For those wondering “which Helm?”:
> Helm’s product was a secure personal server combined with a cloud-based service that made it incredibly easy to own your data — starting with online identity and email.
Looking Back On Helm
11–20 of 36 posts
Re: Looking Back On Helm
#12This is about the startup that produced a secure personal server, which pulled the plug last year. It’s not about the kubernetes package manager, for anyone wondering.
Or the popular Emacs package.
Re: Looking Back On Helm
#13Helm lost on execution. The browser company which makes Arc will also lose similarly unless they drastically change.
Re: Looking Back On Helm
#14I had one of these devices and the user experience was superb. Essentially you got all the benefits of a home email server without the headaches. You also (and many people could not wrap their heads around this) didnt give up privacy for your emails - Helm provided you an IP and proxy (via ec2) but assuming TLS protected SMTP connections (most are these days), inbound mail was protected with a cert that lived on your…
That sounds pretty neat. I wonder why they didn't pivot away from hardware to a service?
Re: Looking Back On Helm
#15Re: Looking Back On Helm
#16I'm a bit confused on what exactly helm was, would it be acceptable to compare it (functionally) to having an email and calendar server on a raspberry pi with a private vpn and a hosted ip address?
Re: Looking Back On Helm
#17I had one of these devices and the user experience was superb. Essentially you got all the benefits of a home email server without the headaches. You also (and many people could not wrap their heads around this) didnt give up privacy for your emails - Helm provided you an IP and proxy (via ec2) but assuming TLS protected SMTP connections (most are these days), inbound mail was protected with a cert that lived on your…
Thanks for the kind words!
Re: Looking Back On Helm
#18I was, and am, sad helm shutdown. That said, the fact that they rug pulled on a device I waited a year to get, then owned for less than two years, all while charging me an annual fee (that I thought was meant to make them sustainable) irks me.
Is it really a rugpull if they simply run out of money?
Re: Looking Back On Helm
#19They never did ship to Canada, as far as I knew
We did ship internationally, and Canada was one of the top international destinations for our products.
Re: Looking Back On Helm
#20I had one of these devices and the user experience was superb. Essentially you got all the benefits of a home email server without the headaches. You also (and many people could not wrap their heads around this) didnt give up privacy for your emails - Helm provided you an IP and proxy (via ec2) but assuming TLS protected SMTP connections (most are these days), inbound mail was protected with a cert that lived on your…
That sounds pretty neat. I wonder why they didn't pivot away from hardware to a service?
It sounds like "hardware > service" was not just core to the product's value proposition, but also a core value of the founders.
And if so, I get it. But it seems like 99% of people will choose convenience over privacy, even if they claim that privacy is really really important. So if you're selling something that is more private than convenient, you should accept that you've eliminated 99% of the world from your TAM.