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The Almighty Buck IT

Would You Pay $30 a Month To Check Your Email? (nytimes.com) 219

Posted by msmash from the email-will-kill-emails dept.
The year is 2019, and the brainy engineers of Silicon Valley are hunkered down, working on transformative, next-generation technologies like self-driving cars, digital currencies and quantum computing. Meanwhile, the buzziest start-up in San Francisco is ... an expensive email app? From a report: A few months ago, I started hearing about something called Superhuman. It's an invitation-only service that costs $30 a month and promises "the fastest email experience ever made." Marc Andreessen, the influential venture capitalist, reportedly swore by it, as did tech bigwigs like Patrick and John Collison, the founders of Stripe. The app was rumored to have a waiting list of more than 100,000 people. "We have the who's who of Silicon Valley at this point," Superhuman's founder, Rahul Vohra, told me in an interview. The waiting list is actually 180,000 people long, he said, and some people are getting desperate. He showed me a photo of a gluten-free cake sent to Superhuman's office by a person who was hoping to score an invitation. "We have insane levels of virality that haven't been seen since Dropbox or Slack," Mr. Vohra added.

Last month, Superhuman raised a $33 million investment round, led by Mr. Andreessen's firm, Andreessen Horowitz. That valued the company at roughly $260 million -- a steep valuation for an app with fewer than 15,000 customers, but one apparently justified by the company's trajectory and its support among fans, which borders on evangelical. [...] Signing up for Superhuman is not easy. First, you fill out a long questionnaire about your email habits and work flow. Then, if you're approved for access, there's a mandatory session in which a representative gives you a videoconference tutorial. In my case, Mr. Vohra spent a full hour teaching me how to use the app's features. Superhuman, which plugs into your existing email account, works with only Gmail and Google G Suite addresses for now, but the company plans to expand to other providers soon. Some of the app's features -- such as ones that let users undo sending, track when their emails are opened and automatically pull up a contact's LinkedIn profile -- are available in other third-party email plug-ins. But there are bells and whistles that I hadn't seen before.

Like "instant intro," which moves the sender of an introductory email to bcc, saving you from having to manually re-enter that person's address. Or the scheduling feature, which sees that you're typing "next Tuesday" and automatically pulls up your calendar for that day. Superhuman promises to help V.I.P.s get through their inboxes twice as fast. Partly, that's because every command has a keyboard shortcut, so a busy power broker never has to waste precious seconds reaching for the mouse. And partly it's because the app itself is built for speed -- it stores information locally in a user's browser rather than retrieving it from Google's servers, which cuts down on the time required to surf between emails. Further reading: Superhuman is Spying on You.
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Would You Pay $30 a Month To Check Your Email? More

Would You Pay $30 a Month To Check Your Email?

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  • Hell No! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by al0ha ( 1262684 ) on Tuesday July 02, 2019 @01:29PM (#58861814) Journal
    What a dumb question.

    • Re:Hell No! (Score:5, Informative)

      by Penguinisto ( 415985 ) on Tuesday July 02, 2019 @01:48PM (#58861962) Journal

      It is however proof that sometimes even the most idiotic fads do have followers.

      Can't blame them for fleecing the fashion victims, no matter what plane they reside on.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by sycodon ( 149926 )

        These people still have a Pet Rock on their desks, no doubt.

      • If their clients are Silicon Valley bigwigs paid $80 an hour and they have a lot of email to get through, something that halves the time to process the email is worth $1 a day, easily.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shanen ( 462549 )

      What a dumb question.

      Really? An insightful mod for that? Sad, even with attempted allowance for FP effect.

      Confession time: My own reaction was similar to the Subject: line,

      "Another 'smart' nagatron? Hell no."

      Turns out it's already a brand name for a phono cartridge. Too bad. It would have been a great brand name for a truth-in-advertising smartphone. "Get your Nagatron 2020 super-smart phone before they sell out! With Nagatron Email preinstalled!"

      As regards this story, the impression it gives is paradoxical. The added value app

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by msauve ( 701917 )
      I was reading it, OK, full of promises. Only works with Google? OK, doesn't handle standardized email protocols - POP/IMAP/SMTP. "it stores information locally in a user's browser " - OK, it's not even an MUA, and they're bragging it's fast because it does what any decent MUA did 30 years ago?

      I'd like to know how they're fast, and also allow "undo sending" when quick means the email is delivered quickly, and you're not going to be your deleting emails once they're on my server. You also won't be getting re

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by lgw ( 121541 )

        I don't think it's fast in the sense of "mail moves quickly" but in the sense of "navigate your inbox quickly". like any decent local email client.

