11 ms·

Superhuman

97 points by yarapavan 7y ago

eterm 7y ago
> Information we receive from third parties. From time to time, we may receive information about you from third parties and other users. We may also collect information about you that is publicly available. No thanks. ( from https://superhuman.com/privacy https://superhuman.com/privacy )
- devoply 7y ago
  Yes my first thought was great another we'll mine your data for a trivial benefit that you can mostly get from Tunderbird or other desktop clients. E-mail is a utility to be provided by non-ad tech company and browsed using an open source/private desktop client... that you pay a monthly fee for. At $30 / month for a webclient I would hope it comes with full iron-clad private hosting of your stuff with an strong privacy-based agreement to boot. I pay half that for my mail for a few mailboxes about maybe 50 gbs of storage between them.
  - smacktoward 7y ago
    In fairness, I love and rely on Thunderbird, but I certainly wouldn't call it a triumph of usability. The UI hasn't changed appreciably in more than a decade, and it wasn't particularly easy or pleasant to use even back then. Don't get me wrong, it works well for what it sets out to do, and the stagnation is understandable given how Thunderbird was always treated by Mozilla as a sort of red-headed stepchild before they cut it loose altogether. This is a project that has been operating in survival mode for a long time now. But it does mean that there is space in the market for an email client with a modern UI and some fresh ideas on how to interact with email.
  - jschwartzi 7y ago
    Information hiding is key. I get bombarded by so many trash emails every day that I could spend weeks unsubscribing to stuff. When Gmail came out with their tabbed interface and hid all the marketing messages behind a tab, I started using email again for the first time in about 7 years. Before that it was actually less useful than postal mail because I couldn't find anything for the flood of crap. That's something Outlook and Thunderbird don't do, is give you convenient features to hide information. Sure, you can organize things into folders or labels, colorize things for follow-up, sort emails, etc., but you're fundamentally limited by their model of "emails should be in a list, like a database. And they should be in chronological order. And you deal with them in chronological order, or you colorize them."
    - kthejoker2 7y ago
      Outlook has added a lot of "smart" features to its inbox sorting and management. I'll just say "so far so good" but clearly there's something in the air in the space.
- Pyxl101 7y ago
  Definitely not if I'm paying for the offering. If it's free, then I'll consider making that trade-off.
- chamen 7y ago
  One of Superhuman's founders previously started a company named Airseed. To users the service looked like an assistant that accessed your email account to keep track of your travel, purchases, etc., but the actual business was selling that data to third parties (presumably aggregated). I don't think Airseed ended up panning out but I wonder what he brought from that business to Superhuman.
  - Alex3917 7y ago
    > I don't think Airseed ended up panning out but I wonder what he brought from that business to Superhuman. There are several other businesses that specialize in doing just this, so even if they wanted to continue doing the exact same thing it wouldn't necessarily make sense to continue using their own in-house technology. That said email is insanely difficult to wrap your head around, I've been doing it full time for several years and don't pretend to be anywhere near close to fully understanding it. So just having experience in the space and having tried out some different approaches to similar problems would surely help a ton.
- JeremyBanks 7y ago
  Their registration page breaks if you enable Firefox's built-in tracking protection. :|
- antiviral 7y ago
  Vivek Sodera, cofounder of Superhuman, was also one of the cofounders of Rapleaf acording to (1): Also see: https://money.cnn.com/2010/10/21/technology/rapleaf/index.htm https://money.cnn.com/2010/10/21/technology/rapleaf/index.ht... From the article (10/21/2010): "Rapleaf knows your name, your age and where you live. It knows your e-mail address, your income and what social networks you use. It knows your likes and dislikes. And it makes money by selling much of that personal information to advertisers." (Reference 1): https://dataweekapiworld2014.sched.com/speaker/vivek_sodera.1srsgp1d https://dataweekapiworld2014.sched.com/speaker/vivek_sodera.... "..Previously he(Vivek Sodera) co-founded Rapleaf, a consumer data company that was acquired in 2013, and spun out LiveRamp, a data onboarding platform." It would be great to hear what A16Z's position on consumer privacy is, as I am sure this is just a misunderstanding.
adamnemecek 7y ago
Does anyone have an invite?
- underyx 7y ago
  I do, referring you via your email address on your HN profile. In return, I think I'll take you up on > If you have ANY (literally ANY) sort of problem that you need solved, contact me. I mean seriously, literally any problem, even the one you think I can't help you with. The harder the better. How do I work at a Silicon Valley startup that wants to hire me, if I'm an EU citizen with no degree and 5 years of work experience?
  - foxya 7y ago
    Any chance I could snag a referral as well?
    - underyx 7y ago
      Sorry, I'm worried about getting a bad rep with Superhuman if I refer low quality users, and you have a day old account :( I think I'll refer only above 500 HN karma. And I'm honestly sorry, I really don't mean to be elitist or anything.
      - adamnemecek 7y ago
        Thanks for the invite. I contacted you over linkedin. We can talk about visa.
      - scotth 7y ago
        I'd love one, if you would be so kind. Email in my profile.
        underyx 7y ago
        And off the invite went. Enjoy!
mxwsn 7y ago
A relevant NYTimes article about Superhuman was also published today: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/technology/superhuman-email.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/technology/superhuman-ema... Key quote for me: "Mr. Vohra said the app was targeted at people who spend three or more hours a day checking their email. “When you’re doing three-plus hours of email every day, it’s your job,” Mr. Vohra said. “And every single other job has a tool that makes you do it faster.”"
jbrun 7y ago
I tried it for 1 month, it is genuinely great, just kind of expensive considering all the pretty good free email apps out there. It is nice for me (CEO), but buying this in addition to everything else for all of our staff is tough to justify.
- eightysixfour 7y ago
  What made it great, did it genuinely free up time?
LynxInLA 7y ago
The Acquired podcast just released an episode on them today: https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/superhuman https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/superhuman
teekert 7y ago
So much text, so little information. It would have been nice to read what is so uber great about it.
- lucb1e 7y ago
  Yeah, I read the whole thing and have absolutely zero clue how the product is better. Was already wondering where this over the top admiration post was going, but I should have figured it would conclude with "so we bought (part of) them". The TL;DR of this whole 1500-words post is "we think this will change everything about email, so we invested in it", and you wouldn't have missed out on any details.
- nickpsecurity 7y ago
  Yeah, it was a near-total waste of my time reading that article. Almost 100% hype with no actual content. Fortunately, the Superhuman website the author linked to tells you all about it. Many features looked good, too. https://superhuman.com/ https://superhuman.com/
  - literallycancer 7y ago
    I found a little bit of footage of the actual app in this video: https://youtu.be/IdYGpiRZIgg?t=1476 https://youtu.be/IdYGpiRZIgg?t=1476 Interface seems reasonably fast, but not surprising for native clients. Does anyone know whether it's actually native? Or just electron that doesn't suck?
comex 7y ago
