“The medium is the message” is the frequent phrase, however entrepreneur Alexis Traina believes that messages, themselves – textual content messages to be actual – deserve consideration, too.
Traina is the CEO and co-founder of HiNOTE, an app that helps individuals create messages, set over customized backdrops of something from a tipped-over wine glass to a branded letterhead pocket book web page. The concept, she stated in an interview with TechCrunch, is that she wouldn’t stand up daily and costume up in inexperienced, blue and grey – so why do our textual content messages stick with these colours?
“Individuals want to discover new methods to attach new methods to current themselves,” Traina, who constructed the corporate along with her co-founder and husband Trevor, stated. “Even professionally, it’s to have the ability to talk with polish and illustration.”
Since launching in 2022, 1 million HiNOTES have been shared by customers with over 2,000 sorts of notes capable of be customized on the app. The corporate can be engaged on model and creator collaborations – assume digital message drops tuned to the aesthetic of your favourite influencer – and has already completed 20 offers.
Many of the customers, Traina says, are ladies and vary between the ages of 25 and 65. She listed out among the most typical traits among the many early adopters: they ship out 15 greeting playing cards a yr, have Canva subscriptions and ship Paperless Publish invitations proper alongside Minted vacation playing cards.
Self-expression within the type of textual content messages is a selected guess on individuals wanting extra out of their digital communication kinds. But it surely’s not too new, both. Emojis have been created within the late Nineteen Nineties and nonetheless stay an enormous a part of our lexicon immediately. Memes, simply whipped up on on-line providers and even inside some messaging apps like Groupme, proceed to be a enjoyable solution to share a message. And, as an Indian American, I definitely can inform you how frequent it’s to land what looks like 1,000,000 pictures throughout every vacation or life event with textual content overlaid.
As people, we’ve been evolving away from solely bubble-based textual content for many years. Heck, there’s an elephant valued at $40 billion within the room: Canva.
Traina stated that Canva grew to become a invaluable software within the enterprise house as a result of it introduced simplified instruments to enterprise communications.
“What I noticed about it was that it was nonetheless on the desktop, and it was usually 9 to 16 faucets to get your product into work,” she stated. “o I understood for us, the magic can be mobile-first, simple to create and for the on a regular basis communicator.”
Certain sufficient, HiNOTE requires much less buy-in than an app like Canva – actually, as a result of it’s free proper now.t takes a couple of minutes to create an account and begin utilizing customized notes. When you edit a be aware within the app, you’ll be able to share it by way of textual content with one click on.
Clearly, customized messaging is common amongst some, so the query for HiNOTE is extra round methods to seamlessly change into part of a person’s on a regular basis conduct. A part of that entails understanding what is smart to precise by way of a text-overlaid picture and what is smart to ship as a fast
Traina listed off quite a lot of use instances for HiNOTE, revealing that the most well-liked class of notes is the “on a regular basis be aware,” which presents photographs asking somebody to offer you a fast name, birthday messages with customized sign-offs and extra.
Tellingly, in our dialog, Traina solely used one HiNote: to say that she was wanting ahead to our name. Past that, we caught to texts. Clearly, as a lot as we get pleasure from a great meme, it isn’t the one manner we categorical ourselves. Generally a textual content works. HiNOTE is within the strategy of discovering that early product-market match, nevertheless it’s evidently resonating with a bevy of top-tier traders.
HiNOTE has raised $1.9 million thus far in beforehand undisclosed capital from angel traders recognized to be disruptors together with Marissa Mayer, Dick Costolo, Marc Benioff, Yuri Milner, Peter Thiel and Sarah Kunst.
Mayer, former CEO of Yahoo and founding father of Sunshine, informed TechCrunch over e-mail that she loves “the intent of making an attempt to take one thing odd (like texting) and add a richness and expressiveness to it.” She in contrast HiNOTE to her different angel investments, which embody Uber, Sq., Minted and Figma. All “solved broad client issues with an ecosystem method in a chic and easy manner.”
The pre-seed spherical helps the staff keep away from the necessity to monetize instantly, not like a few of its early-stage compadres.
“Like many early-stage, client firms, we’re centered on offering a tremendous, sticky product to our customers — and sooner or later, there are many confirmed income fashions for client platforms with scale,” Traina stated.
