Another US Start-Up Wants To Replace the Post Office
What with the USPS wanting to end the overnight delivery of first-class mail and terminate Saturday deliveries altogether, another start-up is forming that would substitute digital postal mail for paper mail.
Called Outbox, the Texas start-up is so young it doesn’t even have a web site yet. But it has gotten the first $1.5 million of what is supposed to be $2.2 million in seed capital from Floodgate Fund, a self-styled “super angel” set up by Twitter-backer Mike Maples Jr., whose father used to be big at Microsoft before he retired, and a handful of other angels.
And as a result Maples and the two shiny new Harvard MBAs who are trying to put Outbox together got the start-up a write-up in both Inc and the Austin Statesman.
Apparently the idea basically copies Earth Class Mail’s. Outbox wants to open and scan paper mail intercepted at the post office and forward bills and catalogs and magazines and all to the recipients’ tablets. No mention of desktops or laptops.
And like rival schemes such as Zumbox, doxo, Manilla and, when it gets here, Volly, users could archive it.
Outbox CEO William Davis and co-founder Evan Baehr reportedly imagine their audience being busy mothers, who could still get physical copies although billers want folks to go paperless to save themselves money.
Instead Outbox means to sell advertising side-by-side with the mail and has the idea it could persuade the USPS to give it access to mail at the local post office. That way, the Statesman repeats, “People wouldn’t have to change their mailing addresses to use the service,” which sounds like Outbox also means to copy Zumbox’ idea of digital mailboxes that use physical addresses as their e-mail address.
Baehr told the Statesman mothers could flip through the mail in the car just when the call has been raised to outlaw American drivers from using any digital device, even hands-free phones.
Otherwise he said on his blog that he and Davis were “bringing disruptive innovation theory, cutting edge mobile UX, digital marketing, and US Post Office reform together in one company in order to create a new channel for content delivery.”
Outbox still has to finish product development and hire staff.
As an aside, VA Shiva, the India-born MIT professor who holds the US copyright on e-mail, told the International Business Times that the USPS could be saved if it took 50,000 of the people it wants to fire and use them to scan postal mail and turn it into e-mail for SMBs.
He’s apparently been telling the USPS this since 1997 but the USPS couldn’t imagine being run into the ground by e-mail.
He told the paper the biggest US companies have outsourced their e-mail handling to India “where the corruption is absolutely insane.” The situation is not only insecure, it adds to US unemployment. He imagines the USPS managing corporate e-mail systems, analyzing responses and sending responses based upon pre-determined answers. He has reportedly offered to train them.
Shiva was 14 when he got the copyright.
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