“Happy Birthday!” texts, emails, or social media posts don’t quite have the same pizzazz as opening up a physical card in the mail.
Cousins Andrew Gold and Aaron Albert want to revive the art of mailing greeting cards for Gen Z and millennials with their startup Escargot.
“People want to feel human,” Albert told Business Insider in an interview.
Launched in February, Escargot lets people send physical greeting cards for any occasion — birthdays, holidays, congratulations — all within its mobile app or website. Individual cards cost about $8, while subscriptions start at about $10 a month for two card credits that roll over.
The startup recently raised $2.75 million in seed funding from investors like Wischoff Ventures, Hannah Grey, and South Park Commons.
“This greeting card industry is massive,” Gold said. Grand View Research estimated that the US card market was about $7.1 billion in 2025.
Gold said that most of the birthdays in the app are after 2000.
“That’s where we have a big, fertile opportunity,” Gold said. “But we also are interested in marketing towards millennials and up as well.”
While AI has taken over the internet and social media has evolved to feel less social, there’s also been a resurgence of analog media: landlines, photo booths, record players.
This “cultural shift,” Albert said, signaled to Escargot’s founders that now was a good moment to launch a product centered on nostalgia for paper goods as a foil to the futuristic tech coming out of Silicon Valley.
“We’re not Luddites,” Albert said. “We’re not going to poo-poo tech.”
Instead, Escargot’s founders plan to leverage tech and AI to return to a more social version of the web.
“We are not going out pitching ourselves as an AI company,” Gold said. “We are going to use it in interesting ways to power some of the experiences.”
Gold, Escargot’s CEO, previously worked at Apple and Coinbase, while Albert, Escargot’s CMO, is a former child actor and the founder of mental health startup Felt.
AI as a tool to help real people connect
Escargot uses AI in a couple of ways.
If the available art doesn’t suit the message you’re trying to convey, Escargot offers the option to “remix” the card art with AI using Google’s Gemini. Users can upload their own photos to the card, as well.
The app also uses AI to recommend moments to send cards to your friends if you give it access to your calendar and contacts.
Escargot isn’t the only one betting on the space. Hallmark, one of the leading greeting card incumbents, has an app that lets you send paper cards and reminders.
In its pitch to investors, Escargot emphasized that the company plans to expand beyond greeting cards with features that offer a twist on gift cards and more ways to keep people connected.
Escargot is one of several AI-era startups that pitch users with tools to build stronger relationships in the real world. Retro, a photo-sharing social media platform, has a postcard feature that makes sending photos to friends and family as easy as posting online. There’s also Rodeo, founded by former Hinge executives, which is using AI to streamline the process of getting together IRL with friends.
Escargot has five full-time employees, including Gold and Albert, and plans to deploy its recent funding by building out its product ecosystem.
Read the Notion memo Escargot used to pitch investors, shared exclusively with Business Insider.
Note: Some details have been redacted.
Read the full article here
