DNS for online/offline addresses
I’ve always been obsessed with the idea of being able to send physical mail or packages to someone’s email address. We recently sent Pace Airpods to a large handful of friends and we had to manually chase down everyone’s mailing address to do it. These are super close people who we talk to and email all the time, but we never had a reason to know their physical address until now. Why can’t I just put their email address on the package and feel good that they’ll receive it. The world needs a mapping of physical addresses to email addresses, or more broadly physical addresses to any online id, be it an email addy, a phone number, or even an Instagram/Tiktok handle.
The tough part about this idea that has always been a block is awareness. Even if I had a way for you to send a package to jordan@pacecapital.com, you’d have to know about it in order for it to be useful. Historically, this awareness felt insurmountable, but the world has changed. Thanks to social media and the emergence of creators and influencers, there are now very built out distribution channels (i.e. creators) with a need/painpoint that said mapping service solves. It’s quite common for an influencer’s followers to mail her samples, gifts, promotional products etc…but in order to receive this form of compensation, an influencer must reveal her address to strangers…not ideal from a safety standpoint…even if that isn’t not an issue, the friction of a fan sliding into an influencer’s DMs, asking for an address, etc…is more than it needs to be. What if a creator’s followers could send these items directly to her Instagram handle…feels like a win for all…
With influencers evangelizing this new capability, it’s not a leap to think that mainstream awareness would follow, and that everyone eventually could sign up to be reachable physically by way of an online identity. I’d love to invest in a startup that is tackling this. My hack solution, which can DEFINITELY be improved upon, is to route all the mail and packages through a proxy that maintains the mapping between digital and physical addresses. You’d be able to send me a package to:
@jordancooper
C/O Instagram ID
333 Front Street (Newco sorting facility address)
NY, NY, 10012
or
Jordan@pacecapital.com
333 Front Street
NY, NY 10012
or
212-555-5555
333 Front Street
NY, NY 10012
333 Front Street would be a sorting facility owned and operated by Newco, which I as a creator or consumer pay to securely maintain (and authenticate) my digital/physical mapping. Newco would receive, readdress to my physical address and forward the package (or deliver it in the scaled state where Newco has usurped UPS, Fedex or USPS).
So what about spam? Feels solvable/manageable with focus, but yea…
So what about security? Feels solvable/manageable with focus, but yea…
I always wished the US Postal Service would have done this in a highly standardized way…but that ain’t happening so someone else should do it. Shopify and Amazon both have a pretty significant mapping of email addys to physical addresses, and I guess could play here, but seems pretty far afield for them near term.
Holler if you happen to be thinking about this stuff or if you’ve solved it more elegantly than me: jordan@pacecapital.com
Jordan Cooper's Blog: startups, venture capital, etc... 
Shyp had a pretty cool take on this a long time ago with usernames: https://shyp.helpshift.com/a/shyp/?s=pickup-and-packaging&f=using-your-shyp-username&l=en
“When you send to your contacts with Shyp, you don’t need to ask for their address—just enter their username.”
Jeremy Cai
jjeremycai
November 15, 2020
One approach could be via an email client
On Mon, Nov 16, 2020 at 4:10 AM Jordan Cooper’s Blog: startups, venture capital, etc… wrote:
> jordancooper posted: ” I’ve always been obsessed with the idea of being > able to send physical mail or packages to someone’s email address. We > recently sent Pace Airpods to a large handful of friends and we had to > manually chase down everyone’s mailing address to do it. The” >
Varadh Jain
November 15, 2020
That’s a cool idea
jordancooper
November 15, 2020