After our startup launched a private and secure messaging service, we weren't able to drive easy and repeatable traction.
We broadened the appeal to include email privacy which not only got press but created a ton of sticky users. Eventually, we turned it into our first point of revenue.
Email allowed us to reach a wider audience while still preserving our focus on privacy. While we weren't technically "email first" it was a big second that ultimately served our primary focus.
The startup is called Gliph. Gliph is a digital identity platform. Our goal is to allow people to communicate and transact with privacy and security.
Today, you can use Gliph to send text and picture messages with other Gliph users. It has a few benefits over other messaging tools:
- The messaging system is hosted, so you can access your account from either the iPhone, Android or Mobile web.
- Either party can delete messages from both sides of the conversation, delay messages, and set expiration on messages.
- The system allows you to be anonymous, we don't require entry of any personal data such as a phone number used by other messaging clients.
Gliph's Email privacy tool is called Cloaked Email. We debuted it in August of this past year. You can use a Cloaked Email address as substitute for your real one while signing up for websites. Cloaked Email:
- Helps protect you from data breaches.
- Allows you to communicate with sellers on sites like Craigslist using your normal email client, without revealing your actual address.
- Has Chrome and Firefox plugins to easily integrate email privacy into your web experience.
Some other points about Gliph and privacy:
- We don't log IPs except for rate throttling.
- We encrypt all personal data entered and set sharing to private by default. When you share data with another user, it is encrypted using public keys of both users.
- You can turn on a feature called Lockdown Privacy Protection, which removes password reset and makes your account data inaccessible by anyone without the password.
- We have a generous privacy policy that puts ownership of user data in user hands.
We launched in March of last year, and have an iPhone, Android and mobile web clients.
I'd be pleased to connect with you on Gliph. You can find me at Dice, Heart, Lightning.
Here are some more links:
iPhone app: https://gli.ph/iphone
Android App: https://gli.ph/android
mobile web: https://gli.ph/m
Company Blog: http://blog.gli.ph
I think email in this case would encourage participation. If you're not subscribed and getting the emails you don't get a chance to ask a question. By being subscribed you have a greater chance at returning to the message board and writing an answer. Thus fueling the community.
Sound good?
There's already a popular project very similar to this called The Listserve.
Would love to hear what you think!
Email users stick around.
I've seen a lot of web companies fail because their retention sucked. Even users that absolutely love your products forget about you because they are being bombarded with noise from everyone else.
Validation happens so freaking fast over email. As long as you can solve the user's problem over email who cares if there is a product. Wrote about my experience here - http://blog.goodsense.io/2013/03/27/making-guesses-for-your-...
Swombat was one of my early adopters (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5280289). Hopefully I'll be launching as a Show HN sometime next month.
Email first allowed me to quickly validate the business and generate revenue without having to worry about anything other than the core value proposition.
I wish I know this before launching my latest startup, http://www.bucketlistly.com.
I always thought that you need a product first in order to build audience. Boy, how I was wrong and wasted countless days just to learn that you can build audience even without a product. :/
Thanks for sharing it here.
I'm no security expert, but my understanding is that email is pretty flawed when it comes to establishing the true identity of the sender. I guess you could use something like DKIM or SPF, but plenty of people don't have that set up.
If you use obfuscated inbound email addresses then it's not really a problem. But, if you're identifying people by their FROM address on a very public inbound address, be aware that it's trivially easy to spoof that.
Can we stop putting 'awesome' everywhere?
Anyone whose been obsessed before knows how it can accelerate learning and mastery of skills.
I thought email would be the ideal platform for Indoctrinator because I can roll it out in phases and give more personalized service.
EDIT: I invite anyone who reads this and is interested in the program to sign up for more info and early notification of launch.
It's getting noisy in here.
Edit: Here's the discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5279590
