Roastmystartup: Sealed — send time delayed messages and gifts

[jaaye]

I'm launching Sealed. Link to Betalist. Sealed is a photo & video sharing app that allows users to send time-delayed messages. Recipients are immediately notified when they receive a message, but they then must wait until the unlock date specified by the sender. I originally had the idea because I'm a sentimental fool and wanted to have a personal time capsule... It has evolved into a social time capsule where you can send photo, video, audio, or text messages for unlimited time into the future and can also be used to send time-delayed gift cards.

Direct use cases would be for birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, graduation, etc. The point of Sealed is to use anticipation to make the receiving experience more exciting. Imagine your birthday is in 2 weeks and you receive a message that you know will unlock at exactly the time of your birthday from your good friend. Now imagine it's actually a gift card. IMO the gift card use is not just trying for monitization but is actually an important aspect of the app, as you won't know what the content is until it unlocks, and the possibility that it could be $ does something to the experience.

Market: This is new. There are other services where you can schedule a text message or email or gift card to appear on a specific future date, but nothing exists where you know something is coming and then just have to wait. I've been working on this for about a year and a half, but in March of this year a direct competitor launched, Incubate, which does the same thing except the messages are anonymous, you don't know when they will unlock (except for the NEXT message) and they don't do gifting. I think their take on it is cool and has a certain allure, but Sealed will be more about relationships. You'll care more if you know that your girlfriend or best friend or aunt sent you a message than if you just have an anonymous 'number' of messages that will unlock sometime in the future. Curious for your thoughts on this.

Who is going to use this? First off, I don't know yet, without user data it's all speculation. My speculation: College aged females, young people in relationships, young mothers / families. Potentially even grandparents, people with terminal illnesses (just an interesting use case), and high schoolers in relationships. High school i'm torn about, don't know if it will fly for very young people as the whole delayed gratification thing is kind of abstract and painful to an extent (imagine getting a message that won't unlock for 2 years, or 20. Its almost a practical joke..)

Stage: I have been accepted into Hidden Founders. The iOS app is about 90% complete for an internal beta launch hopefully in early August. I will be actively seeking funding as soon as 1) I am convinced that this is actually something people want 2) once I have some metrics/users/traction to prove it and 3) when the product is presentable and has gone through at least 1 iteration post soft-beta-launch.

Customer conversion: Lots of question marks here. From what I can tell, I'm launching in a new market, not advancing on an incumbent. How to reach people? Where are they, who are they? Having a strong brand, ppc fb marketing around the holidays, college brand ambassadors and launch parties (once I have some $$) news articles etc... potentially capitalize on holidays - is setting up a booth downtown on New Years invasive or unrealistic? Appreciate input here.

Why me: I'm a graphic designer/marketer and have designed the whole app / website etc. I can't wait to build a team and culture. I'm organized and enjoy meeting people and am good with ambiguity. Come from enough privilege to take the risk. I feel I 'need' to be an entrepreneur at this time in my life, as I'm a much better worker when I believe in the cause.

Current challenges:

• I'm making a video for Sealed to illustrate the use case. LMK what you think of the video idea.
• Marketing. What is the right message?! Do you like "In a world of instant gratification... etc" ? Sealed is all about relationships and giving each other things to look forward to. It's abstract, not a shipping service for rice from china to the US or a video editing consultancy or a new futuristic car or coffee maker. What message will translate?
• Recently had a conversation with a mentor who is strongly urging me to set up a concierge MVP test for Sealed. This is what I've come up with. I just made this a few days ago so I'm sure it's not quite right yet. How to improve?

ROAST ME.

Thanks.

Edit: Forgot a link

 

[swordsinging]

@jaaye In addition to "time-delayed," maybe something like "action-activated" photos and messages. The user receiving the notification can have an opportunity to unlock the photo/message early if they perform a specific action, document that action, then send that documentation to the sender for approval. If approved, the sender can unlock the photo/message earlier than scheduled. This may help capture some of the instant-gratification generation.

 

[jaaye]

@swordsinging Mm I like it. I have a whole slew of features that could be build into Sealed over time, what I described is really the bare bones. One such feature along the lines of what you suggest is the ability for the sender to set a clue, or a riddle, and if the recipient gets it right, they get to see the content. If they get it wrong, the time delay increases. This would be down the road, but I think allowing some way for people to engage with the message ahead of time and have some way to see it early IF they do XYZ thing could be very good for overall app engagement. One of the problems with Sealed could be that it probably won't be an everyday-use app. If you're waiting for a message that will unlock in 1 year, why would you open it every day? So finding ways for people to use the app regularly is a priority. Thanks for the feedback

 

[thomas1987]

@jaaye I like this idea, but if your MVP is successful and you start gaining serious traction, why wouldn't SnapChat or any other messaging platform introduce their own delayed sending feature? There goes your single point of difference.

