Paid email? Regardless of the merits of the idea here, its worth looking at history. The idea "if I could charge 1 cent for every e-mail" is the most scalable business model. But every Mckinsey consultant and two-bit MBA has dreamed of this "Goose" that lays the golden egg, since the dawn of the internet. So has every tax-seeking government. But it has not happened. There is a deep seeded respect online for 0 marginal cost communication. Large enough to even hold off the shadowy forces of very powerful monied interests. At least to date. The idea is in a certain way disrespectful to the foundations of online culture. LIke asking, what if PG charged for every post on HN? This is not passing judgement on the idea itself, more raising context, unintended consequences and other latent forces at play. In other words: overcoming this inertia, would be part of the challenge.
Startup idea: short, paid email
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Re: Startup idea: short, paid email
#42The truth is that only the Robert Scobles in this world are affected by head-aching e-mail management problems. For the rest of the 99% it simply isn't that MUCH of an issue. That's why I don't think it will catch on. But nice idea though.
Hmm... but Robert Scobles, and more to the point, Beyonce, Jay Z, Lady Gaga etc might be willing to use the service as a screening tool for all the promo pitches they get. Or at least their agents & publicists might.
Beyonce surely has an army of PAs and social media managers to shield her from it.
Scoble is probably in the small intersection of people with massive volume of incoming messages who doesn't have a human screening it. It's in his job description.
Re: Startup idea: short, paid email
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is true, and my point was more an aside about businesses that have a profit motive and incorporate a charity component to it so this probably wasn't the best thread to muse in. That being said, I don't know if the charity aspect would still accomplish the desired goals. What if the recipient started skimming emails, with no real intention of following through, just because they want to see their favorite charity…
Interesting thought, but if your aim was to get as much money as possible for a charity then a.) skim reading as opposed to reading fully doesn't earn your charity any more and b.) if anything, people are more likely to spend money again if you pay them attention and respond fairly
Hmm, you've got a point. I didn't think about the possiblity of email conversations and how that would impact any cost imposed as well as whether charity was involved.
Re: Startup idea: short, paid email
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
That may be true, but that would be a pretty small market.
What if you market it as some high end service? I mean exotic cars and luxury handbags have a pretty small market too, right?
"Any idiot with money can send you an e-mail directly" doesn't scream high-end to me.
Re: Startup idea: short, paid email
#45How about an app that donates the 20 bucks it costs to send someone an email to charity? Seems like it would have a built in marketing strategy.
I'm going to reply to my own comment because I just came up with an awesome feature for this app: Priority inbox based on how much the sender donated.
Re: Startup idea: short, paid email
#46How about an app that donates the 20 bucks it costs to send someone an email to charity? Seems like it would have a built in marketing strategy.
This is somewhat orthogonal but am I the only one that usually finds businesses built on "do X and help charity at the same time" as pretty weak? It's strikes me as though the business operator doesn't believe in the value they are providing so they piggyback off the value of donating to charity. There are exceptions, things like the Humble Bundles, but I tend to buy those primarily as call to actions for charity don…
The donation isn't so much about piggy backing (although I see why it seems like that since I made that marketing comment). The money ensures that the sender is serious while not simply providing a platform for celebrity entrepreneurs to further enrich themselves (not what I had in mind while reading this guy's idea but an equally valid business model I suppose). As far as the sender and receiver are concerned the only thing the fee does is ensure that sender is serious about this email. You could just as easily collect the fee as the middle man and not distribute it to either. The charity thing just helps senders feel a little better about where their money is going (while helping the world suck a little less). Remember, people don't like feeling manipulated and paying a company to "prove" that you are serious about an email isn't something that would sit well with me.
The comparison I had in my mind is something along the lines of paying a fee to complete a bitcoin transaction. The fee is distributed to a "charity" of sorts (the bit coin miners) and goes toward making the world suck less (making sure the block chain is secure). Also it legitimizes the transaction so the sender knows these bit coins are the real deal. If that doesn't make sense feel free to ignore that last paragraph :P
Re: Startup idea: short, paid email
#47Something like this? https://shortmail.com/
Yes, I wonder why it hasn't taken off. Perhaps lack of word of mouth, or the fact that it's lacking the "paid" component. I would feel bad about telling people to email me at shortmail.com, but a VC who receives tons of unsolicited pitches wouldn't. Some would love charging a fee to get pitched over email. If it takes 30 seconds and they pay you 20 bucks, why not.
Probably because that landing page doesn't tell me much about how it works. It's "limited to 500 characters"... for the sender? What happens if it's more than 500 characters or has an attachment? Or wait, is this a walled garden thing? I can't tell.
So I check the "Why shortmail" page (which 99% of visitors will not do), and I'm still not sure what happens if incoming e-mails are longer than 500 chars.
Re: Startup idea: short, paid email
#48The Marc Andreessen scenario aside, sounds like the right direction for some future of consumer direct marketing... rather than the $s going to an intermediary... it should ultimately transfer to the consumer (assuming said marketplace is sufficiently designed to minimize the aggregate effect of people trying to hack the market without ever consuming).
Re: Startup idea: short, paid email
#49I like the idea for length-limited emails, it's original and clever. Unlike shortmail, this limits people who aren't on your whitelist.
Automated response email (good catch Rudism) could be handled via some sort of separate inbox or UI organization.
One counterintuitive thought: this may work even better within corporations. My external email isn't bad, but company internal email has always been a few hundred messages a day for me. A length limitation might put the onus back on the sender to be efficient.
Re: Startup idea: short, paid email
#50The biggest problem with this idea is that it violates people's expectations. People already know how email works. They don't expect to hit a character limit. They will simply get annoyed. If you want to "take features away", you need to create a completely separate concept in people's minds. Twitter works because people don't think of it as "email that's limited to 140 characters". They think of it as a completely s…
That is a good point. However, this already happens. How often do you email support@somewhere only to get a response that says "your email has been received, we'll process it within 24 hours?" In some cases you'd like to have the option to pay something so that it's processed in one hour. Also, some people don't care if you're annoyed. VCs, celebrities, etc. get tons of email that they can't read anyway. What if Lady…
> What if Lady Gaga received 30 short emails per day from fans who paid $100 (adjust the numbers until it's manageable for her) instead of 100k emails that go to /dev/null ?
Fanmail is a part of being a celebrity, and managing your fans is what keeps them happy and giving you money in innumerate ways.
Asking your most fanatic to pay you more money just to email you would be insulting and might trigger backlash.