At PostEgram we see what's trending with our customers. Recent PostEgrams have lots of graduation photos--from pre-school to high school. Our guess is we'll soon be seeing lots of vacation photos.
Robert Caplin shared some of his travel photography secrets with the New York Times.
http://frugaltraveler.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/qa-tips-from-travel-photographer-robert-caplin/
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
PostEgram is in the NEWS!
Read Marty Keenan's story on PostEgram in the Detroit News. Click on this link:
http://detnews.com/article/20100609/BIZ/6090347/1001/biz
Vote for PostEgram!
Got a minute? I know. Who Does? BUT, it'd be really great if you could take 5 seconds and vote for PostEgram at :
http://www.startupnation.com/leading-moms-in-business/contestant/8607/index.php
Thanks!
http://www.startupnation.com/leading-moms-in-business/contestant/8607/index.php
Thanks!
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
How we came up for the idea for PostEgram
We often get asked how we came up with the idea for PostEgram. It's a good question.
PostEgram CTO Ken Bloink and I were students at Bizdom U.* Bizdom is an entreprenuer boot camp where folks turn business ideas into business plans. Most Bizdom students enter the program with an idea about the kind of business they want to build. I did not.
One day we did an exercise in class called Disciplined Dreaming. Disciplined Dreaming is a concept (and soon to be published book) developed by the founder and CEO of ePrize, Josh Linkner. Josh is the author of several books. His latest one is on creativity.
Here's how Disciplined Dreaming led to PostEgram.
One day we tried it out at Bizdom U. The first thing my Bizdom instructor, Dan Izzo, did was write down what was important to us in terms of starting a business. For Bizdom students, those things are:
- The business has to be located in the City of Detroit.
- It has to be scaleable.
- And the idea should be launchable for $100,000 or less.
As a class we selected a target audience for a business. We decided to look at senior citizens.
With that in mind, we studied the world around us as it related to the elderly. We looked for trends and inflection points . Inflection points are the points of change. (Like an iPod was an inflection point for how we listen to music.) As a class we noted a rise in the use of technology and social networking. We also noted the demise of newspapers. We also realized that retirees are on fixed incomes. Health issues and loniless also came up.
After we familiarized ourselves with our business guiding principles, our target audience, and our Inflection Points, we tried to connect the dots. We started our "Long List" of business ideas--we had to come up with 100.
Keeping in mind the Inflection Points, a couple of people came up with ideas for teaching the elderly how to use computers or Facebook.
That's the point where the idea for PostEgram came up. I thought of my 78-year-old mother-in-law and how she enjoyed it when I showed her my Facebook account. I knew, however, her objections to owning a computer. It did not interest her. So I came up with a way that she could view Facebook without one!
Lucky for me, Ken thought the idea could work too and he had a printing and programming background.
Here's the thing I think is really cool. Of the 100 ideas we wrote on the board that day, PostEgram was like number 60 or so. I talked to Josh recently and he was explaining that when businesses try to come up with new ideas they will develop maybe 5 ideas. BUT, the long list proves that the deeper you go the fresher the ideas get. As Josh put it "Quantity drives quality."
So there is the long explanation of how we arrived at PostEgram. I felt it was worth giving credit where credit is due. Much thanks to Josh Linkner for his inspiration.
You can learn more about Disciplined Dreaming™: A 5-Step System to Develop and Manage Creativity by downloading a free, short eBook (approximately 2000 words) that explains the system in detail. You’ll enjoy examples, stories, and specific techniques that you can immediately put to use to grow your creative capacity. Click here to get your copy.
*Bizdom is a comprehensive four-month, non-profit, entrepreneur boot camp that trains future entrepreneurs about everything they need to know to start and grow a successful, innovative, Detroit-based business. The program was launched by Dan Gilbert, Founder and Chairman of Quicken Loans Inc. and has been funded by him with assistance from the New Economy Initiative and the Kauffman Foundation. Training is conducted by local entrepreneurs who use their real-world and personal experiences to train participants about the opportunities and challenges they will face as business owners. During the program, participants prepare a business plan for a company, which must be located within the City of Detroit.
