Launch HN: Free tool for creating your own group newsletter

TLDR; If you want regular, more meaningful communication with the most important people in your life, I created a tool that lets you have your own group newsletter.

Signup here (it’s free): www.letterloop.co

Background: Hey HN! Lately, I’ve been thinking about how to feel more connected to my close friends and family.

If you’re like me, you talk to your family and close friends over chat, sometimes over phone or video. You often end up playing phone tag. Usually, the conversations are about the basics. The facts of your life, how you’re doing, what they’re up to.

Only occasionally do you get to dive into deeper conversations about their biggest goals, hardest challenges, and truest feelings. Rarely do you get to share and hear without the distractions of life tugging from around the corner.

The problem: I realized I felt like I was running on automatic and just hoping for the best. I’d fall into the same, familiar patterns of communication, but find myself wishing for something more. I’d try to call more, but calls were erratic and hard to get the timing right. Texting was convenient but didn’t deliver on depth.

So I made Letterloop.

How it works: It’s a newsletter delivered to your inbox that covers the lives of your close friends and family.

1. Pick inquisitive questions: Choose from dozens of thoughtful questions or add your own. 2. Invite your inner circle: Just email, no apps. Add your people and we'll take care of the rest. 3. Share an experience: Get everyone's bite-sized stories in a fun and beautiful email, ready for reply-all.

Why a newsletter: Newsletters are an easy and thoughtful way for me to digest information on things I care about. I subscribe to newsletters covering topics across the board. I realized I wanted that same experience from my close friends and families. How can I easily, regularly know what’s going on and what matters most in their lives?

Try it out: I’ve been quietly testing the product for the last few months and am just now opening it up for early access. Would love to get thoughts and feedback!

Signup here (it’s free): www.letterloop.co

Thanks for question! Slack is a good first thought for a way to communicate with friends and family.

So, I've got a nuclear family of 9. We're a big group and squarely in the market for anything related to family connection. Just speaking from my own experience, it's hard for me to imagine creating a Slack group for my family because Slack feels like a place for work.

So I think that energetically the feel of Slack is quite a bit off. I'm looking for a dedicated family experience, and wouldn't get what I want seeing my family's Slack group amongst the many other work ones I've joined.

There's also a usage problem. Despite Slack being obviously popular, a lot of my siblings (and definitely my parents) don't use it or don't have a clue what it is. When I initially floated the idea to friends, they had some concern specifically around their parents' ability to download and use an app. That concern was fairly well alleviated when I suggested everything could be done over email.

Hence I chose email as a better lowest common denominator form of communication across different ages.

But the biggest thing is probably that a Slack message doesn't offer the same experience as as a collaborative newsletter. Letterloop basically works like a survey. It lets you ask thoughtful questions that everyone answers asynchronously. Then, all the answer are compiled into a newsletter that gets sent to everyone. So, you see everyone's replies to all questions at once.

This would be really hard to achieve with a Slack. You'd have to ask the questions in a channel, then let people add answers in subsequent messages. That means you'll get an individual notification for each message, vs a single notification that the newsletter has arrived.

I think that makes a big difference for engagement. One of the goals of the newsletter is to make sure everyone is seen and heard. Presenting all replies at once is a great way to do this. I used to try asking thoughtful questions over chat, but they would get drowned out by other random messages interspersed between member replies. Plus, it led to more notification fatigue.

I also think there's something to be said for presentation. The newsletter delivers the replies in a really beautiful way that makes the group feel more cohesive — like they accomplished something together. You can upload images and there are dedicated sections that help organize replies. It's pretty cool to see your family members all come together and make something. Opening the newsletter definitely creates a very positive feeling about the group that made it. I think you wouldn't be able to get that feeling at all with a series of messages in a workplace messaging app, and it's actually one of the things I've enjoyed the most about my own Letterloop experience.