I'm interested. I hate how slow Gmail feels these days – not sure whether it's gotten slower or my expectations have gotten higher, but either way, I only use it for lack of a good alternative. But does anyone know whether or not the macOS version is an Electron app? The screenshot on the website makes it seem like it might be. If so, most of my interest is lost: it's probably still better than Gmail, but not better enough to be worth switching to. Non-native widgets are annoying to deal with, especially since they tend to not work properly with keyboard navigation/shortcuts (also a problem with Gmail). And while I believe they've gotten their client faster than Gmail, probably by a large margin, if it's Electron it probably isn't quite as snappy as a native app, while also taking up a lot of memory. I could be wrong, and I'll probably still try it if I get the chance, but I have yet to find a single Electron app that didn't struggle with this. Edit: Their GitHub profile lists a bunch of Electron and JS repos, so I'm guessing it is indeed Electron. :(
- underyx 7y ago
  I'm not sure if it is specifically Electron, but it does have Chrome Dev Tools in it.
  - Shank 7y ago
    It's Electron, and that does bring memory concerns, but it is really fast. It's the first electron app I've used that has convinced me that a well-built electron app can exist, if you put the work into it. It's as snappy as a native app to me, and I have said that about no other electron apps.
- ProAm 7y ago
  > I'm interested. I hate how slow Gmail feels these days – not sure whether it's gotten slower or my expectations have gotten higher, but either way, I only use it for lack of a good alternative. I switched to FastMail for this exact reason and have not been happier. And its not a company backed by VC.
sushilewis 7y ago
Most of the fans so far seem to be VCs. It's very clever for Superhuman to target that group. They're wealthy, influential, and will come in handy when its time to raise. Outside of the VC segment, seems like most first-hand accounts I've read -- startup CEOs and journalists -- report that they've ended the subscription because the $30/mo. fee wasn't worth it, given the number of free alternatives. This makes me wonder: does Superhuman have a target demographic outside of the ultra-rich?
- MaximumMadness 7y ago
  I heard the CEO speak at a meet-up a while back, and based off his points, I actually think they don't. It seems like they've figured their sweet spot is with people who spend 3+ hours of emails a day, and that tends to skew towards high-profile, rich, business execs in their case.
- kareemm 7y ago
  I’m not a rich business executive and I love Superhuman. I’m happy to pay $30/m for it. If it saves me 10 minutes a month (and it does) it’s a no-brainer.
  - binaryblitz 7y ago
    What does it provide that other email clients don't?
    - Epskampie 7y ago
      From what I’ve read they force you to learn the shortcuts that people are too lazy to learn for other clients. That’s about it.
    - kareemm 7y ago
      Some reasons I like it: 1. It's fast as hell. I've tried all the OS X Desktop clients and they're all slower than they should be. Email is a task - only a masochist would spend more time doing email than necessary. This focus on speed means the interface is super snappy. Keyboard shortcuts are nice, but the real win is the Slack-style CMD-K menu that lets me change contexts quickly. I don't know why every app doesn't have this. 2. The interface is super clean and minimal. It displays only what's necessary on screen. 3. They've paved many of the key workflows that I care about: - I type a date and they pop up my Calendar in the sidebar (but ONLY if I type a date). - Undo send is critical to any email client I use and they have it. But I can also "accelerate" a send to skip the ability to undo it. Useful if I'm e.g. trying to get an email with some key info to discuss with a client that I'm on the phone with right that moment instead of waiting 10-20 seconds for the Undo Send window to close. - Archiving an email displays the next email (granted so does Gmail) but the point is to process the inbox as quickly as possible. - Copying an email from the list view and pasting it opens up the exact same email (recipients, subject, and body) - this is super useful when I'm sending a variation of the same email to people. - Split Inboxes are great for filtering emails into a "Sub Inbox" for processing in a way that I don't process my main inbox. When I archive emails from there they disappear (unlike labeled emails which are labeled forever). An example is emails from Freelance gigs lists. I want to keep them out of my main inbox and scan them e.g. weekly, then have them go away forever. - The "Escape" key is a back button. It keeps history so you can get back to the inbox very quickly by hitting Esc a few times.
draw_down 7y ago
I feel like my mental model of email is good, I understand well how it works and is basically never surprising. So I'm not really looking to upend all that. Besides that, for people who spend literally hours in their inbox every day, I can imagine wanting a tool to help. But I definitely don't spend hours in there.
ksajadi 7y ago
I am a Superhuman user and really enjoy using it. Having tried and used almost all email clients that have been around, the best thing about Superhuman, until now, was that it made money by charging me a monthly fee, so I knew they can stay alive and continue without being sold to a bigger company and killed like many others before them. Taking money from a VC is a bad sign for me. Call me old fashioned, but I would like to pay for what I use so they can build a business that lasts. VCs change the trajectory of businesses and usually what it means is getting bought by someone like Google and then being killed 18 months after that, leaving me holding the can.
- tylerhou 7y ago
  This is their series B; they have had multiple funding rounds already: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/superhuman#section-funding-rounds https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/superhuman#section-f...
- arrmn 7y ago
  weren't they VC founded from the start? If I remember the story correctly, they didn't release a product for (1-2?) years while having multiple developers in the bay area.
- nickpsecurity 7y ago
  "was that it made money by charging me a monthly fee, so I knew they can stay alive and continue without being sold to a bigger company and killed like many others before them." Although VC money is worse, you don't know that at all about profit-based models. Any profitable company can sell out or cease operations at any time. One that I got burned on recommending was FoundationDB that was selling an awesome database for good prices with steady growth. After Apple bought it, they shut it down. Of all like that, it was one of only ones to get resurrected into an open-source product. Most just disappear with the big company transitioning the paying customers into their own, crappier offerings. This is why I push for anyone trying to create products with longevity and good practices to use an open core model in a public-benefit corporation or non-profit. Best example in recent times is probably Ghost: https://ghost.org/about/ https://ghost.org/about/ Note: I don't use Ghost. Just loved the business model they're trying. One of only trustworthy models out there.
jason_slack 7y ago
If anyone at Superhuman could refer me, I’d love to give it a crack at my 5 emails accounts where I receive 1,000 messages each day and I only get to respond to a few hundred. :-) anything I can do to be more productive and answer more fan mail.
- pisarzp 7y ago
  Funnily enough, top comments say it works only for people with one account :)
  - kareemm 7y ago
    Not true. I have 5 and it works just fine. But they don’t support a Unified Inbox (which suits me just fine).
ChrisMarshallNY 7y ago
Interesting, but not for me. $30/month isn't a big deal at all for someone (not just rich VCs) that have to deal with volumes of email, but that ain't me. My Xero costs $30/month, and that's worth it, to me, because ROI.
andrewstuart 7y ago
