Pets, more pets, and PetSmart

It seems that everywhere i look on GroupCard i see an allusion to pets

1) The Humane Society card for Obama and his family is getting TONS of hits, over 6200 signers to date

2) Bob's dog, Chester recently signed a card

3) Petsmart, the Major US retailer of pet supplies, now uses GroupCard.  Check out this cool comment from one of their

 employees 

"Thanks!  I’ve used your website in the past.  It’s a great, fun way to send greetings to someone.  My teams are

 spread out over half the US and it is very  difficult to get signatures on greeting cards."

October Wrapup....

It seems that things are taking hold, and people are really starting to find out about us! Boss's day was a great success, and we watched hundreds of lucky bosses around the world get some GroupCard love from their office teams.

In October, there were over seventy thousand signatures on cards, and over twenty five hundred cards with over five signatures. Importantly, we are celebrating yet another (6th in a row) month of record revenue.


In October, GroupCard was selected as an FBFund finalist. This means that the good people at Facebook (and Accel and FoundersFund) have awarded us a $25k grant. We are now gearing up for the final selection, where we are eligible for another $225k in additional grant money. We're hoping for your vote!


...and here's this months's select list of "cool new groupcard teams":

September Wrapup

September was a bit of a transitional month we adjusted to the mix shift between our core site and our facebook application traffic. As part of this, we began to understand our "card-to-card K factor" and other really interesting viral metrics.

September marked our sixth streight moth of record revenue, record "average signers-per-card", and over 1300 cards with over over 5 signatures.

Finally, we are excited to see teams from these companies start to use GroupCard.

If you wonder how groupcard works....

We've had numerous requests from people who were curious about what happens behind the scenes at GroupCard........

Big News at GroupCard

How do we celebrate our special events here at GroupCard? With a GroupCard, of course! We started a Congratulations card for John, one of the founders, and his fiancée, Katie, as they get "hitched" this weekend. The card will be delivered on Saturday, June 29^th- the big wedding day. Check it out and leave a message for John and Katie! http://www.groupcard.com/c/DfPdXqwkcqw

In other news, there are celebrity cards going for both Richard Simmons and Harrison Ford. They're neck-and-neck. Are you kidding me people? Add your birthday wishes here: http://www.groupcard.com/celebrity_cards.php

In living color - Now you can get your GroupCard Printed! (BETA)

Every day we get a handful of awesome emails from users asking... er BEGGING for a printed GroupCard. We never expected such big demand! After quite a bit of trial and error (and sadly killing a few trees) we've finally come up with a way to offer printed cards. Our first try is a rough beta, but we think you'll love the final product!

Visit our print page to learn more about how you can choose from three different options

1) "Poster Card" These cards make a real impression! For this solution, we print your card out on high quality poster paper, and send it to you in a roll. It's great for displaying your GroupCard on the wall in your cubicle, office, room, garage, or (if you're really popular and have a lot of signatures) along the side of a school bus! Rich (our Chief Creative Officer) actually does this all by hand, so you're sure to get a high quality product with great attention to detail! Current charge is $14.99, though if you have a HUGE card, we may need to charge you more.

2) "Flip Book"


Perfect for passing around at a party, for a coffee table, or just keeping handy in the bookshelf. This option is slightly more expen$ive b/c we use a third party provider. Current charge is $24.99

3) "DIY"




For this, we send you a pdf file that you can basically print out on your own printer at home or the office. It is great if you need the card NOW, or if you just want something quick and easy to keep on your desk. Current charge is $4.99, and this is to help us cover some extra software and computing work that this rendering requires.

David Cook truly is an American Idol

Right now there's an awesome celebrity "congratulations" card for David Cook (the presumptive winner of this season's American Idol). Over two hundred people have signed it in the last half hour..... including someone who thinks Obama is not going to win?It's still early, but this card appears to have has enough early traction to be bigger than our cards for the Wheel of fortune or BowWow

It's official, SquidNote is now GroupCard!

In a flurry of activity in the past few days we acquired groupcard.com, changed the code to reflect the new URL, and then went ahead and did our first ever press release... just in time for Mothers' day. Everything seems to have gone off well (fingers crossed).


"Why the SquidNote name in the first place?" It was roughly one year ago today that I began roaming the halls at business school interrogating my friends about possible names for my crazy greeting card idea. My process end ed up pretty straight forward:
1) accost an unwitting friend
2) mention three names
3) wait a day, and see what they remember
In this "recollection contest" SquidNote won by a mile.

"So what went wrong with the name"?
It's true, our cephalopod had many admirers, but in the end, he lost out on some key factors.
1) it was distracting... the "why SquidNote" question wasted 3 minutes from every discussion
2) we couldn't rally around it... for some reason, it never excited us.

We knew it just didn't work.
3) in didn't help the brand... in public polls, the name "SquidNote" lost by a mile in terms of trust, energy, and friendliness.

"Where did GroupCard.com Come from"
To be clear, groupcard.com was more than a domain. There actually was a bare-bones collaborative greeting system running there. The technology was vintage (created back in 2001 we think), but we discovered that the 'ol site actually had a loyal community of users! We warmly welcome those users (Hi Diana!) to "the new GroupCard", and we thank Pam (groupcard.com's former owner) and Kurt at zoomwebhosting for kindly helping us with the transition.

"So, what's next?"
We're excited and committed to our new brand. Rich, our CCO (Chief Creative Officer) has a ton of tricks up his sleeve that will bring GroupCard to life. Stay tuned....