PostEgram allows social networking without a computer
This article appeared in the Daily Tribune.
PostEgram allows social networking without a computer
Published: Saturday, May 29, 2010
By Catherine Kavanaugh
Daily Tribune Staff Writer
Newsletter compiles Facebook updates, photos for low-tech subscribers.
There was a time when 78-year-old Joy Davids kept the family connected, relaying news from the mundane to major milestones to relatives who called her regularly.
However, nowadays the family, especially the young ones, doesn’t phone home as often to tell the Hazel Park woman about their school concerts or find out what their cousins are doing. They text and use Facebook to keep up with each other and hundreds of their closest friends.
Technology sidelined the Davids matriarch, who doesn’t have a computer and doesn’t want one. That bothered her daughter-in-law, Judy Davids, 50, of Royal Oak, who based a new business called PostEgram on bridging the generation gap.
PostEgram uses an application on the Facebook platform to turn personal updates and photos into a printed newsletter that arrives monthly in the snail mailbox of friends and family who don’t go online.
Customers can sign up for a PostEgram account for $4.99 a month, edit content for the newsletter, and schedule delivery. The price includes printing and postage.
“It’s great for me,” Joy Davids said. “It keeps me informed without sitting at a computer. I saw pictures of my grandson’s house in Seattle before he moved there and another grandson’s little boy walking in Georgia. It keeps me in touch and they don’t have to call.”
Judy Davids said her mother-in-law was the inspiration behind the business she runs with Ken Bloink, a fellow graduate of Bizdom U, an entrepreneur boot camp started by Quicken Loans Chairman Dan Gilbert.
“Before Facebook came along she was the family status updater,” Judy Davids said. “When social networking exploded we didn’t need her anymore to find out what our out-of-state relatives were up to. She would tell us something and I knew from Facebook it happened two weeks ago.”
The communication gap also was evident when Judy Davids couldn’t convince her sons to call their grandparents about their concert performances and school accomplishments.
“They’d say, ‘I wish I could just text them,’” Judy Davids said. “Kids text and seniors wait for phone calls. Our generation is sandwiched between our kids, who are technical natives growing up with technology, and our parents, who are technical foreigners. We’re technical immigrants, who are learning it and interpreting for them.”
Judy Davids came up with PostEgram to do the interpreting for a growing number of subscribers who want to keep not only elderly relatives but military servicemen and women in the loop.
PostEgram has caught the attention of the Michigan National Guard for reservists serving overseas.
“They use computers, but while they are away for 15 months their computer time is limited. PostEgram keeps them connected,” Judy Davids said.
Another subscriber is creating monthly newsletters for a relative who suffered a traumatic brain injury and has memory problems.
Joy Davids saves her newsletters as a family journal and a modern brag book about her five children, 11 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren.
“I take it often when I have lunch with my friends,” she said. “They share their pictures and I share my newsletter. It’s a good idea.”
PostEgram lets the sender and recipient communicate in a way that’s comfortable for them. The business launched in April with $115,000 of seed money from the Bizdom Fund for modest salaries and start-up costs.
Bizdom U maintains a share of ownership to fund future ventures and requires participants to locate in Detroit.
“The idea is to reinvent Detroit with business not based on manufacturing,” Judy Davids said. “I’m proud to be part of the vision that Detroit can make a comeback.”
It’s a personal comeback, too. Fifteen months ago Davids was laid off from a consulting firm where she had worked for 17 years. She reinvented herself from an obsolete draftsperson to a CEO.
She also is the guitarist in the Mydols, which will appear on the reality TV series Gene Simmons Family Jewels.
“I always felt creative and fearless about everything except what I did for a living,” Davids said. “My friends called it the golden handcuffs. I was afraid to give up a paycheck.”
