July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

One billion versus one million. The numbers don’t compare, and yet social gifting startup Sincerely believes its business, with just 1.2 million members, is safe from the potentially crushing widespread rollout of Facebook Gifts.

Two-year-old Sincerely makes applications like Postagram and Sincerely Ink that mail mobile photos as printed postcards or greeting cards. Today, just one day ahead of a major Facebook press event dedicated to gifts, the young startup revealed user numbers and traction for the first time, and it teased the pending release of its own digital gifts offering.

Sincerely has accumulated 1.2 million members across its entire network, which includes people using the aforementioned apps and the roughly 60 third-party iOS applications tapping its API for postcard printing, it announced today. The startup added that it has mailed cards to more than 800,000 unique households and has built up a database of 1.6 million physical mailing addresses.

Sincerely is also partnered with Facebook and powers the social network’s physical postcard experiment, though neither company is releasing numbers or data associated with that test.

The keepsake company, which refers to itself as a gifting network, next plans to launch its first real gifts app called Sesame in the coming weeks.

“Our strategy has been to start with the world’s simplest gift, a postcard, and expand from there,” CEO and co-founder Matt Brezina said. “Starting with this simple gift, we were able to grow a large network of users and mailing addresses. Now we can take the next step in building out the vision by allowing members to send other gifts.”

Brezina was tight-lipped on the particulars of the forthcoming Sesame app, though he did share a photo of a Sesame gift box (pictured above) and stressed that “beautiful packing” would play an important role in differentiating the mobile gifting app from others out there.

But shouldn’t Sincerely fear the imminent widespread release of Facebook’s social gifting initiative? The social network is currently testing a well-received and easy-to-use Gifts product that allows members to pick from a selection of physical gifts to mail to friends for birthdays and other occasions. Presumably, Facebook will, in an effort to make Gifts a desirable holiday destination, roll out the product to even more members (if not all 1 billion of them) at a press event scheduled for tomorrow at the FAO Schwarz toy store in New York.

“Facebook entering the market was the best thing that ever happened to us,” Brezina said. “Just like when Apple Cards launched on the iPhone, it boosted our business — consumers realized they could send cards from their phone. And I think long term, through a singular business focus on delivering gifts and cards, a focus on customer service … we will end up outshining Facebook in this space.”

We’ll see about that.

Sincerely has raised roughly $3 million in funding to the date. The San Francisco-based startup, Brezina said, is not focused on profitability at the moment and will raise more capital at some point.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what’s the value of a postcard? The Gap hopes to find out.

The apparel maker today launched a holiday postcard promotion on Facebook with an application powered by startup Sincerely. The company is allowing fans to send their own Facebook photos as real, printed postcards to social network friends free of charge.

The Gap is giving away up to 1 million free postcards through the end of December. The cards, which are delivered with a pop-out square photo and a message from the Facebook sender, typically retail for $0.99 a piece. Gap fans can send up to two free postcards.

The brand’s sentimental holiday initiative is the result of a partnership with keepsake startup Sincerely, which makes a mobile application called Postagram for mailing Instagram, Facebook, and mobile camera shots as postcards. The Gap is the first brand to take advantage of Sincerely’s brand-centric service Postagram Direct, launching today.

Postagram Direct ports the standard postcard product to a custom-branded Facebook experience where companies like the Gap can offer their fans the sponsored printed freebies. Brands can also add logos, coupons, hashtags, or QR codes to postcards. Direct customers pay a campaign setup fee, along with a monthly fee based on the number of cards sent.

“This partnership happened because the Gap’s head of social media is a user of Postagram,” Sincerely CEO and co-founder Matt Brezina told VentureBeat. “They think photos are important — and loved the idea of tying their brand to something as tangible and emotional as a card sent to a loved one in the mail.”

Sincerely competes with Apple, which makes a greeting card application for iOS, and a host of other applications and print shops helping smartphone owners transform digital captures into tangible treasures. The two-year-old startup has raised roughly $3 million in funding and recently partnered with Facebook to test a postcard feature for the social network.

Facebook is dipping its toes into the cottage industry of turning digital photos into printed postcard moments.

The social network has today started permitting a small group of members to mail Facebook photos as printed postcards to their social network pals. The feature is powered by mobile-photo-to-keepsake startup Sincerely and began as a hackathon project.

“A few months ago, some engineers built a fun feature that allows people to mail their Facebook photos as a physical postcard to any of their friends on Facebook,” a company spokesperson told VentureBeat. “You can send your own photos to any of your friends or your friends’ photo to them. The front will be the photo and the back you can add a note for your friend, just like a normal postcard.”

Postcard senders do need to pay a small fee, but Facebook is still experimenting with various prices, the representative said.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

“Ummm im obsessed with the app Postcards on the Run!! I’ve been sending them like crazy lol.”

Selena Gomez, the 19 year-old pop princess, actress and girlfriend of Justin Bieber, tweeted the above approbation for the iPhone application to her 8.3 million followers two weeks ago. Today, she informed the world that she too can play the celebrity investor and advisor part, and participated in Postcard on the Run’s $750,000 round of financing.

Postcard on the Run is a fresh, Los Angeles-based startup with iPhone and Android applications that lets you send real postcards to friends anywhere the world for $0.99 a piece. It has a few hooks including automatic address retrieval and “smell mail,” a feature that lets users add scratch-and-sniff scents to postcards.

The startup, which competes directly with Postagram and Apple’s similarly-purposed Cards app, now has Gomez, a powerful social media socialite — and possibly her even more influential boyfriend by association — in its corner. In addition to her Twitter legions, Gomez has nearly 25 million fans on Facebook. A Facebook update on today’s news nabbed 4,117 likes and 663 comments in four hours. Score one for Postcard on the Run.

The story goes that Gomez found the iPhone application on her own and loved it so much she tracked down founder Josh Brooks in September. The pair continued to chat and talks quickly turned to investment opportunities, Brooks told VentureBeat.

“She’s a fantastic partner for me,” Brooks said. Case in point: A recent tweet from Gomez netted the startup 20,000 downloads in 24 hours, he said.

Gomez joins an ever-expanding circle of celebrity tech investors that includes Ashton Kutcher and Justin Timberlake. Does it also include her super famous underage boyfriend? We asked Brooks if the Biebs was exploring an investment, but we got a “no comment” on that one.

Crosscut Ventures, Mike Jones, Kamran Pourzanjani, Yves Sisteron, Aber Whitcomb, Brian Fitzgerald, Ryan Steelberg, Colin Digiaro, Brian Lee, Chris DeWolfe and Jarl Mohn also participated in the startup’s first round of funding.