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Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

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Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#131

Post by whateveracct »

ornornor wrote: post #88
martinesko36 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate? Slack's async feed used to ping me every 5 min and distract me from coding. I also found myself having OCD about going through each and every message that was sent to all channels - very low ROI obsession. I like the slightly higher barrier of having to send emails and refresh your email inbox :) EDIT - thanks to everyone correcting me on the sync vs async! I fixed it in the original comment.

I’m confused as well. FWIW, I always disable notifications, have a filter on my email for “you missed this message” emails to go to a separate inbox, only use slack/matter most in the browser, and only open it a few times a day. I have trained my colleagues and boss to never expect a response right away. We’re also forced to use Skype at work which is a plague because people are lazy and will call about anything and…

> I try and force these incurable skypers to send an email instead: it forces them to really think their stuff through, organize it in a more structured way, and takes me two minutes to answer instead of having a 15 min call that is all over the place.

This is a great way to handle people who jump straight to "let's just do a call, it'll be easier [for me]"

For people who are like this, I will often just say I'm not available for a call for a few hours, and ask them to send me a written message in Slack instead. Most of the time, I am able to just help them async on Slack instead of spending 30min-1hr (x2 since we're both in it) in a call.

Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#132

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#133

Post by gingerlime »

srgpqt wrote: post #41

This app is nothing unique or new, here's another in the same space: https://missiveapp.com

first time I hear of both Front and Missive. After browsing Front I felt like I was drowning in marketing, whereas missive just felt so clear and upfront in comparison. Also really liked their pixel blocking and refusal to use any![0] not very common in the industry.

We’re currently on Helpscout and quite happy. But have to admit I felt very tempted to switch to missive after visiting their page. And I didn’t even look for an alternative nor have any major issues with helpscout to begin with.

Anyone with firsthand experience of any of those tools that can compare?

[0] https://missiveapp.com/features/auto-block-read-trackers

Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#134

Post by zafiro17 »

The folks who do Fastmail built Topicbox (https://topicbox.com) a few years ago and I don't yet see how Front differs from that product. Basically, it brings the concept of conversation channels to inbox, while providing a permanent record of the chats that your newer employees can read to catch up on what happened before they arrived, or for compliance. I think their implementation is pretty slick.

Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#135

Post by wyclif »

chrisfrantz wrote: post #65
cyral wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Jeff Bezos probably loves Front for this reason (anyone who has ever received an infamous "?" cc: email from Bezos will understand what I mean by this comment).

Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#136

Post by beagle3 »

ryan29 wrote: post #109
throwaway201103 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Maybe ticketing systems have gotten better, but I've never used one where I didn't feel like I was "spending time" dealing with the ticket system. As of right now, I end up with discussions spread across email, SMS, phone, and an issue tracking system (Redmine). I think the main reason that happens is that I get delegated work and it often starts via email; "Please deal with this.", "Can we do this?", etc.. Based on…

> As of right now, I end up with discussions spread across email, SMS, phone, and an issue tracking system (Redmine).

That's likely going to stay that way, because there are people on both ends, not machines. They'll write an FB messenger note about "coming with us to lunch?, oh, btw, we found an interesting bug in xyz, you really need to frobnicate the belzebubs"; And then they'll send you an SMS while driving (because their in-car system is older), "oh, and the original fix doesn't fix the bug".

This is a people problem, not a technical problem. It takes discipline, but at an old job I simply refused to respond to anything that wasn't filed in Jitterbug (ultra-low-ceremony issue tracking from the Samba project). And as a result, all was tracked properly.

Now that people have phones that take pictures and whatsapp, they take screenshots and send them to me, and I have no better workflow to offer, so I do accept those issues as well.

I suspect no piece of infrastructure will be the ultimate thing. What you described above will likely make a difference only if it can only receive SMS, WhatsApp, FB Messenger, and somehow do it without requiring your users to call/message/email a different address.

Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#137

Post by rkangel »

kilburn wrote: post #74
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…

> Furthermore, asynchronous communication has proven poor for wellness and worklife balance. I think you meant "synchronous" here ;)

Maybe Teams doesn't work as well for other people as it does for us, but the problem seems to not exist for us on Teams. There's a few things that (accidentally or on purpose) make it work:

Threads/Conversations are the only way to talk in normal team channels. This means that messages are automatically grouped on topic and you can ignore the ones you don't care about. I have never worked with a Slack team that used threads effectively and so you regularly end up reading a load of stuff you don't care about to find the stuff you do care about.

Separation between a Team channel and a chat channel. Chat channels are more like normal Slack conversations - they end up being fairly synchronous. The Team channel is where the more asynchronous stuff goes. We have a strong project convention (almost a rule) to use use a Team channel if more than 2 people are involved. It helps visibility and means that conversations default to async. But if I write a direct message to someone then it's because I want to interrupt and get an answer and so they get pinged.

This means I get pinged a few times a day about things I need (as SW Lead) to deal with, and the rest of the time I can just catch up on threads when I'm waiting for a compilation.

Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#138

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

jen729w wrote: post #18
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #8

I wish people would treat including you on an email like @-mentioning them slack. It may be async, but it’s just as awful for signal to noise ratio. I’m just about ready to give up on my inbox as a lost cause, and that’s my work inbox.

Yeah. Email makes me sad. I've brought a tiny bit of sanity to my Outlook inbox [0] by using many, many rules. The goal is to move an email out of my Inbox and to a folder of my choosing on receipt. I hit about 80%. (And every week or so I update the rules to try to capture more of the 20%. But the goalposts constantly move.) I then use a search folder to show "all unread messages", group the view by "in folder", and…

This got me to download and try out outlook. Any tips for a noob trying to make my email more sane?

Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#139

Post by jonathanmchale »

nt2h9uh238h wrote: post #113

What is CMGR6? "growing 5% CMGR6 for a 35x multiple. "

Think we are reading the same article... CMGR - Compound Monthly Growth Rate. I can’t find anything on the 6 however. My interpretation was that is was projected from a 6 month time frame - but that’s just my guess!
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