I am always interested in the back story. And to understand the back story you have to listen to the founder/CEO speak. https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulvohra/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulvohra/ He's very charismatic - has a fabulous radio voice and when he speaks you feel like you need to listen. He does alot of podcasts and I get the impression he speaks to alot of the most influential people in Silicon Valley (conjecture). So lots of influential people are pulled into the orbit of what he talks about, which is Superhuman of course, and also the way he goes about business. I'm not saying anything here except that I think highly charismatic leaders are able to generate a large amount of interest in what they are doing - they speak, people listen and want to hear more, and buy what they are selling. That's why if you pay much attention to the tech scene, you'll have heard about Superhuman from a number of sources in recent times, and you'll read articles like this one that are very positive. If you are highly charismatic then people want you to know you, be around you, hear you and give you what you want. Paul Graham believes that the person who wins the U.S. election tends to be the most charismatic http://www.paulgraham.com/charisma.html http://www.paulgraham.com/charisma.html and I think that's exactly true as well of getting funding, and generating buzz for your company/product. Unfortunately if you're not born with the voice, the ability to listen or the X factor that gives you that charisma, then you're going to have to develop that success and interest some other way. Of course it's not only about the founder charisma, the product must also be there - and if you've got both then you're probably, well, Superhuman.
- andrewstuart 7y ago
  By way of example, check this out https://youtu.be/IdYGpiRZIgg?t=101 https://youtu.be/IdYGpiRZIgg?t=101 He has the Hugh Grant voice.
- sonnyblarney 7y ago
  The reason they gave you might be an excuse. If they were worried about '6 integrations' they could limit you to one. My bet is they are trying to position themselves as a 'luxury good' of software. Given there's no unit cost for software, that's always going to be a weird one. It makes more sense for supposedly 'exclusive' social networks (remember those?), but email doesn't quite have the same network effects. Their 'laser focus' maybe going to be on people for whom $30/mo is an irrelevant expense, but more importantly they want 'status' individuals, who will personally market the product to those within their 'status' circle. There's a class of higher-net-worth individuals who almost define themselves by specific things: their school, their car, their address, their job title, their activities, the club they belong to. To be fair, in some ways, it's important they do that because in some career trajectories, appearances are everything. But key to building any kind of luxury brand is scarcity (or, it usually is, there are some that defy this), and of course brand, so they want the 'right people' to be using this. If regular plebs use this, well then it's not much of a status signal. All of this seems very cynical, but the reason I believe this might be the case is that the marketing collateral doesn't focus on anything materially relevant. Yes - it's fine for companies to talk about very high level things like 'getting things done faster' - but ultimately, there has to be some kind of material translation there: what features etc. actually drive that productivity? I don't see anything at all. In fact, the screen shoots that we can kind of see in the marketing collateral provide not much information at all. I don't see the 'there there' - at least not from those shots. Many startups make the opposite mistake - tons of features which they don't map well to 'problems solved' (and sometimes it's not bad communications, it's often features that actually have no value) - but the article in a16z - and the Superhuman website are just way too limited in terms of any details, to the point where my 'red flag' is raised. About 50% of office workers spend '3 hours a day' in email. Maybe more. And so yes, any 'improvement' in email is worth something, possibly even $30. But my 'spidey marketing sense' is telling me this is all about selling a 'decent' and 'nice looking' email client to aspirational people who are desperate to signal their status. Possibly not for HN types, possibly not even for true, email warriors. Either this, or they could really trying to pull the exclusivity/insider thing to the max as a launch strategy. Should note 'The Information' is a $50/month news site - which has really set the bar for this kind of stuff. But the difference there is 'The Information' does get really juicy 'insider' kind of stories. The $50/month is probably easily written off as expense by every subscriber, there's materiality there. Anyhow - the level of curation going on here is a little odd. They say 'Superhuman' - that's totally fine, good on them, but I'll wait to see it to draw any conclusions.
kitten_smuggler 7y ago
How does the undo feature work? Is there a timeout period that lapses and locks that functionality?
wnscooke 7y ago
I still doubt _anyone_ really uses it because all the supposed users are over the top effervescent in its praise without saying anything about why, or what. No details. I actually did get an invite from a forum on Lowendtalk... followed the link, gave some info (no about an6 email accounts) and then I had to complete a questionnaire about my usage! Never had to do that for an app before, so I back out and pinged the ceo to remove me from their system. I don’t know. Seems off. Somehow. After reading the article there is still a dearth of details other than saying users “experience joy”, and that it is fast. Nothing about what generates the joy, of what exactly is fast about it. Avoid!
- Shank 7y ago
  > Never had to do that for an app before, so I back out and pinged the ceo to remove me from their system. I don’t know. Seems off. Somehow. They pretty strongly adhere to "The Collision Installation" [0] in that they want to give you an in-depth product overview in a consultation before they give it to you. > Nothing about what generates the joy, of what exactly is fast about it. There's a keyboard shortcut for everything, and the UI actively trains you if you somehow don't use a keyboard shortcut to do something. It sounds intrusive, but it's not. The actual performance in terms of latency between user input and action is optimized too, which makes everything feel super fast. They also optimize some types of actions so that some specific workflows are faster (like reading every email with auto-advance). It's the combination of these things that make it fast. [0]: http://www.startupengine.org/2013/08/the-collision-installation.html http://www.startupengine.org/2013/08/the-collision-installat...
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    Building a theory of businest around wrapping an old idea in a weird attempt at a pun an founder cult of personality worship; is that really where Silicon Valley is today? This is Conjoined Triangles of Success level of ridiculous.
alexandercrohde 7y ago
I'm sorry, is this an article or a commercial? I didn't see a single screenshot, or informative comment on the feature set, just a bunch of meaningless hype "if Gmail was built today it would be this."
- lonelappde 7y ago
  It's a commercial, hosted on the seller's website.
  - alexandercrohde 7y ago
    And who the heck is upvoting this strange advertisement for an undefined product to the frontpage of my go-to NO-BS news aggregator site?
sonnyblarney 7y ago
This is a little heavy on the advertorial. Also - aren't we past the 'false scarcity' thing these days? If you're going to talk about it publicly, why can't I try it? "Ooh, you can use it sooner if you know someone who is using it" Sorry that I'm not already in your club, but I was excited to look at it, now, I'm a tiny bit miffed, but most importantly I may not remember to come back. ... The author lamented 'decision making' 'getting back to someone' etc. which we can all empathize with. The marketing collateral of Superhuman talks about 'speed' i.e. not having to wait 100ms for anything ... I'm not sure how the two are deeply related. Yes, a refresh and speed will be great, but I personally don't think that's the issue. It's a rather difficult thing for orgs to try to magically organize information, Google seems to be trying a few things and while novel and impressive, ultimately I think they are futile. Anyhow, I'm stoked that people are trying to re-invent old things, excited to try it. I guess when my 'klout' score gets high enough?
- nairebis 7y ago
  All you need to know about this thing is this idiotic sentence: "It’s the kind of innovation that can only happen in startups, and with special, once-in-a-lifetime founders." Seriously? Once-in-a-lifetime founders? For an email client? That's how you know this is marketing garbage.
cooc 7y ago
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cyberferret 7y ago
