Outbox
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Outbox was an Austin mail-digitization startup founded by Evan Baehr and Will Davis (record says founded 2012). Its 'unpostmen' picked up customers' physical postal mail three times a week, scanned it into secure digital mailboxes viewable online for $4.99 a month, shredding the paper after 60 days. After an Austin pilot it launched in San Francisco in 2013, raising a $5 million Series A led by Floodgate that July ($6.5 million raised in total), with over 2,000 customers and 25,000 on the waitlist.
02 / Outbox FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
Demand for the mail-digitization service was too low to cover its operating costs. The founders stopped this service and redirected the team toward a different product; this was not a confirmed closure of the entire company.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Company founded
Outbox was founded.
- Operations ended
Outbox ended operations.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
Outbox piloted in Austin, then launched in San Francisco in February 2013; it raised a $5M Series A led by Floodgate in July 2013.
- 02
In January 2014 founders Evan Baehr and Will Davis announced the mail service was shutting down: 'there wasn't enough demand to support the cost model.'
- 03
The team pivoted to a totally new product, the collaborative small-business lender Able.