Ask HN: Review my startup: Send Handwritten Thank You Notes to Your Customers

1. An API/plug-in: no. A service where you do most of the work: yes. I.e., I upload a spreadsheet and you make the magic happen. I don't want to have to do any extra work than I have to, especially since I'm paying you money. Still, this would be very valuable (akin to Shoeboxed entering all my receipts digitally for me).

2. There's only one feature that is important to me: there must be no doubt whatsoever that this letter was sent by anyone but me. I'd expand on this but I think you already have a pretty good idea of what this means and how to solve for it.

Great use of the Woothemes template by the way. There are definitely some UX improvements that could be made (see: http://www.slideshare.net/shereefb/recommendations-for-bette... for tips. Original conversation: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1836538). But overall you seem to be on the right track.

As a small business owner, this definitely solves a noticeable pain point. TTN is a service I would use, at the right price point.

1/ Yes. But I'd prefer you make it easy to integrate with my existing systems. As a stop gap, a web form would be fine; I can probably post to it from my system for volume transactions, or just fill it out for occasional correspondence. I am willing to pay in advance for credits or whatever to do this.

2/ Unless I am misunderstanding something, there's no way I filling out that three-stage form for every note. Is there not an account feature? (To me, that is MVP.)

3/ I would totally use this but very likely not at the volume you're looking for. If I'm going to do this, I would like the option to ship you at my expense a supply of my own branded notecards to use. If you're using my stock instead of yours, I do not want you to charge me more to use it - you're saving on your own paper costs.

4/ International postage?

5/ Your definition of neat writing is different than mine, just as an FYI.

This is a creative idea, but I have a few suggestions. 1) Penmanship is a key thing with this, I suppose if it looks too professional that could be a problem, but the note in the sample seems like the lines are bunched and skewed. 2) One question that occurred to me is that if I am a company in location A, if you drop my notes in a postbox they will have the postmark for your location. Might be worth mentioning that you can send them to me in the faq as well as the video.

In terms of using the service, I am unsure about the price point, I wonder is it a little high?

I would be more likely to use it if there were a range of calligraphic as well as normal handwritten note.

A final thing: what about headed paper / templates? Could be useful for a company as they often use compliments cards.

Best of luck!

Clickable: http://www.thankthanknotes.com/

Am I the only one here who doesn't like the basic premise of this service?

Why is a handwritten note better than an email? I would argue that it is because the handwritten note is more authentic and genuine. If you then pay someone else to write them, then the value is destroyed. You lose the essence of the 'handwrittenness'

This service also has the ability to backfire on the note sender: If I was to get one of these, and later find out that it came from some external service with an API and a pricing plan, I'd be much more annoyed than not getting anything at all.

A good target audience would be the students (esp seniors) - sending a thank you note after an interview.

Amazingly, I've met another company working on this - Gracious Eloise. You might find it worth looking into as you're doing your homework for this.