of what this means and how to solve for it.

Great use of the Woothemes template by the way. There are definitely some UX improvements that could be made (see: http://www.slideshare.net/shereefb/recommendations-for-bette... for tips. Original conversation: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1836538). But overall you seem to be on the right track.

As a small business owner, this definitely solves a noticeable pain point. TTN is a service I would use, at the right price point.

kstealth25 15 years ago | |

Thanks so much for your feedback!

1. Interesting. Uploading a spreadsheet is the minimum viable product that we have up and working today. 2. Makes sense 3. Will definitely get to work on UX/general website improvements. Really appreciate the link. Sounds like $3 a note isn't the right price point for you?

thetylerhayes 15 years ago | | |

As for the $3, two things come to mind:

First, I'm uneducated as to what I would spend if I were to do this myself. Maybe educate people like me on your website? Something along the lines of "Nice envelopes, stationery, and postage alone will cost you $2.50." Or something like that -- this is just a starting point.

Second, if I understand that $3 is a fair price (or you educate/convince me that it is), it's important that you decide whether $3 is fair for a la carte or fair for bulk pricing, as it can't be fair for both. I say this because you are bound to get customers who will want to send 1 note/month, and some who want to send 1,000/week. And if I were a customer who sent 1,000/week, I would want to know I'm getting a better price than those sending 1/month.

(BTW, I'd be glad to offer a bit of UX advice if you have some specific thoughts or questions. Email in profile.)

SabrinaDent 15 years ago |

1/ Yes. But I'd prefer you make it easy to integrate with my existing systems. As a stop gap, a web form would be fine; I can probably post to it from my system for volume transactions, or just fill it out for occasional correspondence. I am willing to pay in advance for credits or whatever to do this.

2/ Unless I am misunderstanding something, there's no way I filling out that three-stage form for every note. Is there not an account feature? (To me, that is MVP.)

3/ I would totally use this but very likely not at the volume you're looking for. If I'm going to do this, I would like the option to ship you at my expense a supply of my own branded notecards to use. If you're using my stock instead of yours, I do not want you to charge me more to use it - you're saving on your own paper costs.

4/ International postage?

5/ Your definition of neat writing is different than mine, just as an FYI.

uberalex 15 years ago |

This is a creative idea, but I have a few suggestions. 1) Penmanship is a key thing with this, I suppose if it looks too professional that could be a problem, but the note in the sample seems like the lines are bunched and skewed. 2) One question that occurred to me is that if I am a company in location A, if you drop my notes in a postbox they will have the postmark for your location. Might be worth mentioning that you can send them to me in the faq as well as the video.

In terms of using the service, I am unsure about the price point, I wonder is it a little high?

I would be more likely to use it if there were a range of calligraphic as well as normal handwritten note.

A final thing: what about headed paper / templates? Could be useful for a company as they often use compliments cards.

Best of luck!

kstealth25 15 years ago | |

Thanks for sharing your thoughts! 1. Good point. I need to upload a few more samples, especially those that show better penmanship. 2. Awesome. I'll add this information to the FAQ page. 3. What price point would make sense to you? Interesting. I'm not familiar with compliment cards. I'll have to check those out.

thetylerhayes 15 years ago |

Clickable: http://www.thankthanknotes.com/

tomfakes 15 years ago |

Am I the only one here who doesn't like the basic premise of this service?

Why is a handwritten note better than an email? I would argue that it is because the handwritten note is more authentic and genuine. If you then pay someone else to write them, then the value is destroyed. You lose the essence of the 'handwrittenness'

This service also has the ability to backfire on the note sender: If I was to get one of these, and later find out that it came from some external service with an API and a pricing plan, I'd be much more annoyed than not getting anything at all.

mr_b 15 years ago |

A good target audience would be the students (esp seniors) - sending a thank you note after an interview.

ahoyhere 15 years ago | |

Students are not known for spending on things like this.

teach 15 years ago | | |

But their mothers are.

Edit: Sorry, I misread the GP comment. I'm a high school teacher, so I automatically thought of graduating (HS) seniors sending out thank you notes to those who'd sent a gift.

smarterchild 15 years ago |

Amazingly, I've met another company working on this - Gracious Eloise. You might find it worth looking into as you're doing your homework for this.