I think they use FOMO effectively in their marketing strategy. I actually applied for a Superhuman account a few months ago (I am guessing before they went 'invite only'). Went through the questionnaire process then received an email from one of their staff saying I wasn't a good fit because I had more than one (I have 6) G-Suite email accounts, whereas their product only supports one email account for best results. I was upset for a few seconds, but then that was replaced by grudging admiration that they had a clear focus of their ideal customer and onboarding expectations and were prepared to say 'no' to some people to filter them out. But I really do wonder how many people have just the one email address these days? Startup founders especially would have a plethora. Would be good if they stated up front that they only cater for people with one email address - that would save them a lot of vetting time, and also make it clear up front for people spending time trying to get an invite that won't make it past the first gatekeeper.
- Shank 7y ago
  > Went through the questionnaire process then received an email from one of their staff saying I wasn't a good fit because I had more than one (I have 6) G-Suite email accounts, whereas their product only supports one email account for best results. I believe this has changed now. You can certainly add more accounts to Superhuman and it has keyboard shortcuts to swap between them. I use it daily like this. If you're really interested, you could reach back out and I'm sure they'd let you jump on board now.
- alexandercrohde 7y ago
  I also kinda wonder if this is "signaling value." Trying really hard to hype up that "this is for successful executives who don't mind blowing 30 a month" as a way for people to try to remind themselves/friends "Hey I'm a powerful person, I spend 30 a month on my email like executives!"
Shank 7y ago
I love Superhuman, and I do think the hype is deserved. It has a few innovative features (like split inboxes and an entirely keyboard focused UI), but the real appeal is polish. It really is fast, but it's consistent and that's the key. If it weren't consistent or if it had random latency spikes it wouldn't be great, but it is.
_zachs 7y ago
I've yet to read an article about Superhuman that doesn't look like it was written by an investor. Was given an invite, which is really just a ticket to purchase this for $30 a month after filling out a questionnaire. Obviously, I didn't go through with it. Not much of an invite if you ask me.
- kristofferR 7y ago
  I found this: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/technology/superhuman-email.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/technology/superhuman-ema... But you're right, the linked story reads like ad copy.
  - 43920 7y ago
    The NYT story also kinda sounds like an ad, actually. Like everything else I've read about Superhuman, it claims that it will somehow revolutionize email, but half the features mentioned in the article already exist in Gmail, and the others sound more like small improvements than something actually new.
- spamizbad 7y ago
  If you have an email-centric workflow you'll love it. It's a tool more for managers than makers.
  - GeorgeTirebiter 7y ago
    But you have to be a Cool Kid who has another Cool Kid send you an invite. Why do they use this 'artificial scarcity' approach? I'm now disinclined to use this service, and to replace it with some scripts in emacs. (One should never, ever leave unencrypted email 'in the cloud'.)
- Timothee 7y ago
  FWIW, Andreessen Horowitz is an investor in Superhuman. :)
  - 7y ago
HillaryBriss 7y ago
IIRC, gmail was once invite-only
User23 7y ago
All I want from email is for any sent to me to bounce unless the sender pays me the current price of a USPS forever stamp.
kristofferR 7y ago
It's kind of shame that being fast has become a super-premium feature that people are willing $360 USD a year for, especially considering how powerful the hardware of today is.
alphagrep12345 7y ago
Why can't we use a Gmail extension to do something similar?
lanrh1836 7y ago
Someone on Twitter freaked out because one of the “core” features of Superhuman is basically a read receipt e.g. similar to marketing emails where they add a clear pixel to your email before sending. I absolutely hate that stuff, but marketers do this all the time anyway. Definitely adds one more creep factor if you know the sender is using Superhuman and can tell if you have or haven’t opened their email.
- dheera 7y ago
  If you use Gmail, turn off loading images by default and it won't open any of those stupid tracking pixels. They won't get read receipts. I thought a long time ago this was the default behavior to not open external images but it seems this has changed. I don't know who decided on changing that default, as pixel trackers can also enable stalking behavior.
  - remyp 7y ago
    You have to block loading of ALL external resources. Smarter trackers will try to load much more than just images.
    - dheera 7y ago
      Can you elaborate? What resources are allowed in e-mails besides images? I'm pretty sure Gmail doesn't auto-load JavaScript or anything like that.
  - mdorazio 7y ago
    Wait, is that actually the case? My understanding was that gmail re-hosts all images sent to its users and strips the trackers out in the process. A quick check on image sources in my inbox seems to confirm this.
pault 7y ago
Is it just me or are all of the features they list on the landing page exactly what Google inbox did before they stupidly shut it down? I loved the inbox UI...
- lanrh1836 7y ago
  Superhuman has read receipts. AFAIK no email clients offers that outside of email marketing software.
  - dheera 7y ago
    I actually consider read receipts unethical. It enables stalkers, and enables bad employers to make judgements about their employees' personal time and sleeping habits. Good e-mail clients should never load any external resource without the user's explicit consent. It should be enforced that images to be displayed in the e-mail should be attached to the e-mail itself.
  - mkr-hn 7y ago
    AOL had this a very long time ago, but I think it only worked with other AOL accounts.
wenbin 7y ago
Listen to this recent podcast interview w/ its founder & ceo https://lnns.co/V8Z-SfuvqbB https://lnns.co/V8Z-SfuvqbB The founder raised $750k initially. Spent 20% buying superhuman.com and $45k hiring a design agency to turn wireframes into high fidelity mock. Very bold 2nd time founder
- wenbin 7y ago
  Superhuman founder & ceo is doing quite a few podcast interviews recently https://lnns.co/65uTMm9nytW https://lnns.co/65uTMm9nytW
iphigenia 7y ago
why did i just spend 5 min reading an ad
new_realist 7y ago
A VC pimping one of their investments? YC’s influence has spread far and wide.
mkr-hn 7y ago
Over 1500 words and I'm not sure what it does to actually improve email. This reminds me of marketing copy for marketing apps for marketers that, when you get down to it, don't do much.
dgudkov 7y ago
TLDR: Promotional article for Superhuman (email client) written by its investor.
metroholografix 7y ago
I use Emacs for email (and most of my other tasks). The problems that he presents, I have long ago solved. The reason is programmability. I can mold Emacs and its wide assortment of email clients into my exact requirements. If my requirements change, _my_ Emacs evolves and adapts. The Lisp Machine rapid-feedback-loop paradigm makes that possible. Once you lock onto that way of working, everything else seems substandard. That of course includes yet another centralized “service” that I have no control over.
nikolay 7y ago
I've had terrible, terrible experience with Superhuman! I got an invitation and some lady wanted to me to do a screenshare and show her how I use Gmail. I told her if she's nuts as I'm not letting anyone see what's in my Inbox and this kind of intrusion is not something they should be doing, but the stupid "Subhuman" employee said they cannot continue onboarding without this. I told them that I don't want anything to do with such blatant privacy invader and cancelled my onboarding.
arittr 7y ago
> Unfortunately, we're not ready to support your desktop device yet. Superhuman is currently built for Apple laptops, but our team is working hard to expand platforms. So not only is it a recurring $30/m but it only works on macOS. Seems to me this could have easily been Electron or a cross-platform web app. Not sure why email needs native performance. Stop discrimination against Linux users!

