I was making a case for why it is worth throwing another $5M at when you have already thrown $2M. You were asking why they got the funding, not if it would wor

I was making a case for why it is worth throwing another $5M at when you have already thrown $2M. You were asking why they got the funding, not if it would work. Very different propositions -- they only have to get to 1 in 10 odds to make it worth funding. ... But as for the points, 1 & 2. It's a better marketing proposition than Facebook is today if done right. There is $17B spent on postage and maybe about $30B spent on printing in direct mail today in the US alone. Once you get penetration, the ads will come to you digitally and would know what people want (because they will tell you by opting out what they don't) and you have rooftop location which Facebook doesn't have or doesn't expose. Trust me -- this is my business. A good replacement for direct mail is giant opportunity. 3. Yeah, I don't like the last mile part either. Will and Evan do. However, it is clearly a place to extract value if they can saturate the dense zip-codes and have a good relationship with the individuals. It is no different than JetBlue taking traffic on major routes. The USPS is burdened with Rural delivery. UPS and FedEx prove that Urban delivery can be profitable. 4. Bill Pay. The existing services in this market charge the biller $0.75 to deliver. The biller saves on printing so both sides win. This is a proven market with PayTrust being the pioneer. At scale, it is clearly a good revenue source. Outbox is a natural to capture business from the existing services. 5. Saturating zips. I don't think you've demonstrated that the costs won't work. You assume a certain ratio of FTE to customers and then say it is impossible. That same type of logic is why everyone said UPS and FedEx would never work. I don't know if you are right. But these VCs are not dumb money -- they probably have better numbers on this than you do. This is exactly what they are testing in Austin and SF today so, internally, they have some decent estimates of the costs. ... 6. How often do you get mail that you care about? For me, it is once per week at most. Using Outbox lets you change what you get in the mail. People will opt-out because it is easy. Thus, people are likely to wind up with only a few items being delivered per month once Outbox builds relationships with the billers and stops the paper advertisers. ps - I don't think they are talking about a smart mailbox. I just like the idea.