Idea for the President Elect - find missing children with email

I posted the following on citizens briefing book today -

Please feel to vote and comment, the text:

Unfortunately people, especially children, go missing every day. There are a great number of methods in place to help find the missing BUT one very obvious method is totally ignored, not to say impossible until WrapMail, Inc. in Florida developed its technology: interactive letterhead for email. Not email-blasts BUT using the emails people send every day anyway (one-on-one emails)!

Corporate and Government employees send emails ever day, these emails go to the public, businesses and government agencies but when they arrive they are plain black on white.

Each of these emails could have a wrap surrounding the email that in addition to information and links to the respective websites also could feature pictures of missing adults and/or children. WrapMail, Inc.’s technology allows for dynamic rotation so that every single email that is sent out could feature new missing kids so that every single one is exposed to the receiving audience. There are already RSS feeds out with data on missing kids that can be incorporated into a wrapmail. This is the milk carton of the 21st Century! All emails that leave WrapMail, Inc. have an amber alert on the bottom, currently linking to missing children in Florida where WrapMail is headquartered. This RSS feed comes from the Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

These pictures could have embedded hyperlinks that lead to pages with more details (such as more pictures, last seen, clothes worn, last seen with etc).

There are about 50 billion emails sent every day; one-on-one emails that is, every one of them could be looking for missing children.

The bottom line is that these emails are sent every day anyway – why not use them for something good? WrapMail offers its clients to incorporate this feature for free either with just an amber alert or a rotation of missing people with every outbound email.

New Browsers - Google Chrome and Explorer 8

Google enters the market with a new browser pretty much at the same time as Microsoft releases latest beta of IE8. Of course I had to try both:

Chrome: Loved it at first, best feature being the combination of the search and url bar BUT as I found out that autofill, word memory and spelling was not available I had to abandon it. Spelling and autofill is something I use many times every day. This actually is a feature in the Google Toolbar I am now using in Firefox 3 (yeah, back to Firefox for now). I had some Java-problems at first but got that solved.

IE8: Downloaded but before I explored further I noticed that the same Google toolbar I use so much with IE7/Firefox was not available for IE8 I went back to Firefox again.

The lesson for users: Don't jump on the first releases

The lesson for Google/Microsoft: Don't release these products without features (at least electable features) that you KNOW are commonly used and how you grabbed, increased or maintained market share in the first place.

I did manage to test the WrapMail email marketing Control Panel with Chrome and found it to be 100% compatible so that was pleasing.

millions of unused ad impressions

I had to post this post posted by WrapMail's CMO - kudos to Dave!

The element that makes our web based product so interesting is the fact that we can “push” advertising out within emails. No other web based email system currently does this. Yes, there are advertisements where you manage your folders, but that is where it begins and ends. If Yahoo or Gmail or Hotmail, for instance, had our technology, they would, in effect, increase their number of “sellable” impressions by a factor of whatever their daily email traffic is. Whatever that number is, it’s a lot.

As mentioned in a previous post, WrapMail is currently evaluating relationships with a number of colleges and universities with the goal of 1) creating a “college advertising” network using student email traffic as the vehicle, and 2) creating a model where WrapMail shares the revenue with participating colleges/universities.

Big Picture: create a network where not only “tier 1″ advertisers like Apple, Dell and Verizon could reach the very important college demographic, but also a network where local advertisers can serve their own ads. Yes, Johnny’s Pizza in College Town USA could log into the portal and upload an ad that would appear in local emails of college students. He could control the ad, choose what to spend and check the response. Pretty cool.

Look at this example of a possible scenario. Dave emails Joe about the big game and within that email is an ad for Dell.



Here is an example featuring local businesses.



This is new ground in the world of advertising, but such an obvious way to generate impressions. Wrap it up!

Classic startup dilemma - when to ask for the umbrella?

There's an old saying that you should ask to borrow an umbrella when it is not raining because when it is indeed raining nobody will lend you one. Having started north of a dozen companies on 3 continents I can verify that this is true. My latest venture, WrapMail, is looking to raise some money and it is not raining so to speak. In this effort (which we yet have to put focus on as building the business takes just about all available time) I've come across some interesting responses:

Bank: If you deposit $1M with us in an escrow account (that you can't touch) then we would consider lending you $1M. Does this make sense to anyone? Assuming I have the million why do I need the bank for this exercise?

VC: Why don't you build the Sales Team and get to cash-flow positive and then we'll talk. Duh - this is exactly what we would use most of the funding for.

I have many times been on the other side of the table and I view it as one party has an idea and people to execute a part of the way, the investor has money. The risk is always high at these levels where there's zero liquidity in the investment so one tries to balance that risk looking at the validity of the idea, the potential, the team and the potential exit strategies (liquid event). Then, in my case, I jump or I don't.

There's always the old fashioned way of building the business with blood,sweat and ones own money (which I am doing currently), it is less dilutive and a great feeling when success is established. However, it is normally a slower process and being in the viral internet advertising space SPEED is Job 1.

I guess we plug on, the more no's we get means we get that much closer to a yes OR better yet success without sharing.