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Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

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Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#61
> Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

How does it help me if they have 1.3 Bn? Or are valued at 1.3 Bn?

Generally speaking, why would I care how much they're valued at? Shouldn't I care if they solve a problem for me?

Unless what they want is my investment money, not me as a customer. In which case I worry they don't solve any problems I have...

Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#62
Nice try, but this "$1.3B Startup" is nothing more than a glorified UI on top of email. I wonder how they will justify their valuation in this crowded market.

And this article at this timing (on the same day Slack was acquired) is clearly a marketing article for this company.

They should have just owned it and said "come use our service instead of slack, now that slack is acquired", instead of throwing around the cringe worthy hype words like "slackifying email"

Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#63
post #3

Slackifying e-mail sounds like a nightmare to me. Email is about perfect for what it was designed. I check it when I want to check it, few Times a day. We (as humanity) really give up more and more of our most precious resources: attention and deep focus.

To say “slackifying” is offensive to Front. I HATE Slack. For me, it turns into a gross “pinging you” and overall is insanely annoying to be in channels and check back on information. Or, finding files or using search is Hell. Not to mention their insanely painful login experience. I am looking forward to its death at CRM. Front is the real deal. Hands down the greatest productivity software I’ve used in YEARS. If yo…

> Slack is best when you are just a drone on a project/channel (if that makes sense...).

> Slack also is great when the conversation is heavily one sided.

Honestly, that seems extremely unfair to me. It feels like you're using it wrong. In my experience, Slack is for conversations. The groups I'm in use it for tossing out random thoughts/questions... and people participate as they choose.

If you're using in a way where people are constantly pinging you demanding your attention, then you should change that. That's no different than being in a large office and everyone else feeling free to just walk over to you and tap you on the shoulder every time they want something. If _that_ was happening, it would be something you should fix, too.

Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#65
post #15
post #3

Slackifying e-mail sounds like a nightmare to me. Email is about perfect for what it was designed. I check it when I want to check it, few Times a day. We (as humanity) really give up more and more of our most precious resources: attention and deep focus.

I mean you still use Front as email... except you can invite users to threads and assign them to other people and it makes doing anything with a team so much more manageable instead of forwarding things around and being unsure if they have already been handled.

Isn’t that just forwarding and cc’ing? I’ll often have long threads where multiple chains will be going within it with different parties brought in.

Not to sound like the Dropbox comment from back in the day, but cc’ing and forwarding are just the basics when it comes to email.

Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#66
post #46

> Front is like Slack for your email, except instead of creating another distracting, noisy, always-on tool, Front allows users to spin up ephemeral chats within email threads themselves. That's the exact opposite of what I'd want. Most small businesses have the same email problem that I always feel like I do. Too many requests come in via email and it's hard to track, discuss, resolve, and (at a later date) referenc…

There is a very very narrow area where the ability to create ephemeral chats around email threads is useful: agencies and consultancies. The ability to discuss a client email, workshop a response, and delegate response authority to someone else is a huge game changer for the client services industry. Buuuuuut, there aren't enough agencies out there to justify a $1.3B price tag.

Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#67
I LOVE Front. 'slackifying' is such a bad reduction. Cross-channel communication, multi-seat enterprise support, CRM and automation would be better buzzwords.

My experience:

I spent a good amount of time thinking of ideas and building a plugin for our clients/use case. I think the concept would be killer if we can execute and get our clients to scale.

THENNNNN FB changed their rules and now I can't use Front to message outside of 24 hours.

I wouldn't bet/invest FB won't block all access to Messenger api once tools like Front are just gaining traction and or they have time to copy the best features into their own messenger tool.

My experience with the Front plugin api is kind of not great and missing basic features that were in version 1 but not in 2, and 1 is not supported anymore. And I think the RxJS doesn't help and like if you have to 'hack' a settimeout anyways to get and cache the state then what's the point...

Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#68
Disclaimer: I work on Emailio (https://emailio.com), a YC company that is a direct competitor to Front. We help you build healthy email habits.

Slack is detrimental to team communication in several ways, and bringing it to email is a mistake imho. Slack combines the stress and urgency of text messaging with the importance of email. Your Slack becomes a Facebook or Twitter feed - another infinite feed that addicts you to some level. Since it's a chat, the conversations are shallow and disorganized. For example, search never worked properly in Slack for me. Furthermore, synchronous communication has proven poor for wellness and work-life balance.

I know Slack just got acquired and its the hot new thing but email is great as it is - its our ways of using it that need to change.

Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#69
post #3

Slackifying e-mail sounds like a nightmare to me. Email is about perfect for what it was designed. I check it when I want to check it, few Times a day. We (as humanity) really give up more and more of our most precious resources: attention and deep focus.

Shameless plug: If anyone is interested in an email client that helps you build healthy email habits, I work on Emailio (https://emailio.com), a YC company that helps you do just that. HN users who sign up can email me martin@emailio.com for free lifetime beta access.

Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#70
Folks who were around during the first dot-com boom might remember Zaplets, which tried to do this 20 years ago. https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2000/0612/6514218a.html

"Combine the Web, instant messaging and e-mail, and you get Zaplets...You also get a fistful of nifty features--from live chats and instant polls to real-time snapshots of your stock portfolio"

It was created by a company called FireDrop that raised $100 million and then suddenly flamed out. Bad timing, maybe, since this was around the time of the crash. I can't remember anyone I know ever receiving a Zaplet but they sure generated a lot of buzz.

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