Paperless Post is an awesome new service that allows you to make custom invitations that look like engraved type on a nice thick paper stock – but it’s all digital. Facebook or Evite no more – show your guests that you’re all class. These invites show up just like the *real* thing, envelope and all, yet you can make them and send them right from your desk in a matter of minutes. Click here to see one of their cards animating, and then read the interview below!
How did this start?
James: Well it was easy to find each other, because we’re brother and sister, so that was a previous relationship… We’ve always been really close. We cooperate well. And we decided that we wanted to do something together professionally.
Why Paperless Post? Where did the idea come from?
James: We threw some ideas around, but we came to this one because we decided that there was no online option for designing and sending a meaningful note – something that expresses your look and your style. That’s a big part of how people have communicated for a long time, but it’s not one that’s caught up with the internet until now. The people who love us are are people who really get what’s great about nice paper.
Alexa: We wanted to create a platform for more meaningful communication online, both aesthetically and emotionally. And we want to give people a centralized archive of all these really important communications from years of their life.
Like a box of letters.
Alexa: Yes, exactly. I don’t know if you’ve ever done this, but I always save birthday cards. That’s basically the only kind of paper card I get anymore, because it comes with a physical gift. The experience of going back through all these old cards is really powerful. Each one of them represents the person that wrote it, because they chose this paper and they wrote these words and it was to you. It has a meaning that transcends the time when it was written. We want to make that for the online world.
James: Bringing texture to the flatness of email is our big idea. We’re giving people the tools to create and manage the communication that actually matters to them online, in an emotional way.
That’s really cool. When did you launch?
James: We launched our public beta on April 17th of 2009, but we started thinking about this business about 2 years ago. I was a sophomore in college, and Alexa was one year out.
Alexa: We took this risk and it was really scary. But I remember James saying to me once – a lot of times the scariest things that you do, if they work out, they’re better than you expected. You really couldn’t have imagined what happens.
Do you guys have a business background?
Alexa: We didn’t have a business background, but now we do! If you have a goal in mind, and you want to achieve that goal really, really, really badly, then you do everything that you need to do to make it happen. The limitations that building a viable business sets can actually be a really good thing for creativity.
Definitely. I think that’s important. If you could do anything in the world, you wouldn’t know where to start.
Alexa: No, you wouldn’t. And what you would make probably wouldn’t be that awesome, because it would be all about you.
Have you seen a good response so far? What has it been like?
Alexa: Yeah, it’s been incredible. We’ve grown by a multiple of 10 in terms of users and revenue in the past 4 months. What people like most is the aesthetics. If you read the reactions from users, it’s just all about design. A really important part of the site is our design tool. It allows you to choose a paper, choose a motif, set the type, and word the invitation. There are defaults set in so that there is some guidance for people who don’t feel comfortable really getting into the whole design process. But then, a lot of people who use us really do have a vision of what they want this to look like. The products that come out of these user accounts are really amazingly reflective of those people who make them. They’re really different.
How have you gotten the word out about your service? How has this spread?
James: It’s been a lot of viral growth. People receive these invitations and notice that it’s different from anything they’ve ever seen before on their computer screen. They say, “What is this?” and go to our home page and create an account and end up sending an invitation to new people, who continue the same process.
Alexa: 600,000 invitations have been sent so far.
What’s been your happiest moment with all this?
James: One of them was definitely when an article about our company was published in the New York Times, in the style section, in June. The piece was really positive, and it was the realization of a lot of work on our end.
Alexa: One of the moments that I can think of is on Mother’s Day, when we saw that all these people from different places were going on our site to basically jerry-rig invitations to send a Mother’s Day card to their moms. We saw that this idea of aesthetics that we started with, doesn’t just relate to invitations. It relates to all these other kinds of messages that people want to send each other. Watching the users take our products in their own direction – that made me really happy.
So what’s next?
Alexa: We’re adding announcements now, and we’ll be adding a bunch of other products this fall. Maybe you don’t have a party coming up, but you want to send a thank-you note to your friend’s mom.
James: Or you want to announce that you graduated from college, or that you had a baby.
One last question – what advice do you have for people who want to start their own business?
Alexa: I would say just do it. And you better really be committed to succeeding, and you better make sure you choose the right idea, meaning that you care about it. And that you have people you trust.
James: You need willpower and commitment.
Alexa: And determination. Be ready to do whatever you have to do, that’s legal and being a good person, to get there. Seriously. If you feel that way then you’re ahead of a lot of people.
