YC has switched over to HelloFax and we love it. With 250 companies we have to deal with a lot of faxes, because every later funding round or acquisition means we have to sign stuff. So not having to deal with actual paper faxes makes a big difference for us.
I dont' want to come off as a naysayer - I can see this taking off - but I do have some real questions. Maybe someone can enlighten me.
Don't you keep hard copies of these documents? Just wondering. For us, if it requires a signature, we usually need a hard copy (original) for our records.
Since we are printing it out (or receiving via fax in the first place), it seems just as easy to walk over to our $40 fax machine and send it (via our $9/mo Vonage fax line).
Don't be silly. It's reasonable to plan for disaster scenarios, especially in this case where it's something important, and the probability of disaster is unknown. Do you look both ways across the street, even if you have the walk sign?
At least we heard about this one before it got acquired by and then shut down so that the founders could work on companion technologies in their new company.
Kudos to HelloFax, this is exactly what I've been seeking for a long time. I've been making do with MyFax's intermittent free trials but this service is worth paying for.
Having more functionality isn't necessarily better. Laser-sharp focus on doing one thing better than the alternatives just shows that you really understand what your users want and can sometimes make you stand out more in a competitive environment than having more features.
Guy Kawasaki always brings up the story of Tam's Art Gallery in Hong Kong. In one of the markets there, there are dozens upon dozens of shops selling all kinds of souvenirs from shirts to toys to electronics. But the store that gets the most business is Tam's Art Gallery, which is well-known and stands out because it only sells stone stamps.
That store example is flawed. They stand out because of a well-executed marketing strategy built around being a single-product shop, but in the end it is a matter of execution rather than of just not selling more products. In other words if they were selling three products, and if they were well-known, they would've still gotten most business.
The focus of my project is "laser-sharp" and streamlining things like faxes are just background processes that don't get in the way of the actual user functionality at all. Users take less than 30 seconds to set that part up and never have to think about it again. So if anything, in my particular case, it actually only makes me stand out more in the competitive environment as you say.
There is of course no way you would have known that, so excellent post otherwise. Everyone here should know that too many features can definitely break an application (coders' brains too lol)... the only time tons of features are beneficial is when they don't get in the way.