97 points by yarapavan 7y ago

> Information we receive from third parties. From time to time, we may receive information about you from third parties and other users. We may also collect information about you that is publicly available. No thanks. ( from https://superhuman.com/privacy https://superhuman.com/privacy )

devoply 7y ago
Yes my first thought was great another we'll mine your data for a trivial benefit that you can mostly get from Tunderbird or other desktop clients. E-mail is a utility to be provided by non-ad tech company and browsed using an open source/private desktop client... that you pay a monthly fee for. At $30 / month for a webclient I would hope it comes with full iron-clad private hosting of your stuff with an strong privacy-based agreement to boot. I pay half that for my mail for a few mailboxes about maybe 50 gbs of storage between them.
- smacktoward 7y ago
  In fairness, I love and rely on Thunderbird, but I certainly wouldn't call it a triumph of usability. The UI hasn't changed appreciably in more than a decade, and it wasn't particularly easy or pleasant to use even back then. Don't get me wrong, it works well for what it sets out to do, and the stagnation is understandable given how Thunderbird was always treated by Mozilla as a sort of red-headed stepchild before they cut it loose altogether. This is a project that has been operating in survival mode for a long time now. But it does mean that there is space in the market for an email client with a modern UI and some fresh ideas on how to interact with email.
- jschwartzi 7y ago
  Information hiding is key. I get bombarded by so many trash emails every day that I could spend weeks unsubscribing to stuff. When Gmail came out with their tabbed interface and hid all the marketing messages behind a tab, I started using email again for the first time in about 7 years. Before that it was actually less useful than postal mail because I couldn't find anything for the flood of crap. That's something Outlook and Thunderbird don't do, is give you convenient features to hide information. Sure, you can organize things into folders or labels, colorize things for follow-up, sort emails, etc., but you're fundamentally limited by their model of "emails should be in a list, like a database. And they should be in chronological order. And you deal with them in chronological order, or you colorize them."
  - kthejoker2 7y ago
    Outlook has added a lot of "smart" features to its inbox sorting and management. I'll just say "so far so good" but clearly there's something in the air in the space.
Pyxl101 7y ago
Definitely not if I'm paying for the offering. If it's free, then I'll consider making that trade-off.
chamen 7y ago
One of Superhuman's founders previously started a company named Airseed. To users the service looked like an assistant that accessed your email account to keep track of your travel, purchases, etc., but the actual business was selling that data to third parties (presumably aggregated). I don't think Airseed ended up panning out but I wonder what he brought from that business to Superhuman.
- Alex3917 7y ago
  > I don't think Airseed ended up panning out but I wonder what he brought from that business to Superhuman. There are several other businesses that specialize in doing just this, so even if they wanted to continue doing the exact same thing it wouldn't necessarily make sense to continue using their own in-house technology. That said email is insanely difficult to wrap your head around, I've been doing it full time for several years and don't pretend to be anywhere near close to fully understanding it. So just having experience in the space and having tried out some different approaches to similar problems would surely help a ton.
JeremyBanks 7y ago
Their registration page breaks if you enable Firefox's built-in tracking protection. :|
antiviral 7y ago
Vivek Sodera, cofounder of Superhuman, was also one of the cofounders of Rapleaf acording to (1): Also see: https://money.cnn.com/2010/10/21/technology/rapleaf/index.htm https://money.cnn.com/2010/10/21/technology/rapleaf/index.ht... From the article (10/21/2010): "Rapleaf knows your name, your age and where you live. It knows your e-mail address, your income and what social networks you use. It knows your likes and dislikes. And it makes money by selling much of that personal information to advertisers." (Reference 1): https://dataweekapiworld2014.sched.com/speaker/vivek_sodera.1srsgp1d https://dataweekapiworld2014.sched.com/speaker/vivek_sodera.... "..Previously he(Vivek Sodera) co-founded Rapleaf, a consumer data company that was acquired in 2013, and spun out LiveRamp, a data onboarding platform." It would be great to hear what A16Z's position on consumer privacy is, as I am sure this is just a misunderstanding.

adamnemecek 7y ago

Does anyone have an invite?

underyx 7y ago
I do, referring you via your email address on your HN profile. In return, I think I'll take you up on > If you have ANY (literally ANY) sort of problem that you need solved, contact me. I mean seriously, literally any problem, even the one you think I can't help you with. The harder the better. How do I work at a Silicon Valley startup that wants to hire me, if I'm an EU citizen with no degree and 5 years of work experience?
- foxya 7y ago
  Any chance I could snag a referral as well?
  - underyx 7y ago
    Sorry, I'm worried about getting a bad rep with Superhuman if I refer low quality users, and you have a day old account :( I think I'll refer only above 500 HN karma. And I'm honestly sorry, I really don't mean to be elitist or anything.
    - adamnemecek 7y ago
      Thanks for the invite. I contacted you over linkedin. We can talk about visa.
    - scotth 7y ago
      I'd love one, if you would be so kind. Email in my profile.
      - underyx 7y ago
        And off the invite went. Enjoy!

mxwsn 7y ago

A relevant NYTimes article about Superhuman was also published today: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/technology/superhuman-email.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/technology/superhuman-ema... Key quote for me: "Mr. Vohra said the app was targeted at people who spend three or more hours a day checking their email. “When you’re doing three-plus hours of email every day, it’s your job,” Mr. Vohra said. “And every single other job has a tool that makes you do it faster.”"

jbrun 7y ago

I tried it for 1 month, it is genuinely great, just kind of expensive considering all the pretty good free email apps out there. It is nice for me (CEO), but buying this in addition to everything else for all of our staff is tough to justify.

eightysixfour 7y ago
What made it great, did it genuinely free up time?

LynxInLA 7y ago

The Acquired podcast just released an episode on them today: https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/superhuman https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/superhuman

teekert 7y ago

So much text, so little information. It would have been nice to read what is so uber great about it.

lucb1e 7y ago
Yeah, I read the whole thing and have absolutely zero clue how the product is better. Was already wondering where this over the top admiration post was going, but I should have figured it would conclude with "so we bought (part of) them". The TL;DR of this whole 1500-words post is "we think this will change everything about email, so we invested in it", and you wouldn't have missed out on any details.
nickpsecurity 7y ago
Yeah, it was a near-total waste of my time reading that article. Almost 100% hype with no actual content. Fortunately, the Superhuman website the author linked to tells you all about it. Many features looked good, too. https://superhuman.com/ https://superhuman.com/
- literallycancer 7y ago
  I found a little bit of footage of the actual app in this video: https://youtu.be/IdYGpiRZIgg?t=1476 https://youtu.be/IdYGpiRZIgg?t=1476 Interface seems reasonably fast, but not surprising for native clients. Does anyone know whether it's actually native? Or just electron that doesn't suck?

comex 7y ago

I'm interested. I hate how slow Gmail feels these days – not sure whether it's gotten slower or my expectations have gotten higher, but either way, I only use it for lack of a good alternative. But does anyone know whether or not the macOS version is an Electron app? The screenshot on the website makes it seem like it might be. If so, most of my interest is lost: it's probably still better than Gmail, but not better enough to be worth switching to. Non-native widgets are annoying to deal with, especially since they tend to not work properly with keyboard navigation/shortcuts (also a problem with Gmail). And while I believe they've gotten their client faster than Gmail, probably by a large margin, if it's Electron it probably isn't quite as snappy as a native app, while also taking up a lot of memory. I could be wrong, and I'll probably still try it if I get the chance, but I have yet to find a single Electron app that didn't struggle with this. Edit: Their GitHub profile lists a bunch of Electron and JS repos, so I'm guessing it is indeed Electron. :(

underyx 7y ago
I'm not sure if it is specifically Electron, but it does have Chrome Dev Tools in it.
- Shank 7y ago
  It's Electron, and that does bring memory concerns, but it is really fast. It's the first electron app I've used that has convinced me that a well-built electron app can exist, if you put the work into it. It's as snappy as a native app to me, and I have said that about no other electron apps.
ProAm 7y ago
> I'm interested. I hate how slow Gmail feels these days – not sure whether it's gotten slower or my expectations have gotten higher, but either way, I only use it for lack of a good alternative. I switched to FastMail for this exact reason and have not been happier. And its not a company backed by VC.

sushilewis 7y ago

Most of the fans so far seem to be VCs. It's very clever for Superhuman to target that group. They're wealthy, influential, and will come in handy when its time to raise. Outside of the VC segment, seems like most first-hand accounts I've read -- startup CEOs and journalists -- report that they've ended the subscription because the $30/mo. fee wasn't worth it, given the number of free alternatives. This makes me wonder: does Superhuman have a target demographic outside of the ultra-rich?

