8 ms·

Chirply (YC S10) is Threadless for Paper Goods

84 points by transburgh 16y ago

shaggyfrog 16y ago
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.
- gaganpalrecha 16y ago
  sorry about that! The shop isn't active so those links are empty links. Right now it's all voting and submissions :)
  - steve-howard 16y ago
    It may be a good idea to let the user know that if they click the links.
swombat 16y ago
So, that's like http://moonpig.com 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.
- seanahrens 16y ago
  sometimes focus (on one vertical - as opposed to four) can mean all the difference.
- gaganpalrecha 16y ago
  and it's crowd-sourced design, so the designs are better. Whereas moonpig is mostly about customized text.
  - adityakothadiya 16y ago
    Probably the more appropriate question is - how it's different than http://minted.com 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?
euroclydon 16y ago
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.
- maayank 16y ago
  forgive me for my lack of knowledge of HN lore, but what was the advice? (a link/keywords for searching would be good :)
  - euroclydon 16y ago
    There's this user, patio11, I think he's in the top 5 karma here, and his schtick might be summed up as: 1) A/B Test 2) Middle aged women are tremendously underserved in the software market, and not because they don't buy software.
  - patio11 16y ago
    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.
    - maayank 16y ago
      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 :)
      - patio11 16y ago
        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."
dtran 16y ago
Congrats Gagan, Neel, and the rest of the Chirply team!
gustaf 16y ago
Congrats on the launch Gagan! Great piece!
- gaganpalrecha 16y ago
  thanks gustaf!
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
francoisdevlin 16y ago
So... how do I actually BUY these cards? I WANT TO GIVE YOU MONEY.
- npalrecha 16y ago
  The cards go on sale after the first contest is over, at the beginning of March. :)
- euroclydon 16y ago
  Their home page is the equivalent of going to mcdonalds.com and seeing a help wanted ad instead of a juicy Chipotle BBQ Bacon Angus Burger.
crcarlson 16y ago
The site looks great guys, can't wait until I can order my cards and wrapping paper from chirply.
bioh42_2 16y ago
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.
pomfreyblack 16y ago
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.
drpancake 16y ago
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!
- gaganpalrecha 16y ago
  haha, everything you just said is already in development! great minds think alike :)
  - pasbesoin 16y ago
    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.
- adityakothadiya 16y ago
  Try http://tinyprints.com http://tinyprints.com or http://minted.com http://minted.com
- frossie 16y ago
  Printed & sent That's the big thing I see missing here. "Having it sent" is the goal of the game. Otherwise I might as well snap a personal photo and send it with Postino (which is how I am doing things now - and unscientific sampling shows that is much more likely to stay on somebody's fridge long after the event is past). Still, wrapping paper has some potential, especially if they offer good quality paper, which Hallmark/Walmart/whatever don't seem to carry much.
gkoberger 16y ago
The logo, sketch-y theme and use of birds and clouds is strikingly similar to the Chirp conference website. http://www.chirply.com/ http://www.chirply.com/ http://chirp.twitter.com/ http://chirp.twitter.com/
- MisterMerkin 16y ago
  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.
prawn 16y ago
The link, in case people try .ly first: http://www.chirply.com/ 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.
- catshirt 16y ago
  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.
kdivvela 16y ago
Awesome designs + Easy UI = Totally looking forward to ordering cards to send my mom :) Congrats Gagan and Neel!
nopassrecover 16y ago
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.

84 points by transburgh 16y ago

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.

gaganpalrecha 16y ago
sorry about that! The shop isn't active so those links are empty links. Right now it's all voting and submissions :)
- steve-howard 16y ago
  It may be a good idea to let the user know that if they click the links.

swombat 16y ago

So, that's like http://moonpig.com 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.

seanahrens 16y ago
sometimes focus (on one vertical - as opposed to four) can mean all the difference.
gaganpalrecha 16y ago
and it's crowd-sourced design, so the designs are better. Whereas moonpig is mostly about customized text.
- adityakothadiya 16y ago
  Probably the more appropriate question is - how it's different than http://minted.com 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?

euroclydon 16y ago

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.

maayank 16y ago
forgive me for my lack of knowledge of HN lore, but what was the advice? (a link/keywords for searching would be good :)
- euroclydon 16y ago
  There's this user, patio11, I think he's in the top 5 karma here, and his schtick might be summed up as: 1) A/B Test 2) Middle aged women are tremendously underserved in the software market, and not because they don't buy software.
- patio11 16y ago
  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.
  - maayank 16y ago
    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 :)
    - patio11 16y ago
      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."

dtran 16y ago

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

gustaf 16y ago

Congrats on the launch Gagan! Great piece!

gaganpalrecha 16y ago
thanks gustaf!

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

francoisdevlin 16y ago

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

npalrecha 16y ago
The cards go on sale after the first contest is over, at the beginning of March. :)
euroclydon 16y ago
Their home page is the equivalent of going to mcdonalds.com and seeing a help wanted ad instead of a juicy Chipotle BBQ Bacon Angus Burger.

crcarlson 16y ago

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

bioh42_2 16y ago

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.

pomfreyblack 16y ago

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.

drpancake 16y ago

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!

gaganpalrecha 16y ago
haha, everything you just said is already in development! great minds think alike :)
- pasbesoin 16y ago
  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.
adityakothadiya 16y ago
Try http://tinyprints.com http://tinyprints.com or http://minted.com http://minted.com
frossie 16y ago
Printed & sent That's the big thing I see missing here. "Having it sent" is the goal of the game. Otherwise I might as well snap a personal photo and send it with Postino (which is how I am doing things now - and unscientific sampling shows that is much more likely to stay on somebody's fridge long after the event is past). Still, wrapping paper has some potential, especially if they offer good quality paper, which Hallmark/Walmart/whatever don't seem to carry much.

gkoberger 16y ago

The logo, sketch-y theme and use of birds and clouds is strikingly similar to the Chirp conference website. http://www.chirply.com/ http://www.chirply.com/ http://chirp.twitter.com/ http://chirp.twitter.com/

MisterMerkin 16y ago
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.

prawn 16y ago

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

catshirt 16y ago
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.

kdivvela 16y ago

Awesome designs + Easy UI = Totally looking forward to ordering cards to send my mom :) Congrats Gagan and Neel!

nopassrecover 16y ago

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.