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Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

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Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#91

Post by martinesko36 »

mfkp wrote: post #86
martinesko36 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really like Silicon Valley's mentality either, but no need for judgment. I totally feel you, and for us as a very small company we had the choice of either a) building a great native iOS/Mac app or b) Electron that runs everywhere but is ultimately a poor experience. We want to build a sustainable business not fueled by VC money, so our bandwidth is very limited. We decided to go the native route and work wit…

Fair enough, it's great to have polished apps. But I was going to "request access" until I saw that your service won't be supporting any of the devices I use, so there's one potential customer down the drain. And I'm sure I'm not the only one. For context, my company ( https://prestodoctor.com ) has spent tens of thousands of dollars on Front licenses, so I'm not just some random nay-sayer :-)

I am very sorry about that. I will make sure the website clearly states that it's only for Apple devices for now!

Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#92

Post by Throwaway1771 »

an_opabinia wrote: post #57
tikej wrote: 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.

The real reason email has problems is that it intermingles messages from real human beings and ones from computers, in a way that Facebook messenger and Twitter to a lesser extent do not. It’s a little puzzling to me why Gmail does not simply separate machine generated from human originated email.

This is what their Promotions tab intends to do.

Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#94

Post by ryan29 »

sriku wrote: post #72
ryan29 wrote: 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…

> Forward an email to a special address. Ex: ryan29@todo.example.com (the TODO address for ryan29@example.com). This should be possible with ryan29+todo@example.com though .. in conjunction with filtering. I use this for bookmarking and some basic categorisation.

Yes, there are many ways email could be used to assign tasks. The way I said, the way you said, by dragging it into a folder. It doesn't really matter how it works in detail as long as the general concept is there; people want to assign work to me via email and they don't want anything more difficult / time consuming than forwarding an email.

Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#95

Post by mathnmusic »

dmarlow wrote: post #81
martinesko36 wrote: post #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 y…

I haven't looked too deeply into emailio or front, but the solution to me looks a lot more like a mix of reddit and discourse (community/forum) than anything else. I'd love to see something that looks and feels like a forum than IM/chat. Systems like Slack are great for quick collaboration, but not ideal for persisting and disseminating information across diverse/large teams and organizations. I want to go to my mess…

Is Zulip Chat close to what you have in mind?

Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#96

Post by martinesko36 »

freshhawk wrote: post #27
neom wrote: post #10

I don't think I totally understand why Front paid Sacra to make this? Are they going public and are worried or....?

Salesforce bought Slack today. For a lot of money. So today is the day everyone talks to their investors about how much like Slack their product is.

So that explains the "Slackifying" monicker.

Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#97

Post by throwaway201103 »

ryan29 wrote: 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…

I'm an old guy now but this just sounds like a standard ticket system. What's the big deal?

Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#98

Post by kitd »

dmarlow wrote: post #81
martinesko36 wrote: post #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 y…

I haven't looked too deeply into emailio or front, but the solution to me looks a lot more like a mix of reddit and discourse (community/forum) than anything else. I'd love to see something that looks and feels like a forum than IM/chat. Systems like Slack are great for quick collaboration, but not ideal for persisting and disseminating information across diverse/large teams and organizations. I want to go to my mess…

The best workplace communication tool I used was effectively just a Usenet newsreader. Ie, topic-based threaded shared email. With a good client that shows eg the number of new messages on a thread, or only unreads etc, ie standard email stuff, nothing else comes close IMO to that for efficiency and clarity.

I'd add in IM for quick 1-to-1 chats but that's all.

Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#99

Post by throwaway201103 »

bassman9000 wrote: post #17
tikej wrote: 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've had this conversation multiple times with my colleagues. One of them always argue that WhateverIsTheNewThingThatsGoingToReplaceEmail will replace email, this time for real; I argue that 10 years from now, email will still be a thing, and all these services will likely be not. It's been at least 4-5 years of the first time we had it. I never update the "10" part.

I was using email in the 1980s and still am (still plain text even) so I'd say you are right!

Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#100

Post by dmarlow »

mathnmusic wrote: post #95
dmarlow wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't looked too deeply into emailio or front, but the solution to me looks a lot more like a mix of reddit and discourse (community/forum) than anything else. I'd love to see something that looks and feels like a forum than IM/chat. Systems like Slack are great for quick collaboration, but not ideal for persisting and disseminating information across diverse/large teams and organizations. I want to go to my mess…

Is Zulip Chat close to what you have in mind?

I just looked it up briefly and I like the idea of topics, but I think there could be too many and it could become messy quickly. Certainly on the right track though.
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