MaximumMadness 7y ago
I heard the CEO speak at a meet-up a while back, and based off his points, I actually think they don't. It seems like they've figured their sweet spot is with people who spend 3+ hours of emails a day, and that tends to skew towards high-profile, rich, business execs in their case.
kareemm 7y ago
I’m not a rich business executive and I love Superhuman. I’m happy to pay $30/m for it. If it saves me 10 minutes a month (and it does) it’s a no-brainer.
- binaryblitz 7y ago
  What does it provide that other email clients don't?
  - Epskampie 7y ago
    From what I’ve read they force you to learn the shortcuts that people are too lazy to learn for other clients. That’s about it.
  - kareemm 7y ago
    Some reasons I like it: 1. It's fast as hell. I've tried all the OS X Desktop clients and they're all slower than they should be. Email is a task - only a masochist would spend more time doing email than necessary. This focus on speed means the interface is super snappy. Keyboard shortcuts are nice, but the real win is the Slack-style CMD-K menu that lets me change contexts quickly. I don't know why every app doesn't have this. 2. The interface is super clean and minimal. It displays only what's necessary on screen. 3. They've paved many of the key workflows that I care about: - I type a date and they pop up my Calendar in the sidebar (but ONLY if I type a date). - Undo send is critical to any email client I use and they have it. But I can also "accelerate" a send to skip the ability to undo it. Useful if I'm e.g. trying to get an email with some key info to discuss with a client that I'm on the phone with right that moment instead of waiting 10-20 seconds for the Undo Send window to close. - Archiving an email displays the next email (granted so does Gmail) but the point is to process the inbox as quickly as possible. - Copying an email from the list view and pasting it opens up the exact same email (recipients, subject, and body) - this is super useful when I'm sending a variation of the same email to people. - Split Inboxes are great for filtering emails into a "Sub Inbox" for processing in a way that I don't process my main inbox. When I archive emails from there they disappear (unlike labeled emails which are labeled forever). An example is emails from Freelance gigs lists. I want to keep them out of my main inbox and scan them e.g. weekly, then have them go away forever. - The "Escape" key is a back button. It keeps history so you can get back to the inbox very quickly by hitting Esc a few times.

draw_down 7y ago

I feel like my mental model of email is good, I understand well how it works and is basically never surprising. So I'm not really looking to upend all that. Besides that, for people who spend literally hours in their inbox every day, I can imagine wanting a tool to help. But I definitely don't spend hours in there.

ksajadi 7y ago

I am a Superhuman user and really enjoy using it. Having tried and used almost all email clients that have been around, the best thing about Superhuman, until now, was that it made money by charging me a monthly fee, so I knew they can stay alive and continue without being sold to a bigger company and killed like many others before them. Taking money from a VC is a bad sign for me. Call me old fashioned, but I would like to pay for what I use so they can build a business that lasts. VCs change the trajectory of businesses and usually what it means is getting bought by someone like Google and then being killed 18 months after that, leaving me holding the can.

tylerhou 7y ago
This is their series B; they have had multiple funding rounds already: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/superhuman#section-funding-rounds https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/superhuman#section-f...
arrmn 7y ago
weren't they VC founded from the start? If I remember the story correctly, they didn't release a product for (1-2?) years while having multiple developers in the bay area.
nickpsecurity 7y ago
"was that it made money by charging me a monthly fee, so I knew they can stay alive and continue without being sold to a bigger company and killed like many others before them." Although VC money is worse, you don't know that at all about profit-based models. Any profitable company can sell out or cease operations at any time. One that I got burned on recommending was FoundationDB that was selling an awesome database for good prices with steady growth. After Apple bought it, they shut it down. Of all like that, it was one of only ones to get resurrected into an open-source product. Most just disappear with the big company transitioning the paying customers into their own, crappier offerings. This is why I push for anyone trying to create products with longevity and good practices to use an open core model in a public-benefit corporation or non-profit. Best example in recent times is probably Ghost: https://ghost.org/about/ https://ghost.org/about/ Note: I don't use Ghost. Just loved the business model they're trying. One of only trustworthy models out there.

jason_slack 7y ago

If anyone at Superhuman could refer me, I’d love to give it a crack at my 5 emails accounts where I receive 1,000 messages each day and I only get to respond to a few hundred. :-) anything I can do to be more productive and answer more fan mail.

pisarzp 7y ago
Funnily enough, top comments say it works only for people with one account :)
- kareemm 7y ago
  Not true. I have 5 and it works just fine. But they don’t support a Unified Inbox (which suits me just fine).

ChrisMarshallNY 7y ago

Interesting, but not for me. $30/month isn't a big deal at all for someone (not just rich VCs) that have to deal with volumes of email, but that ain't me. My Xero costs $30/month, and that's worth it, to me, because ROI.

andrewstuart 7y ago

I am always interested in the back story. And to understand the back story you have to listen to the founder/CEO speak. https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulvohra/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulvohra/ He's very charismatic - has a fabulous radio voice and when he speaks you feel like you need to listen. He does alot of podcasts and I get the impression he speaks to alot of the most influential people in Silicon Valley (conjecture). So lots of influential people are pulled into the orbit of what he talks about, which is Superhuman of course, and also the way he goes about business. I'm not saying anything here except that I think highly charismatic leaders are able to generate a large amount of interest in what they are doing - they speak, people listen and want to hear more, and buy what they are selling. That's why if you pay much attention to the tech scene, you'll have heard about Superhuman from a number of sources in recent times, and you'll read articles like this one that are very positive. If you are highly charismatic then people want you to know you, be around you, hear you and give you what you want. Paul Graham believes that the person who wins the U.S. election tends to be the most charismatic http://www.paulgraham.com/charisma.html http://www.paulgraham.com/charisma.html and I think that's exactly true as well of getting funding, and generating buzz for your company/product. Unfortunately if you're not born with the voice, the ability to listen or the X factor that gives you that charisma, then you're going to have to develop that success and interest some other way. Of course it's not only about the founder charisma, the product must also be there - and if you've got both then you're probably, well, Superhuman.