 

[jaaye]

@thomas1987 There's certainly a chance that snapchat will implement this as a feature, but 1) that would be a win for Sealed, headline 'snapchat just unveiled a new feature to compete with this tiny startup', and 2) I highly doubt they would do it because it would represent a significant pivot from what their core service is, and they've already found a service that is appreciated and successful as-is. I think it would be confusing to their user base, confusing for their app design, and overall a messy thing to implement in their app. I could be wrong, but ... we'll see.

 

[sanguinecross]

@jaaye Just a point of clarification: the "who is your user" question is less about demographics, and more about what kind of profile are you going to be looking for. Not all customer segments are defined by demographics, it's just that demographics are generally the easiest to understand, parse, and find data on. i.e. gamers. The market in the past has been laser focused on the 13-35 single male demographic. However, that kind of insight is generally not very useful for anyone who wants to dig into the core gamer demographic for the simple reason that it doesn't really tell you enough.

In this particular case, game convention knowledge, game type affinity, primary agendas (aka the bartlet model), and past game spend are FAR better dimensions to dissect on. In your case, it's "people who want to send gifts" and also "are comfortable sending things over the internet". There is obviously a lot more to it, since you have that whole "delayed gratification" component. But you get the idea. The important part is behavior, not demographics.

 

[laetri]

@jaaye I need to get out of bed like, 15 minutes ago, but this sounds a lot like futureme.org, a free service that lets you send time delayed emails. FYI.

 

[jaaye]

@laetri Indeed it is similar, though I'm not sure the anticipation is communicated in the same way. My goal is to streamline the process and make it an app that is easy to use with friends, not just for yourself. But the fact that "More than 3,871,000 letters written to the future..." is good validation that someone out there cares/wants this service..!

 

[laetri]

@jaaye I think it's a great idea (both FM and yours). For the last 5 years I've used FM to write myself a birthday email and each year I'm surprised to find it. I always forget about it! It's crazy to read what I write from just a year ago.

 

[jaaye]

@laetri Awesome. Their feedback section is a great resource for understanding what users want, thanks for pointing it out to me.

 

[goodwill]

@jaaye I like this a lot. My concern is about the data. Where is it stored? Is it safe? Is it encrypted? How long do you keep personal info after the message is sent? Is it downloaded like a text message or unviable again life snap chat? After it has been downloaded, do you keep that data? For how long?

 

[jaaye]

@goodwill Great question. I don't know yet. It's a tech question, best answered by someone technical with knowledge of data and storage and also cost efficiency. Should the message be stored on the phone itself? Or on a server in CA? Security and encryption is also something that will need to be explored by someone who knows about such things. I would guess that the data will be encrypted and kept safe in some robust way.

In terms of keeping the data, this is the one feature beyond time-delay that I'm including in this first iteration: disappearing messages. The sender can elect the message to disappear upon viewing, a choice which reflects in the icon next to the message (a dashed box vs. solid boundary box). By default it's lasting. But I think it's worthwhile to include disappearing as an option because it may encourage 'novelty' use, as opposed to 'sentimentality' use (the two broad use cases for Sealed). If you have the ability to make it disappear, there may be less of a threshold for sending a more ridiculous/funny/inappropriate message, which may resonate more with the younger snapchatter crowd, which is important to get because they're the typical early adopters. For regular lasting messages, you will be able to view them again unlimited times into the future. Make sense?

 

[appalonia]

@jaaye What I think is that there should be an option for not sending a notification to the other person. Cause for example if I receive a message, I am going to text the other person and keep on asking what the message contains. Just my 2 cents.

 

[jaaye]

@appalonia Interesting feedback. The notification is what creates the anticipation which is really the crux of the app. Yes, I think it is likely that upon receiving such a notification the recipient will text or message the sender asking what it is etc... it's a tease, potentially frustrating, potentially annoying. But I'm making the bet that people will 'love' it more than 'hate' it, as they'll care about that person sending the message and will have no choice but to wait for the message, which is also giving them something to look forward to.

Think I've misplaced my bet? Do you think the anticipation will be more negative/annoying than positive?