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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

#51

Post by devman0 »

cj wrote: post #42
candiddevmike wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is basically a lot of fintech.

Re: Email startup Superhuman lays off 22% of staff

#53

Post by Semaphor »

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.

After using GMail since they were invite only, I switched to fastmail 5 years ago:

Storage is 18% full - Using 5.3 GB of 30 GB

I think I have some time until I need to delete or pay.

Re: Email startup Superhuman lays off 22% of staff

#54

Post by wumpus »

alanbernstein wrote: post #44
iqkznnft wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Those email chains compress really well.

Re: Email startup Superhuman lays off 22% of staff

#55

Post by TwitBar »

foobaw wrote: post #34
propter_hoc wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this is a solid chrome app store kind of solo dev project. 100 employees is absurd. I think they had a lot of early adopter VC users who really liked it and let their personal bias overwhelm better TAM analysis.

people said that about Honey (just a chrome app store solo dev project) and look how much they got acquired for. Don't underestimate them.

Hindsight is always 20/20. Is Superhuman comparable to Honey? From a tech perspective, maybe??? I.e. could a talented solo dev replicate 80% of Superhuman and then publish it via the chrome app store. Yeah. But from a product perspective? Absolutely not. Honey has a vastly wider market than Superhuman, and almost anyone can use Honey and get something out of it. We can sell Honey as a 'money-saver', in contrast to Superhuman which markets itself as a 'time-saver' (albeit, for an eye-watering subscription). I've seen many people step over dollars to chase pennies, and Honey taps into that behavior, offering a much stronger value proposition than Superhuman (so much so that the two are basically incomparable).

This product is very niche. From my own experience, performing a single mildly unorthodox keyboard shortcut in front of an average Joe sort of freaks them out. Getting regular people onboard with something like this would be a total nightmare. This alone probably filters down Superhuman's market dramatically (enough to make a VC-backed 100-employee effort seem absolutely ridiculous).

Regarding the merit of Superhuman's ability to actually save time is another conversation others have argued to death about. I'd be interested in what others have to say about this, but I don't think the discussion has been very productive so far.

Re: Email startup Superhuman lays off 22% of staff

#56

Post by bradgessler »

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…

I found the waitlist and onboarding process off-putting, to the point where I just didn’t want to even use it.

I remember getting as far as, “ok, now you need to go through the onboarding process”. I asked if I could skip but they insisted I schedule time with them, so I just didn’t bother.

This was probably one of the weirdest experiences I had with a SaaS product.

Anyway, I wish them well and I hope they pull through the whatever-is-about-to-happen with minimal damage.

Re: Email startup Superhuman lays off 22% of staff

#58

Post by antupis »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #19
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…

It's classic productivity app bias. You start using a new app and because of the newness placebo, you get a boost in performance. You post about how amazing and cool it is, tell all your friends, then you get that crash back to baseline. At best, it just becomes a regular part of your routine. More commonly you dump it for the next cool productivity tool.

I cannot think any productivity tool that has sticked only sake of productivity. It is always productivity + something where tool shines. Eg using vim at server through ssh.

Re: Email startup Superhuman lays off 22% of staff

#59

Post by antupis »

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.

It bubble thing I bet these kinda startups disappear like next 10 years.

Re: Email startup Superhuman lays off 22% of staff

#60

Post by Shank »

humanfromearth wrote: post #29

I ditched Superhuman for Simplify: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/simplify-gmail/pbm... It’s cheaper and pretty much the same features without the bugs of Superhuman.

> without the bugs of Superhuman

Can you elaborate more on the bugs that you experienced? I used to be a Superhuman customer, but ultimately cancelled because I found Hey's stance on email to be much more attractive. I'm curious what other experiences were, particularly bugs. I didn't find anything that stood out to me as broken, personally?

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