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Review my startup - E (mynameise.com)

63 points by renn ↗ HN
Looking for feedback regarding the visibility and functionality of our product. Is it clear what we do from checking out our homepage? Is it obvious that 'See how it works' points to a video? What would you suggest? Best from Amsterdam!

58 comments

[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 104 ms ] thread
hirotodo
Homepage looks absolutely stunning. I can see you do online business cards of some sort. Perhaps list features that distinguish you from Bump, Cardmunch, About.me even more?
bretthopper
Site looks great and I love the video. It would be nice to be able to collapse/close the video though.

Although I usually don't put much importance on startup names, "E" seems awkward. This is coming from someone that uses e (the text-editor) and whenever someone asks what editor I use, I say "e", look at a blank face, then reply "it's basically Textmate for Windows".

wheaties
I was just planning out my feature minimal ser forsomething just like this. Why email though? What if you want all people from your company to have a basic card format? Are you planning comany controls? Good luck.
renn
Definitely. We're currently in the process of developing business and conference specific offerings.

And email? Because that's the common denominator on all paper cards that accepts (html) emails with attachments (vcard).

lsb
That's a pretty ungoogleable name. "e business card" might be hard to optimize for.
dhimes
It might be hard to change now. They've been around for a couple of years and won an award http://www.mynameise.com/about/press
renn
Yes and no. We won the award based around the same concept, but a totally different product. We spent our first year and 100K of bootstrapped cash on R&D for a hardware dongle that exchanged cards through RFID. End of 2009 we dropped this and focused on our mobile apps and Cardcloud, and just launched E as you see it today.
mikegreenberg
Can you talk at all about what happened with the dongle? I've been following mynameisE for a while and was excited at the prospect and would love to hear a post-mortem regarding the product.
renn
That's great to hear. I'm planning to write an extensive blogpost on our story there: was quite a train ride. Will post it to HN and my Twitter as soon as it's done!
renn
Point taken. We aim to be as unobtrusive as possible to the user as a brand, certainly when it comes to product. Business cards are about the brands/identities of the people that carry them - we follow the same philosophy here.
sgt
Very cool!

I thought of the exact same idea about 3 years ago. I didn't pursue it due to other circumstances (i.e. being far too busy), so I'm glad to see someone is taking it forward. I wish you the best of luck. The quality of the service and not to mention your website looks stunning. And that's what it takes to really make it!

renn
Wow, thank you so much!
mydigitalself
Can you PLEASE verify username before submit. 4 or 5 submits and re-entering captcha each time to get one that worked!
renn
Yes, we will most definitely solve this asap!
JacobAldridge
I see business cards as a marketing tool, not a way to share contact information, so my immediate response was 'not for me'.

The video addressed this concern ("compatible with real business cards") which is the sign of a well thought out marketing video.

renn
Right now, it's basic indeed. You can add a simple logo, contact info and social networking profiles to the cards. We're working on more advanced customization, and adding other metadata to cards, e.g. a Facebook campaign. Would love to know how exactly you define 'marketing tool'.
JacobAldridge
Re: Marketing Tool, the concept is that you need to make your business card give the recipient reason to pause or comment. My business card (I'm a business coach with Shirlaws) has a picture of a baby on it - it's not what people expect, it prompts a question, and it makes it more memorable. If they meet 20 people at a dinner, they won't remember them all - my card helps. Naturally, my example and the concept don't work in every situation, but it's a good filter to operate.

The best company I know that do this is Think Feel Know (http://www.thinkfeelknow.com/). The starting point for their business (disclaimer - I've worked with them) is understanding communication styles, since each of us is a combination of Thinking, Feeling, and Knowing - usually with a predominance of one style over the others. The different styles are linked to decision making, as well as marketing tools like shapes and colours.

Ask one of their team for a business card, and they will produce a handful, turn them over to show you a group of cards that are blue, red, and green on the back, and ask you to choose one. The contact information on the front is the same; better believe that when you are forced to select one colour, the next question out of your mouth is 'what does that mean?', and the answer will explain their business and how they might be able to help your organisation. Very memorable.

renn
Excellent points, and thank you for sharing them. The physical memorability of paper cards are one of the most difficult borders to cross for us. We have some great ideas that we'll be implementing throughout the year.

Customization of cards and playing nicely with old-fashioned paper cards are an absolute requirement for us to succeed: we're very aware of this - and building towards a great solution.

