One of my very first startups was what we thought was an incredible idea called SnailMailMe. We would let you upload their photos and send postcards for free to yourself, friends or anyone in the world. It was my team’s first idea of how to bring affordable photo printing to the masses to keep your favorite memories off digital. Our plan was to place advertisements on the back in order to keep the costs at $0 or something very minimal. However in the end the idea failed to jump off for various reasons but we still to this date believe if we built this once smartphone’s took off and the team was more committed to find business partners it could have been an incredible success instead of another startup in the graveyard, with key lessons learned.
I was overwhelmed with happiness to see a new startup trying to venture in the same realm with a “print your photos for free”concept called Flag. A deviation from our marketing pitch in early 2000, however in a much better way. The project is currently on Kickstarter that hopes to let you pick photos, have them printed in a high quality and mail them to anyone or yourself for free. Pick your favorite 20 pictures, hit print and in a couple of days receive 4×6 photos printed at “museum quality” on heavy weight photo paper. At a cost of $0!
No shipping, mailing, printing or anything else will be charged to you. On the back of each photograph is an advertisement, which makes all of this possible for free. While local big name shops range in costs of $30 – $78 for similar prints, a little ad that will probably not be noticed once the picture is framed or pinned to a wall is hardly something to be disgusted by.
I’m hoping this Flag meets their goal on Kickstarter, and if they don’t they continue to press on nonetheless. People want to keep a tangible copy of their photos and to allow it all for free is a beautiful solution.