Idea to App in 2 weeks
nemrow.tumblr.comI'd like to offer an observation about the copy at http://www.pigeonpic.com. The larger slogan, "Never lose touch with friends and family", is vague. The smaller one, "Send photographs through the mail with just a text message", is specific. It makes clear what you offer and also that there is a concrete service here instead of just another smarmy social site. If I were you, I'd drop the first one and put the second in its place. Then the clear copy and the sentimental photo would complement each other nicely.
I'd also make the one-two-three diagram much larger, i.e. make it the width of the banner. It does a good job of explaining what the original line means. To judge by all the sites out there that can't seem to state simply what they do, that is nothing to sneeze at. If you can get users to read that far until it clicks, you'll be way ahead of most.
Of course you can test all of this.
p.s. One thing remains unclear: how do you get the address to mail the printed photos to?
>The larger slogan, "Never lose touch with friends and family", is vague. The smaller one, "Send photographs through the mail with just a text message", is specific. It makes clear what you offer and also that there is a concrete service here instead of just another smarmy social site.
This is an excellent point. However, I don't agree with your second bit of advice to drop the first line and just use the "clear" copy. Instead, I suggest coming up with a better tag line that maybe even ties in nicely with the name Pigeon (love that name, btw). Maybe something like, "Send photographs to anyone on the wings of a text." OK, that's probably lame, but I think you get my point.
I'd argue that it's impossible to read the first sentence without reading the second, but maybe that's just my "read the small print" instinct kicking in.
The second tag line is kinda long. "Mail pics with just a text" might be better.
Congrats on launching. I built a similar idea and found it to not be profitable:
If you figure out how to make this profitable, when you consider printing costs and marketing costs, please share! Long story short, I found you have to give people one for free, and this kills your margins. Send me an e-mail if you want an Excel spreadsheet that proves this :)
I posted some details here:
OP, if you chose the current title for your HN submission you should be aware that in some countries "Fuck Ya" will be read as "Fuck You". I think you mean "Fuck Yeah"?
I'm a native English speaker, and I read it as "Fuck you."
I didn’t appreciate the use of expletives at all. I appreciated the blog post and I think there’s a market for the service, I just don’t think the profanity added value.
It may be unlikely for the target audience of the service to read this blog post, but I can only guess what they would think of it.
I read it similar to "see ya" so I interpreted it as somewhat friendly.
Congrats on shipping quickly!
Small nitpick - Twilio does offer MMS, but you have to have a shortcode in US: https://www.twilio.com/mms
It's a hefty monetary commitment, so for the purposes of this story Twilio does not offer something compelling, but if you have the $$$ it's a solid service.
The blog date was 9/14, and the groundwork was done presumably at least 2 weeks before (seeing the title of the post). Twilio announced MMS on 9/18 at TwilioCon.
According to their website, you can get MMS via regular phone #s.
Send and receive pictures over both phone numbers and short codes with Twilio Picture Messaging.
However, this service was recently launched
> So after I launched this product I had more orders in the first 24 hours than I did in total with my startup that took over a year to develop.
Can you please elaborate on what you did to get orders? I would think it would be many times harder to get a first order from someone you don't know, than writing the app.
since specific numbers aren't provided, he could have had 2 orders in his pigeon app and 1 from his prior effort and his claim would be true.
The "boomer age" people I know who want to print pictures and send them to someone go to a kiosk at the drugstore or a copy shop, where they also pick up a greeting card in which they typically like to handwrite a note to the recipient, that was the sort of thing people used to consider courteous.
I would imagine that a good deal of the orders are from the friends that were mentioned.
Nice app. However, slow development time is not necessarily a bad thing. If you can develop an app in 2 weeks, it most likely means someone else can easily clone the same app. Whereas if you need 1+ years to develop it, it's likely not as likely to be duplicated (ie. there are actual technical barriers)
If others are interested though, that validates the idea, which is immensely more useful than the alternative.
6 weeks: http://multiplayerchess.com
built it 3 years ago after I had quit my job and came to SF
Cool stuff
This is a pretty cool idea and I applaud the rapid execution.
That being said, you could have tested this idea out without building any tech at all by using your own phone number for texts and manually printing and shipping photos.
Then if the idea took off and you could no longer manually keep up with the orders you'd know you have a winner.
That would have actually been his MVP. But seeing as he could develop the tech so fast, he did have the option to develop the technology first itself. And he did get a lot of text messages in the first 24 hours itself!
But, for someone who wouldn't be able to get the tech out so quickly, an MVP(here, text messages to your phone and manual printing) is the ideal thing. Even he could have benefitted because the product would be out in like a day itself and he could see if it was popular enough to work on it further.
This sounds awesome. Can I ask how you go about getting shipping details, etc from the sender if they simply give you a name? Is there more to it?
In the sign up process you enter the shipping info for who you want to send prints to
I like it! It seems similar to an idea pitched on Shark Tank recently.
I wanted to mention a hiccup in the sign up experience. After signing up, I received an SMS which said to reply "Y" to receive messages from Pigeon. Upon replying "Y", in addition to the 2-part welcome message, I received a 2-part message saying that Pigeon couldn't recognize the receiver for a picture.
So I got to the page, and read the overall blog title, and thought the article was going to go a different way.