JacobAldridge
Which I get from the video. Hopefully you can see why my initial concern was that your product wouldn't be appropriate for what I'm trying to do, and (more importantly) why I appreciated the video talking about the compatibility with normal cards. My current card is the marketing tool; your app makes the contact information more practical.
phlux
Soon, cards with NFC embedded in them will have memorable marketing info etc and no contact info printed on them at all. You get some sort of thought provoking info/material - but just read NFC to get the regular data.
Tichy
So you found a way to let me print with an iPhone? I don't get it.
renn
Did you get this impression after looking at the homepage?
Tichy
Yes - except that I know that can't be it. But if it is not business cards emerging from my phone, I don't know what it does.
renn
And this is without reading the text? So you'd suggest using a less abstract image?
Tichy
Reading it again, I must have missed the word "online" before business card.

Still, how is it supposed to work - you have an app for all phones, then?

renn
We have an iPhone app in the store now. It's free. Currently working on our android client and moving to all other major platforms asap. But you can share your cards with people that don't have the app installed.

For non-iPhones we currently offer a stripped down version of the app on i.mynamese.com

Tichy
So how would the sharing work, with people who don't have the app?

Your first page would have to convince me that it is as convenient as paper cards.

ctdonath
Agreed. Skimmed the first page, not really sure what's going on with this thing. I'm not digging because I'm trying to retain the "first impression" mindset. From experience, I'm assuming it's one step too complicated and/or yet another data mining system masquerading as a useful service (who is really the customer here? Me or someone buying truckloads of contact info?)

I'll for now fall back on old cards. They require no fiddling, no dictation, no operating gadgets...just "here's my card" and "hey, that's a neat card".

pkamb
Love the dropdown for the "see it in action" video.
sandipagr
would be nice to have a close/hide button too when opened
mbreese
I'm not sure if you support this or not, but it might be a good idea to include support for multiple cards per account. Something like a day job card and a startup card.

But I'm not sure how to support it on the backend.

renn
We support this. We don't support creating new cards on the phone yet, but once you login to your Cardcloud in the browser you can create multiple cards with different contact info, social networks, etc!
catlike
My suggestion is that this link to the App Store should be at the top, not the bottom of the page (I had to look through on the page to figure page to figure out how to get the app)

Point being, letting me install the app on my device ASAP is critical

renn
Great point. We'll add that.
nomis80
Does it use vCard in any way?
renn
Yes. Ecards are based on the vcard, and that's what you will be able to save directly to your phone, or export from the website. What we add is a visual layer and other metadata like social networking profiles.

This counts for phone to phone sharing, but also for sending your card to an email. Recipients will get your visual card, and a vcard as attachment.

nomis80
Fantastic! Congratulations for building on open standards.

If you have any time for this kind of thing, maybe the draft of vCard 4.0 would be of interest to you. We added synchronization features, and there is an extension being written for social networking.

http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-vcarddav-vcardrev

renn
Thank you! I will forward this to our devs.
FiddlerClamp
Argh, HN munched my previous comment. Suggestions:

1. Displayed business card should also show QR code for others to scan in. 2. App could display QR code for others to download app instantly. 3. Not sure if it does already (I am on Android), but it would be cool if the emailed card had a link back to the app /site.

renn
We're working on scanning features.

The Android app is currently in alpha stage. We'd love more testers though, firing an email to android@mynameise.com would make us pretty happy!

lisper
Nice UI, but it's not immediately clear why this is better than Bump. (Which is not to say that Bump can't be improved on.)

Found a bug: if you have two phone numbers, only the first one shows up on the card.

renn
First point: our cards can be shared to people without the app. That being said, we have a long way to go before we're even close to Bump in terms of user adoption. I do believe the product is in essence more focused on business cards than on data transfers.

For the time being we only show one phone number on the card (we picked a size that shows up correctly on all mobile screens, not just iPhone). That doesn't mean that the info doesn't get shared though.

shawndrost
Your app is simple enough that you don't need video -- you can show the same interaction in a list format with screenshots. This seems like more important stuff to show new visitors than "connect with anyone", etc.

But honestly, I think it's a terrible concept. (I don't like to say so, because I like entrepreneurs, and want to encourage you, but I also care about giving the best feedback I am able.) Business cards have an important function in the world, and they're very low-hassle relative to how useful they are. Meanwhile, they're very entrenched: the physical card is a strong social convention, and it's very hard to change that. I would not use this product because I suspect that many of the people I would meet would find it unprofessional.

renn
Thank you for the first point, but more importantly, the second.

We know about the important function of paper cards in the world. When people ask us who our competitors are, we respond with 'paper cards'. The only we we will solve the business card problem is by playing well with these paper cards.

What you see on E today is the basic system we've designed to handle contact information with an additional visual layer. Features to handle paper cards - and mimic paper cards for that matter are things we're working on passionately. We know what it feels like to get a great looking business card, with a nice choice of paper, excellent typography, etc. But I'm convinced in time we will find an equally attractive solution - though it will not be overnight. The transitions from vinyl to cd to mp3, or printed books to ebooks have also take years.