andrewstuart 7y ago
By way of example, check this out https://youtu.be/IdYGpiRZIgg?t=101 https://youtu.be/IdYGpiRZIgg?t=101 He has the Hugh Grant voice.
sonnyblarney 7y ago
The reason they gave you might be an excuse. If they were worried about '6 integrations' they could limit you to one. My bet is they are trying to position themselves as a 'luxury good' of software. Given there's no unit cost for software, that's always going to be a weird one. It makes more sense for supposedly 'exclusive' social networks (remember those?), but email doesn't quite have the same network effects. Their 'laser focus' maybe going to be on people for whom $30/mo is an irrelevant expense, but more importantly they want 'status' individuals, who will personally market the product to those within their 'status' circle. There's a class of higher-net-worth individuals who almost define themselves by specific things: their school, their car, their address, their job title, their activities, the club they belong to. To be fair, in some ways, it's important they do that because in some career trajectories, appearances are everything. But key to building any kind of luxury brand is scarcity (or, it usually is, there are some that defy this), and of course brand, so they want the 'right people' to be using this. If regular plebs use this, well then it's not much of a status signal. All of this seems very cynical, but the reason I believe this might be the case is that the marketing collateral doesn't focus on anything materially relevant. Yes - it's fine for companies to talk about very high level things like 'getting things done faster' - but ultimately, there has to be some kind of material translation there: what features etc. actually drive that productivity? I don't see anything at all. In fact, the screen shoots that we can kind of see in the marketing collateral provide not much information at all. I don't see the 'there there' - at least not from those shots. Many startups make the opposite mistake - tons of features which they don't map well to 'problems solved' (and sometimes it's not bad communications, it's often features that actually have no value) - but the article in a16z - and the Superhuman website are just way too limited in terms of any details, to the point where my 'red flag' is raised. About 50% of office workers spend '3 hours a day' in email. Maybe more. And so yes, any 'improvement' in email is worth something, possibly even $30. But my 'spidey marketing sense' is telling me this is all about selling a 'decent' and 'nice looking' email client to aspirational people who are desperate to signal their status. Possibly not for HN types, possibly not even for true, email warriors. Either this, or they could really trying to pull the exclusivity/insider thing to the max as a launch strategy. Should note 'The Information' is a $50/month news site - which has really set the bar for this kind of stuff. But the difference there is 'The Information' does get really juicy 'insider' kind of stories. The $50/month is probably easily written off as expense by every subscriber, there's materiality there. Anyhow - the level of curation going on here is a little odd. They say 'Superhuman' - that's totally fine, good on them, but I'll wait to see it to draw any conclusions.

kitten_smuggler 7y ago

How does the undo feature work? Is there a timeout period that lapses and locks that functionality?

wnscooke 7y ago

I still doubt _anyone_ really uses it because all the supposed users are over the top effervescent in its praise without saying anything about why, or what. No details. I actually did get an invite from a forum on Lowendtalk... followed the link, gave some info (no about an6 email accounts) and then I had to complete a questionnaire about my usage! Never had to do that for an app before, so I back out and pinged the ceo to remove me from their system. I don’t know. Seems off. Somehow. After reading the article there is still a dearth of details other than saying users “experience joy”, and that it is fast. Nothing about what generates the joy, of what exactly is fast about it. Avoid!

Shank 7y ago
> Never had to do that for an app before, so I back out and pinged the ceo to remove me from their system. I don’t know. Seems off. Somehow. They pretty strongly adhere to "The Collision Installation" [0] in that they want to give you an in-depth product overview in a consultation before they give it to you. > Nothing about what generates the joy, of what exactly is fast about it. There's a keyboard shortcut for everything, and the UI actively trains you if you somehow don't use a keyboard shortcut to do something. It sounds intrusive, but it's not. The actual performance in terms of latency between user input and action is optimized too, which makes everything feel super fast. They also optimize some types of actions so that some specific workflows are faster (like reading every email with auto-advance). It's the combination of these things that make it fast. [0]: http://www.startupengine.org/2013/08/the-collision-installation.html http://www.startupengine.org/2013/08/the-collision-installat...
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Building a theory of businest around wrapping an old idea in a weird attempt at a pun an founder cult of personality worship; is that really where Silicon Valley is today? This is Conjoined Triangles of Success level of ridiculous.

alexandercrohde 7y ago

I'm sorry, is this an article or a commercial? I didn't see a single screenshot, or informative comment on the feature set, just a bunch of meaningless hype "if Gmail was built today it would be this."

lonelappde 7y ago
It's a commercial, hosted on the seller's website.
- alexandercrohde 7y ago
  And who the heck is upvoting this strange advertisement for an undefined product to the frontpage of my go-to NO-BS news aggregator site?

sonnyblarney 7y ago

This is a little heavy on the advertorial. Also - aren't we past the 'false scarcity' thing these days? If you're going to talk about it publicly, why can't I try it? "Ooh, you can use it sooner if you know someone who is using it" Sorry that I'm not already in your club, but I was excited to look at it, now, I'm a tiny bit miffed, but most importantly I may not remember to come back. ... The author lamented 'decision making' 'getting back to someone' etc. which we can all empathize with. The marketing collateral of Superhuman talks about 'speed' i.e. not having to wait 100ms for anything ... I'm not sure how the two are deeply related. Yes, a refresh and speed will be great, but I personally don't think that's the issue. It's a rather difficult thing for orgs to try to magically organize information, Google seems to be trying a few things and while novel and impressive, ultimately I think they are futile. Anyhow, I'm stoked that people are trying to re-invent old things, excited to try it. I guess when my 'klout' score gets high enough?

nairebis 7y ago
All you need to know about this thing is this idiotic sentence: "It’s the kind of innovation that can only happen in startups, and with special, once-in-a-lifetime founders." Seriously? Once-in-a-lifetime founders? For an email client? That's how you know this is marketing garbage.

cooc 7y ago

> The views expressed here are those of the individual AH Capital Management, L.L.C. (“a16z”) personnel quoted and are not the views of a16z or its affiliates. Certain information contained in here has been obtained from third-party sources, including from portfolio companies of funds managed by a16z. While taken from sources believed to be reliable, a16z has not independently verified such information and makes no representations about the enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation. >This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. References to any securities or digital assets are for illustrative purposes only, and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services. Furthermore, this content is not directed at nor intended for use by any investors or prospective investors, and may not under any circumstances be relied upon when making a decision to invest in any fund managed by a16z. (An offering to invest in an a16z fund will be made only by the private placement memorandum, subscription agreement, and other relevant documentation of any such fund and should be read in their entirety.) Any investments or portfolio companies mentioned, referred to, or described are not representative of all investments in vehicles managed by a16z, and there can be no assurance that the investments will be profitable or that other investments made in the future will have similar characteristics or results. A list of investments made by funds managed by Andreessen Horowitz (excluding investments for which the issuer has not provided permission for a16z to disclose publicly as well as unannounced investments in publicly traded digital assets) is available at https://a16z.com/investments/ https://a16z.com/investments/. >Charts and graphs provided within are for informational purposes solely and should not be relied upon when making any investment decision. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The content speaks only as of the date indicated. Any projections, estimates, forecasts, targets, prospects, and/or opinions expressed in these materials are subject to change without notice and may differ or be contrary to opinions expressed by others. Please see https://a16z.com/disclosures https://a16z.com/disclosures for additional important information. In which world are we living?

cyberferret 7y ago

I think they use FOMO effectively in their marketing strategy. I actually applied for a Superhuman account a few months ago (I am guessing before they went 'invite only'). Went through the questionnaire process then received an email from one of their staff saying I wasn't a good fit because I had more than one (I have 6) G-Suite email accounts, whereas their product only supports one email account for best results. I was upset for a few seconds, but then that was replaced by grudging admiration that they had a clear focus of their ideal customer and onboarding expectations and were prepared to say 'no' to some people to filter them out. But I really do wonder how many people have just the one email address these days? Startup founders especially would have a plethora. Would be good if they stated up front that they only cater for people with one email address - that would save them a lot of vetting time, and also make it clear up front for people spending time trying to get an invite that won't make it past the first gatekeeper.

