Have you ever yearned: I love the physical junk mail I get, but is there any way I could have it intercepted, opened by strangers, scanned, and routed directly to my email inbox, so I don't have to touch paper? San Francisco startup Outbox thought it had the solution. Maybe it did. Now it is gone. Good.

This is the idea behind a startup named Outbox: a private company of strangers will take your (mostly junk) mail, open it, scan it, and then email it to you. This is questionable for a few dozen reasons, but investors disagree—it just nabbed a $5 million check.