“The medium is the message” is the frequent phrase, however entrepreneur Alexis Traina believes that messages, themselves – textual content messages to be actual – deserve consideration, too.
Traina is the CEO and co-founder of HiNOTE, an app that helps individuals create messages, set over customized backdrops of something from a tipped-over wine glass to a branded letterhead pocket book web page. The concept, she stated in an interview with TechCrunch, is that she wouldn’t stand up daily and costume up in inexperienced, blue and grey – so why do our textual content messages stick with these colours?
“Individuals want to discover new methods to attach new methods to current themselves,” Traina, who constructed the corporate along with her co-founder and husband Trevor, stated. “Even professionally, it’s to have the ability to talk with polish and illustration.”
Since launching in 2022, 1 million HiNOTES have been shared by customers with over 2,000 sorts of notes capable of be customized on the app. The corporate can be engaged on model and creator collaborations – assume digital message drops tuned to the aesthetic of your favourite influencer – and has already completed 20 offers.
Many of the customers, Traina says, are ladies and vary between the ages of 25 and 65. She listed out among the most typical traits among the many early adopters: they ship out 15 greeting playing cards a yr, have Canva subscriptions and ship Paperless Publish invitations proper alongside Minted vacation playing cards.
Self-expression within the type of textual content messages is a selected guess on individuals wanting extra out of their digital communication kinds. But it surely’s not too new, both. Emojis have been created within the late Nineteen Nineties and nonetheless stay an enormous a part of our lexicon immediately. Memes, simply whipped up on on-line providers and even inside some messaging apps like Groupme, proceed to be a enjoyable solution to share a message. And, as an Indian American, I definitely can inform you how frequent it’s to land what looks like 1,000,000 pictures throughout every vacation or life event with textual content overlaid.
As people, we’ve been evolving away from solely bubble-based textual content for many years. Heck, there’s an elephant valued at $40 billion within the room: Canva.
Traina stated that Canva grew to become a invaluable software within the enterprise house as a result of it introduced simplified instruments to enterprise communications.
“What I noticed about it was that it was nonetheless on the desktop, and it was usually 9 to 16 faucets to get your product into work,” she stated. “o I understood for us, the magic can be mobile-first, simple to create and for the on a regular basis communicator.”
Certain sufficient, HiNOTE requires much less buy-in than an app like Canva – actually, as a result of it’s free proper now.t takes a couple of minutes to create an account and begin utilizing customized notes. When you edit a be aware within the app, you’ll be able to share it by way of textual content with one click on.
Clearly, customized messaging is common amongst some, so the query for HiNOTE is extra round methods to seamlessly change into part of a person’s on a regular basis conduct. A part of that entails understanding what is smart to precise by way of a text-overlaid picture and what is smart to ship as a fast
Traina listed off quite a lot of use instances for HiNOTE, revealing that the most well-liked class of notes is the “on a regular basis be aware,” which presents photographs asking somebody to offer you a fast name, birthday messages with customized sign-offs and extra.
Tellingly, in our dialog, Traina solely used one HiNote: to say that she was wanting ahead to our name. Past that, we caught to texts. Clearly, as a lot as we get pleasure from a great meme, it isn’t the one manner we categorical ourselves. Generally a textual content works. HiNOTE is within the strategy of discovering that early product-market match, nevertheless it’s evidently resonating with a bevy of top-tier traders.
HiNOTE has raised $1.9 million thus far in beforehand undisclosed capital from angel traders recognized to be disruptors together with Marissa Mayer, Dick Costolo, Marc Benioff, Yuri Milner, Peter Thiel and Sarah Kunst.
Mayer, former CEO of Yahoo and founding father of Sunshine, informed TechCrunch over e-mail that she loves “the intent of making an attempt to take one thing odd (like texting) and add a richness and expressiveness to it.” She in contrast HiNOTE to her different angel investments, which embody Uber, Sq., Minted and Figma. All “solved broad client issues with an ecosystem method in a chic and easy manner.”
The pre-seed spherical helps the staff keep away from the necessity to monetize instantly, not like a few of its early-stage compadres.
“Like many early-stage, client firms, we’re centered on offering a tremendous, sticky product to our customers — and sooner or later, there are many confirmed income fashions for client platforms with scale,” Traina stated.