Was pleased that it turned out so well, sounds like a great idea -- I know there are companies (for example the one that recently was on the shark tank tv show) that are looking in this space, and I think the process that you've just pointed out is way easier than what they offer
I think this is how it should be done. Get something super rough and functional to market as soon as possible. I've been taking the same approach to micro-portal sites I've been building and launching the last month. In my first month from 2 sites I made $125 from Google Ad revenue. Essentially I build aggregation sites that rewrite the content based on multiple sources, sometimes even improving the original source by using multiple angels for the same content. The result is 2 highly ranking Wordpress sites that get first page priority for some big keywords.
It might not be the most logical for an app you have to build, but I think getting something out super unpolished that works is a great way to get to market early. People think you need massive teams, business plans and a strategy, but all you need to do is release something. I made the same mistake on a project I've been building for 7 years and counting, I'm not sure I'll even ever release it.
I think there's a huge difference between creating a content farm and a real product.
Maybe so, but the result is the same. What I launched went beyond a standard content farm though. I didn't use free or purchased themes, I used a self-created Wordpress theme framework I created a little while ago as the base of the sites but each design was built from scratch in Photoshop. The content aggregation and rewriting plugin that I wrote isn't something you can find anywhere, especially not to the point articles are rewritten from multiple sources in a way that works.
I was merely trying to make a point of developers needing to get stuff out as quick as possible. Maybe what I did was different to an app (and rightly so) but the fact I executed on an idea from start to finish and didn't get caught up on the little things or having a perfect end result is something I think every developer can take from and apply to anything they do.
Semi-related, but if you want to print a lot of pics, it's probably just worth it to buy a printer. I just bought this one: http://www.amazon.com/Canon-PRO-100-Professional-Inkjet-Prin... and I'm pretty happy with it. It supports Apple's AirPrint so you can print from iPhone/iPad on your local LAN/WiFi. Good quality prints and a bunch of rebates on this one if you dig around.
You're suggesting he buy a printer and print the photos, then address and stuff envelopes himself instead of using the service he found (lob.com)? I can't see that being cost- or time-effective.
Unless I have a high-volume business need for a printer I will never own one again. They are space hogs and money pits. Ink/toner is outrageous, buying paper in small quantities is expensive, and the consumer grade printers are slow and flimsy. The few times a year I actually need to print something I just go to kinkos or break the rules and print it at work. Maybe I'll look at using lob.com or a service like it though.
How about you just press a button on your phone and 30 seconds later hand a photo to somebody? There's immediate value in that for me, and I personally would rather do that than use a service (which I did do for years with the online vendors, and I had a crappy experience with all of them).
Plus I can tweak the print in Photoshop before and print direct from there. Each has it's place.
Don't see how this is at all related to the post.
connect-the-dots. it's not one of the harder puzzles.
this app prints photos and mails them to someone else...
You may be able to spread more virally if people don't enter the recipients details into your app, and it may make it easier on everybody.
This is definitely a "maybe", you'll have to do the research.
If you just have the recipients phone number and the photo, you can send a photo MMS to the recipient saying "x bought a printed version of this photo with PigeonPic. We need your address to send this photo".
Just an idea, you'll need to work on it, but I know, I don't have people's mailing addresses.
The image on the homepage makes me think this family is running for their lives from a horde of zombies, but seem fairly happy about it. Gotta love stock photography.
Haha, spot on.
Wow, this is a pretty sweet idea. Nice execution! I could certainly see using this.
I keep hoping I'll have an idea like yours that just pops into my head and I run with it.
This is something I could see using from time to time with friends as a sort of fun lark or joke.
So you may not want to rule out younger users from your market. Imagine it, for example, being marketed to heavy instagram users. The branding is all different, but given that you already have the core product, it would be trivial to buy a second domain and create a new skin of the site for this audience.
Deja Vu for me. I built and shipped a really similar app in 2 weeks last Dec (aim was 1 week but took 2 weeks eventually). https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wish-gift-never-forget-speci...
Good Job! Execution is everything, and shipping a Product in 2 Weeks is AWESOME! It sounds like you are on the right path, executing fast and getting traction. Keep it up! Make sure to check back in with the customers and use their feedback (I think you know that already after reading your Blog)
Immediately thought of @stammy and https://www.picplum.com/. Kind of like an app version. Good luck!
Small idea == (small risks, small returns)
Big idea == (big risks, big returns)
most of the time.
Wow, that actually sounds like a fantastic idea. I can see this being very useful, especially if you add the ability to pre-purchase prints in discounted packages.
How you make money if the print service costs $1.46 per photo and you still have the PayPal fee!? Do you have a better deal with Lob?
I see $1.21 on Lob's website, but it still makes for a thin margin.
I'm wondering if https://www.lob.com/ has an equivalent in Germany or Europe in general.
(yes I've seen the international shipping, but domestic for us is probably faster and cheaper)
I don't get it - how is just the name of the recipient enough to mail them a picture? Where are you getting the addresses from?
You create contacts in the app. Each contact has an address associated with it.
The phonebook.
Just piling on the congrats although I'm sure passionately working on something for 2 weeks straight is reward in of itself.
Working for a startup is the best experience you can get in order to find out how to execute your own ideas.
It's interesting... the design of the site is very 2004ish, but it is surprisingly refreshing. Anyone?
A lean startup. I am not sure how profitable it could get but you still put together a nice product.
Congrats. I like this a lot.
Love the simplicity of the instructions and minimal amount of links on page.
that logo is excellent. (pigeon carrying a polaroid)
Thanks
Cool idea. Is mobile app in the works?