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Email startup Superhuman lays off 22% of staff

businessinsider.com

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Re: Email startup Superhuman lays off 22% of staff

#41

Post by patmcc »

mrhands556 wrote: post #18
throwaway019254 wrote: post #9

I really don't like services that are invite only. Just let me sign up and give you my money. It took them about a year to send me an invitation. Of course I lost interest in the meantime.

Gmail was invite only at one point. I remember when everyone was clamoring for an invite. I wonder if it would’ve had the same success without that hype.

I remember (very lightly) scamming someone for a gmail invite - they wanted a picture of whoever they invited, I send them one I found deep in google images. Was a strange time for sure.

Re: Email startup Superhuman lays off 22% of staff

#42

Post by cj »

candiddevmike wrote: post #10
colesantiago wrote: post #7

I remember when this startup came out, all the VCs, angel investors and tech founders were singing songs of praises (and raises) about how this was going to disrupt email and gating the product an 'exclusive' access to a waitlist. I find it sus when VCs have to keep overhyping their portfolio companies, especially when they don't even make money. Anyway, I checked it out and found that this really isn't novel at all…

So many startups these days seem to only have other startups as their customers, and they're almost always due to connections between their investors. Just trading VC money back and forth.

This is why I especially like B2B2C companies. (Companies that sell to other companies a product that customer company somehow packages or delivers to the end user) In this model, there is, at the very least, a “C” somewhere down the chain where value is transferred from a consumer.

Re: Email startup Superhuman lays off 22% of staff

#43

Post by singhrac »

Given the topic, I figured I’d ask: I have been looking for something like Superhuman but considerably cheaper (maybe $5/month is the right price point for me). I need a desktop app for Windows that doesn’t freeze frequently and (most importantly) can recategorize my junk mail better than Gmail or Outlook can (both have had many significant spam false positive failures lately).

Re: Email startup Superhuman lays off 22% of staff

#44

Post by alanbernstein »

iqkznnft wrote: post #28
IsoldesKnight wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Invites weren't what got me hyped about Gmail. My Yahoo and Hotmail accounts had 2-5 MB storage limits at the time. Gmail offered a 1 GB storage limit. The idea that I'd never have to delete an email again is what had me hitting up old friends on AIM for an invite.

Ironically, now that they've locked everyone in, they're demanding that you pay or delete emails. Scumbags.

My inbox is almost full, so they're hassling me about this. I did some investigation and found that over 1GB of the data in my inbox is email history quotes from a long-running email chain. Of course it's impossible to delete those without deleting each email they belong to.

Conspiracy theory: Google refused to implement an option to disable inserting email quotes in responses, knowing that such an option would make more efficient use of storage space.

Re: Email startup Superhuman lays off 22% of staff

#45

Post by dexterdog »

PhoenixReborn wrote: post #26
parkingrift wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People were clamoring for an invite because it was profoundly better than anything else at the time. I browsed the Superhuman site and I can’t personally find anything compelling.

FWIW, I do think it's an excellent email product. However, it is generally not going to be worth the money unless you send a ton of email all the time (exec, sales person, director+ eng leader).

It's pretty useless to me. I used to live in email. Now I'm this weird greybeard wondering why nobody at the company ever emails anything.

Re: Email startup Superhuman lays off 22% of staff

#46

Post by bachmeier »

$100 million in VC money and they couldn't hire someone to build a competent website. It's genuinely awful, basically a VC Powerpoint presentation converted to HTML. They don't even say what they charge. I don't know what they are selling beyond the fact that it has something to do with email.

Re: Email startup Superhuman lays off 22% of staff

#47

Post by deepGem »

mrhands556 wrote: post #18
throwaway019254 wrote: post #9

I really don't like services that are invite only. Just let me sign up and give you my money. It took them about a year to send me an invitation. Of course I lost interest in the meantime.

Gmail was invite only at one point. I remember when everyone was clamoring for an invite. I wonder if it would’ve had the same success without that hype.

Different time. They did this mostly because they knew they wouldn’t be able to sustain the demand as storage was still expensive back then.

GMail was also in beta for a really long time like > 2 years.

Re: Email startup Superhuman lays off 22% of staff

#48

Post by tempsy »

gsibble wrote: post #27

Maybe I'm the odd one out, but I've been using Superhuman for years and it definitely helps me get through the 50+ emails that are awaiting me each morning significantly faster than either GMail's web or mobile client or Outlook on mobile. I'm quite happy to pay for it as it easily pays for itself. Rahul has frequently personally responded to my inquiries about the product as well as recommendations. They definitely…

A good product doesn’t necessarily equate to a venture scale business.

Re: Email startup Superhuman lays off 22% of staff

#49

Post by gcampos »

candiddevmike wrote: post #10
colesantiago wrote: post #7

I remember when this startup came out, all the VCs, angel investors and tech founders were singing songs of praises (and raises) about how this was going to disrupt email and gating the product an 'exclusive' access to a waitlist. I find it sus when VCs have to keep overhyping their portfolio companies, especially when they don't even make money. Anyway, I checked it out and found that this really isn't novel at all…

So many startups these days seem to only have other startups as their customers, and they're almost always due to connections between their investors. Just trading VC money back and forth.

With so many VC money flowing, is it that bad of an idea?

Re: Email startup Superhuman lays off 22% of staff

#50

Post by xwdv »

latchkey wrote: post #31
gsibble wrote: post #27

Maybe I'm the odd one out, but I've been using Superhuman for years and it definitely helps me get through the 50+ emails that are awaiting me each morning significantly faster than either GMail's web or mobile client or Outlook on mobile. I'm quite happy to pay for it as it easily pays for itself. Rahul has frequently personally responded to my inquiries about the product as well as recommendations. They definitely…

I've been using Mimestream for my desktop Gmail experience... fantastic product.

Another recommendation for Mimestream. Incredible client if you use gmail.

Superhuman had a ridiculously pretentious roll out and by the time I got my invite I didn’t give a fuck anymore.

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