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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

#81

Post by tomjen3 »

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.

That was because it was a much, much better product than everything else: we forget it today, but most other places would allow you to store only a few megabytes of email, and suddenly here is a service that allows you store several hundreds of times what you could do before.

You don't need to generate hype when your product is that good. Same as you don't need to generate power for an electric car powered by an antimatter generator.

Re: Email startup Superhuman lays off 22% of staff

#82

Post by motoxpro »

propter_hoc wrote: post #5
chowchowchow wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be but this app has a limited market regardless how good it is. Its not a VC/hypergrowth product and only possible exit is acquisition.

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.

huh? How is building an email client where no interaction is over 100ms a solo dev project? Thats like saying Instagram is a solo dev project because it only has a few screens.

But hey not a bad idea to recreate it as a solo dev. Get ~10,000 customers, charge $15 instead of 30 and make a few ez millions!

Re: Email startup Superhuman lays off 22% of staff

#83

Post by throwaway2037 »

bradgessler wrote: post #56
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 throu…

I agree: A waitlist on a pure SaaS product is absurd. The only reason why I can think they have it: To require 1:1 onboarding that gives their sales team an opportunity to upsell you. That said, they could have decoupled the two.

Re: Email startup Superhuman lays off 22% of staff

#85

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

fosk wrote: post #12
kromem wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still remember sitting in a strategy session where the same argument was made for Facebook 'killing' Snapchat with Poke. And then again for FB Stories, with tech news running headlines "RIP Snapchat." One of the psych principles I used to lecture about often in my keynotes was on boundaries as freeing, and discussed an experiment where children clustered around the sandbox in a playground with no fence, but used th…

But it did, Instagram Stories immensely limited Snapchat’s growth with now limited upside. Imagine the scale of IG stories today, without it all these people would have used Snapchat instead. Sometimes copying a feature doesn’t have to kill, it’s enough if it cripples another organization.

Snapchat didn't care about Android, and most of the world runs Android, which is what allowed IG stories to massively limit their growth. Quality shooting yourself in the foot there, Snapchat.

Re: Email startup Superhuman lays off 22% of staff

#86

Post by whiplash451 »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #83
bradgessler wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 throu…

I agree: A waitlist on a pure SaaS product is absurd. The only reason why I can think they have it: To require 1:1 onboarding that gives their sales team an opportunity to upsell you. That said, they could have decoupled the two.

The waitlist is an all-to-standard tactic used by B2C SaaS companies. It is designed to create a sense of scarcity and FOMO.

Re: Email startup Superhuman lays off 22% of staff

#87

Post by whiplash451 »

rmason wrote: post #66
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 have to disagree with you. The guy built a niche product, an email program that offered productivity benefits just for those dealing with hundreds of emails a day. Maybe the top 1-2% of email users would find it useful. But this presents some big problems for his go to market plan. If he opens it up to everyone with no restrictions he will face tremendous churn. Plus 98% won't see any value at all and will bash the…

Genuine counter-argument: it makes sense to cast a wide net then to filter your customers to try to build a small and loyal customer base.

The truly genuine way of doing this, though, is to advertise the product as such and let people decide to sign up on their own will (e.g. « here is a new email system dedicated to power users. »)

Re: Email startup Superhuman lays off 22% of staff

#88

Post by aaaaaaaaata »

pembrook wrote: post #68
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.

Is it scumbag of them, or are we the scumbags for refusing to adopt any software unless it’s free? Would you rather they parse all your private communications for advertising profile purposes and keep it free-as-in-Facebook? It was basically a decade-plus free trial. I can’t see how that was a bad deal. I pay for email(Fastmail) because I want to support the team working on keeping my main communication channel worki…

> Would you rather they parse all your private communications for advertising profile purposes

At minimum, they do this for internal use.

Re: Email startup Superhuman lays off 22% of staff

#89

Post by leejoramo »

louthy wrote: post #30

OT: I've been trying recently to find something that works like the old Google Inbox project. Inbox was the only time I've ever reached inbox 0 , and it annoyed the hell out of me when they cancelled it. Has anyone seen/used anything that comes close?

Try Simplify Gmail

It is a browser extension created by the former lead developer of Google Inbox and reimplements many of Inbox’s ideas.

https://simpl.fyi/

Works on Chrome, Firefox, Safari and more

Re: Email startup Superhuman lays off 22% of staff

#90

Post by aaaaaaaaata »

bachmeier wrote: post #46

$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.

If you have to ask what they charge on their landing page, then is it that much of a pain point for you?

They probably want people who are desperate — and have an AMEX.

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