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Threadable (YC W14) makes mailing lists more awesome, less noisy

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Re: Threadable (YC W14) makes mailing lists more awesome, less noisy

#3
This feels like a lot of the good stuff Google Wave promised (and failed to deliver) but implemented with e-mail, in a way that will scale. Very nice, and I hope they get good adoption, because whilst most e-mail list web interfaces are terrible, keeping e-mail for casual contributors is invaluable.

Re: Threadable (YC W14) makes mailing lists more awesome, less noisy

#5
post #2

What I like about Threadable is that it's both obvious and contrarian. Startup people usually turn their noses up at mere email. Not sexy enough. Except, everyone relies on email, and everyone hates their tools for managing it.

Thanks, neilk. People say they hate email, but we see that as an indicator of its utility: "I hate this but use it everyday" sounds like an opportunity for improvement. As Elie Wiesel said, "the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference."

Re: Threadable (YC W14) makes mailing lists more awesome, less noisy

#7
We've been using it for our non-profit for the past few months as an early beta tester. So far I love it. Clean reinvention of mailing lists. I'd say mailing list on steroids but that's wrong as while it is more feature packed it isn't overwhelming with options. The added features are built on where needed in and intuitive way. Of course as with any new product, It's not without it's issues of course but it's been amazing to watch the progress and improvements they've made in only a few months. The people at Threadable are very responsive and open to comments and ideas.

Re: Threadable (YC W14) makes mailing lists more awesome, less noisy

#9
post #6

Hi, everyone. I'm Ian, one of the Threadable founders. I'd be happy to answer any questions.

What's the plan for a business model?

Our current thought is to charge for business features. A Threadable list is a pretty open place by default. Lists are all members-only, but once you've been added you have a lot of control. Private (within the team) subgroups are a feature we'll likely charge for, along with Google Apps integration. We've also seen a lot of interest in a product that can be installed behind a firewall, but that's a little further off.

One thing we know for sure is that we won't charge based on the number of users in your organization. We really value people being able to use Threadable for large-scale organizing outside of the business context, and we don't want our pricing model to limit that.

Re: Threadable (YC W14) makes mailing lists more awesome, less noisy

#10
post #8

Hi, everyone. I'm Ian, one of the Threadable founders. I'd be happy to answer any questions.

What was your solution to Django's unreliable collectstatic?

Heh. Threadable's actually Rails on the backend, but last time I had a problem with collectstatic being slow, I used this: https://github.com/antonagestam/collectfast
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