I’m a Product Manager Who Used Claude to Build a Postcard Business

This as-told-to essay is predicated on a dialog with Priscilla Tina, a 28-year-old product supervisor primarily based in San Francisco. It has been edited for size and readability.

I am a tech product supervisor in San Francisco by day, and a content material creator by evening. I make movies to encourage individuals to rediscover their creativity.

I have been doing inventive side hustles and experiments my complete life, and I am a lover of all issues analog.

Final November, I sat down and built an app with Claude Code that sends postcards with out coping with stamps or supply.

Analog is again in

Lots of people, together with myself, grew up surrounded by know-how. However I additionally had analog products in my life once I was rising up, and I did not have a cellphone.

Minimize to now, I’ve began dwelling on my cellphone.

We’re spending a whole lot of time brainrotting, a whole lot of AI slop. We’re realizing that spending all our time on our telephones is not very significant.

We’re additionally discovering out that you would be able to join rather a lot higher when socializing in individual, and that there’s worth in going again to the outdated joys of life.

I wished to bridge the divide between the digital and the bodily world and assist join individuals.

I have been sending postcards with my buddies for years; it is a actually enjoyable technique to keep in contact whereas touring. I additionally began to understand that I had bought so many postcards. I had an enormous stack, and it was tremendous inconvenient to write down them.

Then you must purchase stamps on the put up workplace and stroll to a type of mailboxes to mail them. I puzzled if there’s a better method to do that.

Utilizing Claude to construct an app in 4 hours

I might signed up for ProductCon in San Francisco, and I wished a prototype of an app I might showcase on the occasion. So I got here up with the thought for Postcard Press, an app that lets customers add photos and sort messages, which connects to a service known as Postgrid that handles printing and supply.

The evening earlier than, I constructed the naked bones of the app in 4 hours and bought it engaged on my cellphone.

Once I shared it with different product managers on the convention, they requested me when it was able to go, saying they wished to ship their buddies postcards for Christmas. That gave me intel that folks had been enthusiastic about it.

I examined the waters on social media too, posting a video about it that bought 20,000 views.

As a result of there was curiosity in it, I made a decision to problem myself to complete the app earlier than the tip of the yr. Over the following two months earlier than the tip of 2025, I discovered the best way to monetize it, combine cost processing, and launch it.

Since I launched it in December, greater than 100 postcards have been despatched by means of Postcard Press, every costing about $2. Postgrid’s providers value $0.82, and Stripe fees $0.30 per card, so I am truthfully not making a lot revenue per card.

I do know I might transfer to a subscription mannequin if income had been the purpose, but it surely’s actually not why I constructed this app to start with.

Some tech hiccups alongside the way in which

I’ve an engineering background, however not essentially coding, so I wanted some assist from my techie friends.

Earlier than I launched the app, I shared it with a few of my buddies, they usually sat down with their laptops to attempt to hack the web site.

One in all my buddies discovered a safety error that permit him ship 10 postcards with out paying me something, and he stated, “It’s good to repair this earlier than you launch it publicly.” The expertise helped me shore up the app’s security measures.

Funds had been additionally an enormous hurdle for me, as a result of I did not know the best way to arrange a Stripe payment system or how a lot it will value.

However my buddies challenged me. One in all them stated, “I feel you may combine Stripe to do funds and bank card funds in half-hour,” and one other guess towards it. So I sat down and bought it working in half-hour.

Usually, I’d’ve wanted a developer to do this, however I simply requested Claude to learn by means of all of Stripe’s API documentation, and it was capable of combine a cost step within the checkout course of.

The primary of many analog apps

Even when it might not be that profitable in the long term, I consider that what you’re taking away from every experiment is all the educational. Constructing this app has been a extremely priceless studying lesson for me and has made some enjoyable money on the aspect.

I’ve been turning my consideration to creating new products. For instance, I constructed a brand new app known as Mini Print, impressed by the Polaroid partitions I’ve seen in buddies’ properties and native companies.

I constructed an app that allows you to flip pictures into little digital Polaroids and prepare them right into a customized wall in your cellphone to make use of as cellphone backgrounds.

I constructed it with Claude Code, and it is now reached round 2,000 customers. I’ve beloved seeing buddies share their partitions with me.

So lots of my favourite analog experiences are simply ready to be reimagined digitally, and I have been having enjoyable incorporating nostalgic interfaces. Nature and crops are subsequent on my checklist.