Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

blogs.dropbox.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 435 posts

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#211

Post by stdbrouw »

vu0tran wrote: post #198
schneidmaster wrote: post #3

Ugh. Yet another intriguing email startup being acquihired and killed off by a more-established tech company (see also: Sparrow). It's 2015 and I still bounce around email clients every couple months because all of the major options have substantial flaws.

Yeah, it's frustrating. I was using Sparrow until it got acquired and then shut down. Then switched to Mailbox... which then got acquired... Whoops. I ended up so frustrated I created my own email client in my spare time and half accidentally got into YC S14 haha. You can check it out here: http://www.slidemailapp.com I'll admit, as a previous poster said, it's not without it's flaws but we try hard and we really do…

Nitpick: "If you delete the application from your phone, your data is gone for good" is the worst possible way to phrase what is otherwise an excellent feature :-)

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#212

Post by grinich »

jordigh wrote: post #86
grinich wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey there-- I work at Nylas. We've structured our business to... actually have a business. Our team spent the first year selling APIs to developers [1] which already power lots of paid apps. The N1 mail app we released two months ago[2] follows this and will have paid features next year. Plus both are open source free software, and quite popular on GitHub. [3] [1] https://nylas.com/features/ [2] https://nylas.com/n1…

Can you compare yourself to Mailpile? I want an email client (and maybe server) that is privacy-conscious and easy to configure. Are you two completely different projects?

We're two totally different projects. We focus on a lot of stuff in addition to privacy (like great design).

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#213

Post by limeyx »

jonursenbach wrote: post #210
vu0tran wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's frustrating. I was using Sparrow until it got acquired and then shut down. Then switched to Mailbox... which then got acquired... Whoops. I ended up so frustrated I created my own email client in my spare time and half accidentally got into YC S14 haha. You can check it out here: http://www.slidemailapp.com I'll admit, as a previous poster said, it's not without it's flaws but we try hard and we really do…

What's your end goal with this? Surely it must be getting acquired by one of the big email providers.

...and then get shutdown?

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#214

Post by pilif »

At least in case of mailbox, I would say they were sherlocked by Google Inbox: nearly as good an UI but without the need to share access to email with a third party.

I really never liked that aspect of mailbox and I thus never used it with my primary mailbox, which meant that I practically haven't used it at all.

The moment Inbox came out for google apps, I started using it to the point where it is now my primary means for accessing my mail.

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#215

Post by rdancer »

timdiggerm wrote: post #26
smnrchrds wrote: post #12

Another one bites the dust... I still remember the discussion when the acquisition was announced: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5381572 I hope it was really not going anywhere.

>Did you not RTFA? >> " To be clear, Mailbox is not going away. When people say stuff like this when a startup gets acquired, don't believe them.

If you put a few in the back of someone's head, technically they're not going anywhere either.

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#216

Post by jordigh »

grinich wrote: post #212
jordigh wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you compare yourself to Mailpile? I want an email client (and maybe server) that is privacy-conscious and easy to configure. Are you two completely different projects?

We're two totally different projects. We focus on a lot of stuff in addition to privacy (like great design).

I understand what Mailpile is. It's a self-hosted email web client.

What is Nylas? The website doesn't seem to be written for me, but for PHBs. Apparently you have great business, design, and APIs, but what is it that those things do? Are you an email client? A server? A webmail service?

What makes you different from Gmail or from Mailpile?

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#217

Post by vu0tran »

stdbrouw wrote: post #211
vu0tran wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's frustrating. I was using Sparrow until it got acquired and then shut down. Then switched to Mailbox... which then got acquired... Whoops. I ended up so frustrated I created my own email client in my spare time and half accidentally got into YC S14 haha. You can check it out here: http://www.slidemailapp.com I'll admit, as a previous poster said, it's not without it's flaws but we try hard and we really do…

Nitpick: "If you delete the application from your phone, your data is gone for good" is the worst possible way to phrase what is otherwise an excellent feature :-)

Haha, thanks for the feedback. Copywriting was never my strong suit ;) Any tips on how I can improve it?

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#218

Post by ash »

dirkdk wrote: post #197
untog wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because there simply isn't money to be made in being an e-mail startup. Or, more correctly, there isn't enough money to be made to satisfy VC investors. Mailbox and the like could have lived quite comfortably as paid-for apps with comfortable but small levels of profit, but that isn't what Silicon Valley rewards. EDIT: also, IIRC Apple's restrictions on background processing meant that they needed to have ev…

And you are limited by a 30 year old standard (IMAP) with an insane message format. Building a truly new email experience would require a new protocol as well.

There's JMAP protocol (from fastmail.com): http://jmap.io/

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#219

Post by timjahn »

jonursenbach wrote: post #210
vu0tran wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's frustrating. I was using Sparrow until it got acquired and then shut down. Then switched to Mailbox... which then got acquired... Whoops. I ended up so frustrated I created my own email client in my spare time and half accidentally got into YC S14 haha. You can check it out here: http://www.slidemailapp.com I'll admit, as a previous poster said, it's not without it's flaws but we try hard and we really do…

What's your end goal with this? Surely it must be getting acquired by one of the big email providers.

Exactly. By joining YC, the goal is automatically getting acquired. So the parent is solving the problem temporarily, until they become the problem.
Post reply on HN