Shank 7y ago
> Went through the questionnaire process then received an email from one of their staff saying I wasn't a good fit because I had more than one (I have 6) G-Suite email accounts, whereas their product only supports one email account for best results. I believe this has changed now. You can certainly add more accounts to Superhuman and it has keyboard shortcuts to swap between them. I use it daily like this. If you're really interested, you could reach back out and I'm sure they'd let you jump on board now.
alexandercrohde 7y ago
I also kinda wonder if this is "signaling value." Trying really hard to hype up that "this is for successful executives who don't mind blowing 30 a month" as a way for people to try to remind themselves/friends "Hey I'm a powerful person, I spend 30 a month on my email like executives!"

Shank 7y ago

I love Superhuman, and I do think the hype is deserved. It has a few innovative features (like split inboxes and an entirely keyboard focused UI), but the real appeal is polish. It really is fast, but it's consistent and that's the key. If it weren't consistent or if it had random latency spikes it wouldn't be great, but it is.

_zachs 7y ago

I've yet to read an article about Superhuman that doesn't look like it was written by an investor. Was given an invite, which is really just a ticket to purchase this for $30 a month after filling out a questionnaire. Obviously, I didn't go through with it. Not much of an invite if you ask me.

kristofferR 7y ago
I found this: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/technology/superhuman-email.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/technology/superhuman-ema... But you're right, the linked story reads like ad copy.
- 43920 7y ago
  The NYT story also kinda sounds like an ad, actually. Like everything else I've read about Superhuman, it claims that it will somehow revolutionize email, but half the features mentioned in the article already exist in Gmail, and the others sound more like small improvements than something actually new.
spamizbad 7y ago
If you have an email-centric workflow you'll love it. It's a tool more for managers than makers.
- GeorgeTirebiter 7y ago
  But you have to be a Cool Kid who has another Cool Kid send you an invite. Why do they use this 'artificial scarcity' approach? I'm now disinclined to use this service, and to replace it with some scripts in emacs. (One should never, ever leave unencrypted email 'in the cloud'.)
Timothee 7y ago
FWIW, Andreessen Horowitz is an investor in Superhuman. :)
- 7y ago

HillaryBriss 7y ago

IIRC, gmail was once invite-only

User23 7y ago

All I want from email is for any sent to me to bounce unless the sender pays me the current price of a USPS forever stamp.

kristofferR 7y ago

It's kind of shame that being fast has become a super-premium feature that people are willing $360 USD a year for, especially considering how powerful the hardware of today is.

alphagrep12345 7y ago

Why can't we use a Gmail extension to do something similar?

lanrh1836 7y ago

Someone on Twitter freaked out because one of the “core” features of Superhuman is basically a read receipt e.g. similar to marketing emails where they add a clear pixel to your email before sending. I absolutely hate that stuff, but marketers do this all the time anyway. Definitely adds one more creep factor if you know the sender is using Superhuman and can tell if you have or haven’t opened their email.

dheera 7y ago
If you use Gmail, turn off loading images by default and it won't open any of those stupid tracking pixels. They won't get read receipts. I thought a long time ago this was the default behavior to not open external images but it seems this has changed. I don't know who decided on changing that default, as pixel trackers can also enable stalking behavior.
- remyp 7y ago
  You have to block loading of ALL external resources. Smarter trackers will try to load much more than just images.
  - dheera 7y ago
    Can you elaborate? What resources are allowed in e-mails besides images? I'm pretty sure Gmail doesn't auto-load JavaScript or anything like that.
- mdorazio 7y ago
  Wait, is that actually the case? My understanding was that gmail re-hosts all images sent to its users and strips the trackers out in the process. A quick check on image sources in my inbox seems to confirm this.

pault 7y ago

Is it just me or are all of the features they list on the landing page exactly what Google inbox did before they stupidly shut it down? I loved the inbox UI...

lanrh1836 7y ago
Superhuman has read receipts. AFAIK no email clients offers that outside of email marketing software.
- dheera 7y ago
  I actually consider read receipts unethical. It enables stalkers, and enables bad employers to make judgements about their employees' personal time and sleeping habits. Good e-mail clients should never load any external resource without the user's explicit consent. It should be enforced that images to be displayed in the e-mail should be attached to the e-mail itself.
- mkr-hn 7y ago
  AOL had this a very long time ago, but I think it only worked with other AOL accounts.

wenbin 7y ago

Listen to this recent podcast interview w/ its founder & ceo https://lnns.co/V8Z-SfuvqbB https://lnns.co/V8Z-SfuvqbB The founder raised $750k initially. Spent 20% buying superhuman.com and $45k hiring a design agency to turn wireframes into high fidelity mock. Very bold 2nd time founder

wenbin 7y ago
Superhuman founder & ceo is doing quite a few podcast interviews recently https://lnns.co/65uTMm9nytW https://lnns.co/65uTMm9nytW

iphigenia 7y ago

why did i just spend 5 min reading an ad

new_realist 7y ago

A VC pimping one of their investments? YC’s influence has spread far and wide.

mkr-hn 7y ago

Over 1500 words and I'm not sure what it does to actually improve email. This reminds me of marketing copy for marketing apps for marketers that, when you get down to it, don't do much.

dgudkov 7y ago

TLDR: Promotional article for Superhuman (email client) written by its investor.

metroholografix 7y ago

I use Emacs for email (and most of my other tasks). The problems that he presents, I have long ago solved. The reason is programmability. I can mold Emacs and its wide assortment of email clients into my exact requirements. If my requirements change, _my_ Emacs evolves and adapts. The Lisp Machine rapid-feedback-loop paradigm makes that possible. Once you lock onto that way of working, everything else seems substandard. That of course includes yet another centralized “service” that I have no control over.

nikolay 7y ago

I've had terrible, terrible experience with Superhuman! I got an invitation and some lady wanted to me to do a screenshare and show her how I use Gmail. I told her if she's nuts as I'm not letting anyone see what's in my Inbox and this kind of intrusion is not something they should be doing, but the stupid "Subhuman" employee said they cannot continue onboarding without this. I told them that I don't want anything to do with such blatant privacy invader and cancelled my onboarding.

arittr 7y ago

> Unfortunately, we're not ready to support your desktop device yet. Superhuman is currently built for Apple laptops, but our team is working hard to expand platforms. So not only is it a recurring $30/m but it only works on macOS. Seems to me this could have easily been Electron or a cross-platform web app. Not sure why email needs native performance. Stop discrimination against Linux users!