Now she is watching her ideas pay off.
For more information about PostEgram, call (313) 202-6675 or go to www.postegram.com.
PostEgram allows social networking without a computer
Published: Saturday, May 29, 2010
By Catherine Kavanaugh
Daily Tribune Staff Writer
Newsletter compiles Facebook updates, photos for low-tech subscribers.
There was a time when 78-year-old Joy Davids kept the family connected, relaying news from the mundane to major milestones to relatives who called her regularly.
However, nowadays the family, especially the young ones, doesn’t phone home as often to tell the Hazel Park woman about their school concerts or find out what their cousins are doing. They text and use Facebook to keep up with each other and hundreds of their closest friends.
Technology sidelined the Davids matriarch, who doesn’t have a computer and doesn’t want one. That bothered her daughter-in-law, Judy Davids, 50, of Royal Oak, who based a new business called PostEgram on bridging the generation gap.
PostEgram uses an application on the Facebook platform to turn personal updates and photos into a printed newsletter that arrives monthly in the snail mailbox of friends and family who don’t go online.
Customers can sign up for a PostEgram account for $4.99 a month, edit content for the newsletter, and schedule delivery. The price includes printing and postage.
“It’s great for me,” Joy Davids said. “It keeps me informed without sitting at a computer. I saw pictures of my grandson’s house in Seattle before he moved there and another grandson’s little boy walking in Georgia. It keeps me in touch and they don’t have to call.”
Judy Davids said her mother-in-law was the inspiration behind the business she runs with Ken Bloink, a fellow graduate of Bizdom U, an entrepreneur boot camp started by Quicken Loans Chairman Dan Gilbert.
“Before Facebook came along she was the family status updater,” Judy Davids said. “When social networking exploded we didn’t need her anymore to find out what our out-of-state relatives were up to. She would tell us something and I knew from Facebook it happened two weeks ago.”
The communication gap also was evident when Judy Davids couldn’t convince her sons to call their grandparents about their concert performances and school accomplishments.
“They’d say, ‘I wish I could just text them,’” Judy Davids said. “Kids text and seniors wait for phone calls. Our generation is sandwiched between our kids, who are technical natives growing up with technology, and our parents, who are technical foreigners. We’re technical immigrants, who are learning it and interpreting for them.”
Judy Davids came up with PostEgram to do the interpreting for a growing number of subscribers who want to keep not only elderly relatives but military servicemen and women in the loop.
PostEgram has caught the attention of the Michigan National Guard for reservists serving overseas.
“They use computers, but while they are away for 15 months their computer time is limited. PostEgram keeps them connected,” Judy Davids said.
Another subscriber is creating monthly newsletters for a relative who suffered a traumatic brain injury and has memory problems.
Joy Davids saves her newsletters as a family journal and a modern brag book about her five children, 11 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren.
“I take it often when I have lunch with my friends,” she said. “They share their pictures and I share my newsletter. It’s a good idea.”
PostEgram lets the sender and recipient communicate in a way that’s comfortable for them. The business launched in April with $115,000 of seed money from the Bizdom Fund for modest salaries and start-up costs.
Bizdom U maintains a share of ownership to fund future ventures and requires participants to locate in Detroit.
“The idea is to reinvent Detroit with business not based on manufacturing,” Judy Davids said. “I’m proud to be part of the vision that Detroit can make a comeback.”
It’s a personal comeback, too. Fifteen months ago Davids was laid off from a consulting firm where she had worked for 17 years. She reinvented herself from an obsolete draftsperson to a CEO.
She also is the guitarist in the Mydols, which will appear on the reality TV series Gene Simmons Family Jewels.
“I always felt creative and fearless about everything except what I did for a living,” Davids said. “My friends called it the golden handcuffs. I was afraid to give up a paycheck.”
Now she is watching her ideas pay off.
For more information about PostEgram, call (313) 202-6675 or go to www.postegram.com.
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