VentureBeat

A New York City startup is offering humorous e-cards with a novel strategy: Be funny.

Okay, that’s a little unfair to the competition, but Someecards made me laugh a lot harder than what I’ve seen on sites like Funny eCards. Traditional sites may be fancier, but they’re also … cuter. Someecards, on the other hand, features content written by former Onion writer Brook Lundy and his partner Duncan Mitchell, and the humor is smart and mean. The most popular card, for example, reads, “When work feels overwhelming, remember that you’re going to die.” The rest of the cards in the site’s “most popular” section are equally uplifting and are probably not safe for work.

The company just raised a $350,000 seed round from Betaworks and angel investor Chris Sacca (formerly Google’s wireless chief), who says the site’s humor makes it popular with a much younger crowd than other companies.

“I’d feel like such a loser sending somebody an e-card off a traditional site,” Sacca says.

On the other hand, Sacca had no qualms telling his parents he loves them with this card: “I’ll always be grateful that you didn’t abort me.”

Since launching a little less than a year ago, the ad-supported site’s traffic has grown to around 1.5 million unique visitors a month, with healthy return visits as well, Sacca says. That’s pretty impressive for a site mostly written part-time by two guys. Next, Someecards is looking to hire someone technical to take charge of the website.

There’s a lot of room to expand Someecards using social networking tools, Sacca adds — content from the site could be incorporated into Facebook, and the company could add some social functionality, like commenting, to the site itself. The more Sacca talks about Someecards, the more it becomes clear that he’s not just excited about the site, but also about harnessing Mitchell and Lundy’s talent and taking it into whatever channels are available.

Of course, those T-shirt and TV deals may be some distance the future. For now, I’ll leave you with a message for everyone who’s tried to contact me in the last few days.

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