Our added benefits however (stored geolocation of meetings, synched notes, etc.) are features we're getting great feedback on.

crux
One of the issues here is that paper cards aren't just a well-entrenched and pleasing communication tool, but they're also a status tool. American Psycho is the model here—If I give you my business card and you see that it is letterpress-printed and impeccably typeset, you know that I have excellent design sense—but also that I have more money than you. Really good business cards are expensive. Whereas even if you create an e-business card that allows for complete typographical customization, there's no implicit class message because the only difference between a simple, banal card and a beautiful one will be taste (thus I don't think it would be a space worth expanding to; when there's no status message encoded in a design issue like that, the most simple and uniform formatting tends to be privileged. Hence the low-class associations with people who send emails encoded with extravagant fonts and colors). And of course nobody would participate in a system where you had to pay more for an e-business card that was more nicely formatted.

The fact is that the purely utilitarian aspect of business cards is a very minor element of their continued use. As a way of giving somebody your phone number, they're absurdly overevolved and ripe for supercession. But as a medium of social display, it'll be a lot harder to shake loose of them.

renn
Best response so far. However, we don't feel that this (the business card as a status symbol) can't be translated into a p digital form. We will be pushing out features that allow for more sophisticated designs, and optimized connections methods will make the whole concept more of a commodity. However, we know that until we get to a point where adoption of (whichever) online business card service reaches some kind of critical mass we have to play well with paper cards. Like I've answered before, this won't be solved overnight.

But even if your card is well designed, with offset typography: "Eggshell with Romalian" type (continuing with the American Psycho references) - come back from a conference, trade fair or event with piles of cards that lost all context - that's where our system shows its power first and utmost. The context of a meeting is just as important, if not more, than the card itself. Eventually you'll want to follow up on a meeting, track sales trajectories, etc... Information your paper card will not remember.

Final note: have a look at our video and see if you can spot the reference.

phlux
I do like the concept, and I also agree with the sentiments of others about how a physical biz card is an important tool.

I would suggest to make this better would be to make it a hell of a lot faster to receive cards;

Allow all the functionality you currently have (i.e. write something on the contact, add to contacts etc) -- but also allow you to push cards into a To-Be-Sorted bucket of a recipient.

THis would allow people to push their cards into the bucket of another in 15 seconds and walk away.

You dont want to bog down interactions with people for long as they are trying to share the card/contact and move on with their convo or move to other people.

I would also recommend the ability to have an event bucket/tag that anyone can see and let anyone push their card into that bucket.

For example - I go to a mixer "Cool things" and when I get there (gps recognizes I have arrived) my card shows up in the "cool things" mixer directory of people who have arrived/are there.

Then later - I can go back and look through the bucket and select the people I interacted with and grab their cards. I can do this after the fact when I have time and it wont interfere with the flow of any conversations.

renn
These are all great points. Thank you for sharing. We have some features in the pipeline that already address some of your points - but new stuff as well. Thanks again!
jranck
This looks pretty cool, nice job on the UI. I don't really understand the name of your service but at least it wouldn't be hard to remember.

Are you guys planning on allowing users to customize their cards to match their actual business card?

Either way good luck taking on Bump, it's good to have a couple options in the marketplace.

renn
Thank you! We think our name will work in our advantage.

Yes, a Card Editor is definitely in the planning.

chc
You might want to change the name to something that is not already the common name of an illegal drug. I assumed before clicking that your business was putting on raves or selling glowsticks or something.
renn
And being based in Amsterdam probably reinforces that perception.

We haven't had bad experiences with our name so far, but we're well aware that some people might make that association.

trafficlight
And I thought it was related to the E! TV network at first. Also not a very good association.
dickeytk
I love the design of your home page, the CTA and copywriting is spot on. The one thing I think you could do without is the "Get e on your phone". It's out of place and too big. If I want to download your app I'm just going to go to the app store.
ScottBurson
I might use this, actually. I don't see why people are so crazy about physical business cards. I just lose them.

A bit of copy editing: "... hand out your contact information to whomever needs it." A lot of people make this mistake, but actually "whoever" is correct here. The case of the relative pronoun is governed by its role in the subordinate clause, not the main clause; the object of the preposition "to" is not the relative pronoun itself, but the entire clause "whoever needs it". "Whoever", being the subject of the verb "needs", is correctly in the nominative case.

zohebv
I think a bar code scanner/OCR kind of functionality could also be useful.

If the other person does not have your app and isn't comfortable about sharing their email address, they can just photograph your card. Later they can download your app if interested and the app can use OCR or bar code scanning to identify the original e-card.