A Free Business Idea For Outbox, Or Anyone Else
Digitize my mail, or else.
Outbox is a service that picks up your mail 3x each week, scans it, and then sends you the images. You then choose whether to have them send it on to you or chuck it. They will also help you unsubscribe from junk mail.
Sweet service, eh? Sure, but I can’t use it because I’m in Hong Kong, and they aren’t. In fact, at this point they’re only in Austin, TX and San Francisco, CA, which means most of the US can’t take advantage of the service any more than I can. That resulted in the following email I just sent them:
Hi Outbox, I’m wondering if you guys have considered opening your platform for others to provide the physical management of the mail while you just provide the software that facilitates it.
Right now I’m in Hong Kong opening a branch office of my company, MWI. Virtual offices are very popular here. I pay a few hundred bucks a year to a virtual office company and they take phone calls for me, give me a business address, and receive my mail. When they receive my mail they email me telling me I got some mail, and they’ll type in the return address. If I want I can pay extra and they’ll scan it and send me the scan. But it’s quite a bit more, and I think this is because they don’t have any sort of system to do it, it’s all manual, so scanning every piece of mail becomes quite a problem and they have to charge a bit for it.
But what if there was an app my virtual office could use so they could log in, choose a client, and then start snapping photos of that client’s mail? The client would then get an automated email inviting them to click on a link or use the client-facing side of the app to view the mail, just like Outbox already provides. The client could provide their responses, which are received by the virtual office, and they take the appropriate action.
That’s just one example of how it could be used. Perhaps the far more ubiquitous use would be amongst friends checking mail for each other. Like I said, I’m in Hong Kong right now, but I’m still receiving mail at an address in the US, which means I have to get someone to check the mail. Right now he snaps a photo, emails it to me, and I respond telling him what to do with each piece of mail. It works, but it’s kind of a pain. If an app were set up like the one above, it would be 10x easier and faster.
Monetization? Free for the first 100 pieces of mail each month, meaning it’s basically free for individuals or very small businesses. Then charge either a flat fee for 100+ per month, or perhaps tiered pricing ($20/month for up to 500, $50 for up to 2,500, etc.). Or since people could theoretically use this to store images of all the mail they ever receive, perhaps it’s just free until you get to 100 stored images and then you either have to pay for more or start deleting images.
And of course you get some great data that I’m sure would be valuable to someone. Maybe the NSA…oh wait, they already scan all the mail as we recently found out.
You would have to set up the app so that one person (the mail owner) can pay the monthly fee while the friend who checks the mail can use the app to “send” the mail without having to pay.
Anyway, there’s my idea for you, take it for what it’s worth. If you make it happen, I’d be honored to be your first customer.
And for what it’s worth, if someone wants to jump on this and give Outbox a run for their money, I’d be happy to be your first customer as well.
