I gave out thousands of shirts during my time at Twilio and never once sold one. You got one because we met you or you did something cool and wanted to thank you for the modicum of attention you were able to spare us and for being part of our community.
Selling swag just rubs me the wrong way. Its elitism on the side of the company selling the swag that you would think so highly of yourselves that anyone would pay to promote your company for you. You should be thankful they even know who you are.
I see your point but my experience has been different. I run a similar service (http://StartupThreadsMonthly.com) and I struggled with this point to start (we actually shipped out Twilio shirts as our #2 company). What I realized/decided on after running this for 7 months is that
A) People who are scattered around the world dont always get a chance to get startup tees at events. 40% of our shirts are shipped internationally. They love feeling like they are a part of the community even if they are overseas
B) We ended up trying to add more value to each package by adding in not just a shirt but stickers, discounts on services, etc, to make the value of the bag much higher than what they are saying. (Heck, I even lowered the price after I saw HN comments a while ago about another service that was similar)
C) We dont do any logo shirts, so that they were exclusive to the site and were interesting enough to wear outside of the startup context.
The combination of these things definitely helped me keep some of the subscribers we have had and they seem happy.
This is a cool idea, hope the YC tees takes off! I'm subscribing for sure :-)
> They love feeling like they are a part of the community even if they are overseas
Companies that give out swag should learn from this: ship swag anywhere. If someone does something on their own to provide value to your community then $70 to ship a t-shirt to Lebanon is worth it.
Is it still "swag" (stuff we all get) if you pay for it (and eventually for the shipping)? I bought a couple of tees and stickers from Github because I love everything about them and I thought it would be nice to support them - that was before that $100mm investment. I think people should buy merch from companies they admire and want to support even more. $15 bucks a month for a tshirt with the name of a service you don't use and might even never heard of seems a bit weird.
So would you NOT buy stickers from them post investment? Isn't the bigger point of stickers to show the world that you support Github, rather than to financially support them?
Certainly! Working on a tshirt api (http://swagmate.startupthreads.com/) to do just this, since the hard part for companies I have spoken to seems to be the managing of this process
Startup Threads is a cool idea. If you're one of the people who is not interested in "swag" just don't sign up. I don't understand why people get offended by products. No one is forcing the "swag." If you've ever run your own startup, there is a certain thrill that comes from sticking your first stickers or wearing your first tshirt. The next greatest thrill is seeing your sticker in the wild on shirt on someone on the street. It's about pride. If people are willing to fund the spread of those feelings, then all the power to them.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. I get excited when companies I actually care about give me something. This just feels dirty. It doesn't even look like a choice of what company's tshirt. YC has what, 500+ companies? It seems silly to just want a tshirt from a company because they are in some funding group.
Just to clarify,
YC Startups are NOT profiting whatsoever from people buying their t'shirts from HN Tees. We have found in talking to countless startups that distributing merchandise to existing and potential supporters and appreciated customers is not something that they have a lot of time to handle while running their businesses. HN tees is providing a service to startups, so that people who follow YC startups WORLDWIDE, not just in the SV or SF area can sport a cool t-shirt. It's really meant to be a positive thing for people who like sportin a little tech wear now and then. For those of you who claim to never wear anything with a logo and/or brand name on it, this membership may not be for you.
The money isn't going to the YC companies, it covers shipping/handling/production. It was something we wanted so we thought others would like it too. Didn't mean to offend.
This is what's interesting to me. The concept of advertising for other companies is something the majority of people do on a daily basis. There's not many name brands that hide their logo or name on clothing. Not sure why this is getting the response it is. Are people really serious that they think they should be paid to wear these, like they are doing some great service, but a company like american eagle is for some reason entitled to peoples $30 to have you advertise their line. Or do the majority of HN readers wear completely plain shirts day in and day out. I like the idea, i'm only having trouble pulling the trigger as I don't think I'd wear a shirt for a service i've heard little about or don't even like using.
1. bitsweet, your post below in this thread seems to be marked as [dead]
2. If the cost is solely to cover shipping / production, it would be a good idea to put this on the main page. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't sign up if I knew people were making money off this, but if there's no profit involved, I'd be more interested.
This seems really similar to StartupThreadsMonthly (https://www.startupthreadsmonthly.com/), except that StartupThreads uses higher quality American Apparel shirts and have both YC and non-YC startups participating.
