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Oof. I know of a startup that recently Show HN'd here, the agent mail.to, that is NOT having a good time right now. I don't know what all these new startups hav

Oof. I know of a startup that recently Show HN'd here, the agent mail.to, that is NOT having a good time right now. I don't know what all these new startups having moats thinner than Durex are thinking -- like, what the plan if someone does what you do, faster and cheaper?

Hendrikto 6mo ago
The plan is to have exited by then. These people are mostly just grifters.
delfinom 6mo ago
Write an angry blog post about how big business is using their power to kill their _totally_ unique original idea that nobody could possibly copy in a hour?
Kye 6mo ago
Classic "is this a feature or a product?" problem. You're going to have a bad time if you spend all your effort on a feature and nothing to set it apart.
CWwdcdk7h 6mo ago
> We raised $6M in Seed Funding Well that part was impressive. It looks like they focused on receiving emails, that is probably even worse, as I expect OpenAI/Anthropic to add such ability directly to agents, if it really is useful.
- strbean 6mo ago
  > It looks like they focused on receiving emails That's wild. $6M for an MCP server for SMTP?
nozzlegear 6mo ago
> new startups having moats thinner than Durex are thinking Haha, great visual. Really illustrative of what these AI startups and bootstrapped indie developers are dealing with (and, if I had to guess, why most of them don't go anywhere).
bridgetburch 6mo ago
I'm building something similar (Dead Simple Email - same category, different pricing structure). The moat criticism is fair and worth being honest about. The defensible part isn't the feature set, it's infrastructure and price. We run our own mail servers rather than reselling SES, which gives us direct control over deliverability and costs. That's what lets us charge $29/mo for 100 inboxes where AgentMail is at $200. Whether that's a real moat or just a head start is a legitimate question. Email deliverability is genuinely hard to get right at scale, but I can't say with confidence they won't eventually just absorb this. Building fast and staying cheap is the only real answer I have to that.
FlyingSnake 6mo ago
“Each agent gets its own identity from a single domain.“ That too on the edge, along with the futuristic CF Dev primitives. I had the same thought when I read this part. The $6MM investment on Agent Mail is in serious trouble right now.

Hendrikto 6mo ago

The plan is to have exited by then. These people are mostly just grifters.

delfinom 6mo ago

Write an angry blog post about how big business is using their power to kill their _totally_ unique original idea that nobody could possibly copy in a hour?

Kye 6mo ago

Classic "is this a feature or a product?" problem. You're going to have a bad time if you spend all your effort on a feature and nothing to set it apart.

CWwdcdk7h 6mo ago

> We raised $6M in Seed Funding Well that part was impressive. It looks like they focused on receiving emails, that is probably even worse, as I expect OpenAI/Anthropic to add such ability directly to agents, if it really is useful.

strbean 6mo ago
> It looks like they focused on receiving emails That's wild. $6M for an MCP server for SMTP?

nozzlegear 6mo ago

> new startups having moats thinner than Durex are thinking Haha, great visual. Really illustrative of what these AI startups and bootstrapped indie developers are dealing with (and, if I had to guess, why most of them don't go anywhere).

bridgetburch 6mo ago

I'm building something similar (Dead Simple Email - same category, different pricing structure). The moat criticism is fair and worth being honest about. The defensible part isn't the feature set, it's infrastructure and price. We run our own mail servers rather than reselling SES, which gives us direct control over deliverability and costs. That's what lets us charge $29/mo for 100 inboxes where AgentMail is at $200. Whether that's a real moat or just a head start is a legitimate question. Email deliverability is genuinely hard to get right at scale, but I can't say with confidence they won't eventually just absorb this. Building fast and staying cheap is the only real answer I have to that.

FlyingSnake 6mo ago

“Each agent gets its own identity from a single domain.“ That too on the edge, along with the futuristic CF Dev primitives. I had the same thought when I read this part. The $6MM investment on Agent Mail is in serious trouble right now.