Chirply (YC S10) is Threadless for Paper Goods

http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/09/y-combinator-backed-chirply-is-threadless-for-paper-goods/

by transburgh • 15 years ago

84 33 15 years ago

shaggyfrog• 15 years 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.

gaganpalrecha4• 15 years 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• 15 years ago

It may be a good idea to let the user know that if they click the links.

swombat• 15 years ago

So, that's like 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• 15 years ago

sometimes focus (on one vertical - as opposed to four) can mean all the difference.

gaganpalrecha4• 15 years ago

and it's crowd-sourced design, so the designs are better. Whereas moonpig is mostly about customized text.

adityakothadiya2• 15 years ago

Probably the more appropriate question is - how it's different than 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?

euroclydon3• 15 years 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.

maayank2• 15 years ago

forgive me for my lack of knowledge of HN lore, but what was the advice? (a link/keywords for searching would be good :)

euroclydon3• 15 years 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.

patio112• 15 years 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.

dtran• 15 years ago

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

gustaf• 15 years ago

Congrats on the launch Gagan! Great piece!

gaganpalrecha4• 15 years ago

thanks gustaf!

francoisdevlin• 15 years ago

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

npalrecha• 15 years ago

The cards go on sale after the first contest is over, at the beginning of March. :)

euroclydon3• 15 years 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• 15 years ago

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

bioh42_2• 15 years 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• 15 years 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• 15 years 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!

gaganpalrecha4• 15 years ago

haha, everything you just said is already in development! great minds think alike :)

pasbesoin• 15 years 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.

adityakothadiya2• 15 years ago

Try http://tinyprints.com or http://minted.com

frossie• 15 years 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• 15 years 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://chirp.twitter.com/

MisterMerkin• 15 years 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• 15 years ago

The link, in case people try .ly first: 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• 15 years 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• 15 years ago

Awesome designs + Easy UI = Totally looking forward to ordering cards to send my mom :)

Congrats Gagan and Neel!

nopassrecover• 15 years 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.

Chirply (YC S10) is Threadless for Paper Goods

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