I can't say anything about Next Level, but as a relatively short gentlemen who prefers Adult Small tees, my size in American Apparel seems built for extremely tall, extremely skinny people. And the one time I was accidentally sent an Adult Medium it fit me a bit like a sundress.
Most days I will wear a t-shirt that I have been given either though a conference or other means. I wear them mostly because I like them and want to be identified as a developer (by other developers or people who 'know').
So, I like these shirts and happily wear them to my co-working space or around town and to industry meet-ups. I have never paid for one (outside of conf fees) and probably never will.
I might pay for a service that bundled up several shirts from companies I cared about only to cover the cost of shipping and 'time.' But forking over $15 for a single shirt from some random start-up does not make much sense to me.
I would. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics). For example, if I see someone wearing a YC t-shirt over here in China, I'd most likely strike a conversation. I understand the signal isn't much needed or useful in Silicon Valley though since basically everyone seems to be involved in a startup.
Take a look at www.StartupThreadsMonthly.com - they've been running for awhile and do a great job. American Apparel, stickers in the bag, etc. They've taken what we did with StartupSchwag to the next level.
Good luck to the hntees guys tho =) Really tight landing page.
"You pay us to be advertising for startups"... Im sure some will signup out of love for YC but have you thought of instead paying people to receive the T-shirts with the hope that they will wear them in public?
YC Startup: Pays HN Tees for the cost of the T-shirts and for the service of printing and distributing them to their followers/customers. (make no profit off customers wearing shirts)
HN Tees: Provides the service of processing and distribution for the startup.
HN Tee's member: Pays $15 for a monthly HN Tee because its a high quality t-shirt designed by an awesome Startup, they like and wear a lot of T-shirts, and follow and support YC Startups.
As commented by other people there's a few similar places to get this sort of thing (a monthly start-up branded tshirt), but is there nowhere that maybe releases a new one each month and you can check it out and decide to buy, even if it's only available for a limited period of time (e.g. until the next one comes out)?
Personally for me to want the shirt it has to have an OK combination of a.) looking good and b.) I like the company - could be that it looks kinda alright and I really like the company, or that it looks really nice and I kinda think the company are OK... but I just don't really have any interest in getting a tshirt that may or may not look terrible, for a company I may or may not hate / not have heard of / whatever.
I see what you did there. A meta/piggy-back business on top of the YC buzz, but i'm ok with it. As much as I stay away from wearing unknown texts on my clothing, I'd be fully ok to wear these if they look decent and the quality is ok. I'm fully happy wearing my Mailchimp t-shirt because 1. mailchimp rocks 2. it's comfy and creative.
I wonder if the people who commented about free t-shirts do realize that the money doesn't go to the YC companies, but to this other start-up.
There is one small reason why I'm here ranting and not actually signing up: that credit card form. I see that you use https, but there's something I don't trust about this "1 page, bam, give us your credit card info" bit.
Nice site. If I had to nitpick, I'd say put the FAQ above the order form, and would've liked to get at least some sort of representation of what sort of tees I'd be getting.
The idea reminds me a lot of Valley Schwag[0], which was doing something very similar back in 2006... I got a few great tees out of being a member there, and a tonne of stickers and other little promo items.
I'd really like a gallery of previous tees so I can see what sort of thing I would be getting. You say they won't be logo shirts, so what will they be? I'm interested but confused.
What if I get a tee from a startup of which I don't necessarily like? The only tees of startups I wear are ones I use/really support. I don't want to be a walking advertisement for a startup I'm not even using.
Why were you hoping it would go to https://www ? If you knew the proper landing URL was https://hntees.com why not just go there? I really do not understand hoping; were you hoping to put down a start up on HN?
I didn't mean to offend anyone by suggesting to do a redirect, but I know that it's an easy fix to do so that's why I suggested it.
hntees is a business, and if I were running a business I wouldn't want my clients to run into any warnings that could scare them away from using my site.
yes they have a slight issue with their security cert when used with the "www." but I would not be so quick to call them fly-by-night just for that. Simply bringing it to their attention seems less dickish.
While I admire the effort, however I have some complaints for you. Horrible visual design (especially fonts) and screams skeumorphism done wrong. Why every hipster designer wants to follow Apple?
EDIT: Dowonvoters, bring it on! You can't give critiques anymore?
Selling swag just rubs me the wrong way. Its elitism on the side of the company selling the swag that you would think so highly of yourselves that anyone would pay to promote your company for you. You should be thankful they even know who you are.