photo credit: CNN
In February, a startup called Outbox launched with aplomb, and it promised to provide a disruptive alternative to the old system of postal delivery.
Just under a year later, the service is shutting down.
The company shared a blog post and FAQ, which explains why founders Evan Baehr and Will Davis are throwing in the towel. It’s elegantly written and well worth a read, particularly if you’re a fellow entrepreneur.
The company had built up a small team based in Austin, Texas, and recruited drivers to deliver mail. It’s not clear whether all the employees have been let go or whether the founders will keep them on payroll in anticipation of a new venture. In the post, the founders hint that this isn’t the end, but they won’t reveal concrete next steps at this stage.
Outbox originally promised to collect and manage people’s physical mail for $5 a month. At that price, the startup grew its user-based to a little over 2,000 individual customers, with 25,000 people on the waiting list.
Here is another view from Techcrunch:
The company has one of those ideas that’s both intriguing and slightly crazy sounding — it sent people by your home to pick up your physical mail, then it digitized that mail, all for $4.99 a month.
After a pilot program in Austin, Outbox launched the service in San Francisco a year ago, and it raised a $5 million Series A led by Floodgate over the summer.
The company itself isn’t going away. Instead, the blog post says it’s “focusing our team and resources on a totally new product.” Outbox says there just weren’t enough people signing up to pay for the service, at least given the company’s costs:
That may not come as a huge surprise to the critics who found the idea impractical or downright creepy. I tried it out myself for a few months, but eventually canceled my subscription. I wasn’t bothered by Outbox employees opening my mail, it just wasn’t as useful as I’d hoped, and it was a pain for me to coordinate with a roommate who didn’t subscribe.