David Wachs is the founder of Handwrytten, the global leading provider of handwritten notes. Before Handwrytten, he founded, built, and sold Cellit. Established in 2004, Cellit was a leading mobile messaging company that sent millions of messages a day on behalf of leading retailers. The company was also an early player in building mobile websites and apps. Before Cellit, he worked in consulting, investment banking, and briefly in venture capital. He went to the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied computer science, engineering, and economics at Wharton.
He chose this path because he always wanted to start a business. He has two young children (ages 2 and 4), so he tries to spend as much time with them on weekends. David loves escaping to the mountains for cooler weather, hikes, and days in the park with their dogs. He loves taking the kids to swim class or T-ball. His life outside of work revolves around his wife and children. Additionally, he loves long bike rides and finds it to be a great way to clear his head.
The budding startup:
Handwrytten allows one to send real handwritten notes, written in ballpoint pen, from their computer, automatically. They can submit their orders via the company’s website, iPhone app and Android app. The company also integrates into powerful platforms, including Salesforce, Zapier, Integromat, Shopify, and Hubspot, to automate the process too. The company has at least 115 custom-built robots that write one’s notes for one in the handwriting style of their choice on the stationery of their choice. It looks realistic, and the recipient isn’t aware of it. The company can optionally include gift cards to major brands or even a client’s business card to make it even more of a gift.
Handwrytten is building out a robust campaign manager for sending real handwritten cards on a timed basis, and it is most likely to improve the workflow of things, for example, for sending real birthday cards out on people’s birthdays on an annual basis. They are also continuing to build out their integrations into third-party platforms as their Shopify integration was just complete, and now they are starting with an ActiveCampaign integration.
David thinks Handwrytten has an excellent culture, and they are a fun-loving group with limited layers of management. All the members of the team are kept in the loop on big sales opportunities and on the financials of the company. The best part is that the company regularly has monthly team-building exercises, such as golfing trips or even muffin baking competitions. The young entrepreneur thinks they have an enjoyable, vibrant culture. He wishes that more people knew about the excellent services they offered. They are continually marketing and advertising to increase awareness, but having more extensive brand awareness would be helpful. He is most proud of developing his team, and he has a few team members that joined more than five years ago and are still with the company. They have not only grown with the company but have also gained leadership skills and now have substantial responsibility in the company. The company quickly realized the technology was not sufficient for their needs, the output quality was not realistic, and the company supporting the machines was not responsive to the requirements. The process took over three years and hundreds of thousands of dollars, but they now have a robot that is better than the old autopen.
Standing out among all the rivals:
The company is one of the biggest providers of automated handwriting globally as their proprietary robots have the best, most realistic writing in the industry. All characters tend to multiple variations to create a more natural look. To create more realism, lines are not spaced perfectly on the page, and the left margin is a bit staggered. The company tends to with more systems than anyone else, and currently, they are integrating with Salesforce.com, Zapier, Integromat, Shopify, Hubspot, and SyncSpider. They can set up SFTP transfers of data on an automated basis for other systems; clients can use their API for direct integration. They run a complete print shop in their facility, with a top-of-the-line digital press as it allows one to print full-bleed, folded cards for their clients on demand. The company has at least 115 robots, which will enable them to fulfill more orders faster than anyone else.
They estimate that they are at least 5-10x larger than their next competitor in terms of capacity. The company serves all clients, including individuals to small businesses and large corporations, besides serving individual consumers looking to send a card to their friends or loved ones. But the company’s core is business is businesses. The clients can be real estate agents, mortgage brokers, and other professionals looking to connect to their clients and prospects or any other companies that wish to reach their clients.
Additionally, the company also serves car manufacturers, luxury goods and perfume makers, solar panel installers, meal box subscriptions, financial institutions, and non-profits. The clients have faith in the company because they offer a 100% money-back guarantee that means if a client isn’t happy with them for any reason, they will provide a full refund without any second thoughts. Furthermore, the organization leads the industry because they keep their platform ahead by continual innovation and integration and look to see where people might use them and then build integration into that system.
The best part is that they are currently building a robust computer vision and machine learning system to improve quality assurance, and it has come out of their continued R&D efforts, and the core of the organization is innovation. Their scale of operation is an actual barrier to entry for others, and David hopes to dominate the market. They were thrilled to be named one of Inc. Magazine’s fastest-growing companies in 2020, coming in at #148.
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