        I get the impression it's just a "local email client" written in JS, so that you're working with a local copy of your email, and it syncs in the background.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by msauve ( 701917 )
          "I get the impression it's just a "local email client" written in JS, so that you're working with a local copy of your email, and it syncs in the background."

          So, nothing new, just doing what any decent MUA has done for the past 30 years or so.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by lgw ( 121541 )

            So, nothing new, just doing what any decent MUA has done for the past 30 years or so.

            On the Internet! or perhaps on a mobile device! Either of which makes it a billion dollar startup.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by deKernel ( 65640 )

      But for only $30.00 a month, image how inflated your self worth will be. The minutes saved each day could be used for better ideas like formulating plans to save baby panda's. Remember, your time is INVALUABLE to not only you but the world. Everyone knows each minute of your life is potentially millions of dollars, right?

      I think I am going to start a new web browser project that only shows a page after it has completely rendered every element. Image the time saved because you would only click when ready....

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kaoshin ( 110328 )
      I can't even afford to read TFA.

  • There will be an idiot or two that will (Score:5, Informative)

    by DaMattster ( 977781 ) on Tuesday July 02, 2019 @01:37PM (#58861862)
    Why would I pay for an email service in 2019? This was something I did back in 1995 with FishNet and pond.com, a dialup SLIP and PPP provider. Today, I actually run my own email server where I have total and complete control. Of course this comes at the expense of having to do some daily care and maintenance but I would rather be self-reliant.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday July 02, 2019 @02:49PM (#58862392)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Good for you, Hillary!

  • Before you judge... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fortythirteen ( 5606969 ) on Tuesday July 02, 2019 @01:39PM (#58861882)
    Think of it this way: if you're someone whose time is worth more than $30 an hour (as most tech-people are), then if this app actually does what it promises and saves you an hour a month, then it pays for itself.

    That seems to be the value proposition here.

    • Re:Before you judge... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by QuietLagoon ( 813062 ) on Tuesday July 02, 2019 @01:52PM (#58862018)
      }}} if this app actually does what it promises {{{ --- Don't forget to also tally the time you spend undoing the app's mistakes. What if it wrongly schedules an important meeting that you subsequently miss, and it costs you thousands of dollars because of your missing the meeting. How many months will it take to recoup those costs?

      • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

        by fortythirteen ( 5606969 )

        What if it wrongly schedules an important meeting that you subsequently miss, and it costs you thousands of dollars because of your missing the meeting.

        If I had a nickel for every time Outlook's double booked a room...

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by msauve ( 701917 )
          I don't believe you use Lookout! You just bottom posted.

    • Do people really do things like "look up someone's linkedin when emailing them?" And often enough to pay $30/month?

      And, your time has no ingerent value. The question would be "can this app generate more than $30 of additional revenue for you a month". I suspect not, but I don't really know.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by lgw ( 121541 )

        Do people really do things like "look up someone's linkedin when emailing them?" And often enough to pay $30/month?

        Many thousands do, it seems. Not surprising, if you constantly get emails from people in your Linkedin contact list, but you don't quite remember who they work for.

        And, your time has no ingerent value. The question would be "can this app generate more than $30 of additional revenue for you a month". I suspect not, but I don't really know.

        Nothing has (quantified) inherent value. If you're effectively a salesman, as most executives are, and spend all day selling, then of course time not wasted on an email client means more time spent selling, and thus more revenue.

        Guy I know who's a sales director for a large company has the mindset of "if it helps me at all, and it's under $1000

      • Do people really do things like "look up someone's linkedin when emailing them?" And often enough to pay $30/month?

        When you're an exec at a company you're likely to get dozens of "inquiry" emails a day. Being able to weed out the scammers is crucial to saving time. There are entire, for profit Gmail plugins that do nothing but give you a Linkedin profile.

        • If someone uses LinkedIn I just presume they're a scam. The whole site is just a MLM scheme with no actual product.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ranbot ( 2648297 )

      Exactly... The selling point is saving the user time by detecting and automatically getting what they need. (And all it took for that insight was to read beyond the headline! ...why don't more people do that?)

      I wouldn't be surprised if conspicuous consumption will be a selling point too. All the app needs is a little email signature that let's everyone know the sender is someone who is important, wealthy, and special enough to have fancy email. "Sent from an iPhone" at the bottom of emails became passe a lo

      • All the app needs is a little email signature that let's everyone know the sender is someone who is important, wealthy, and special enough to have fancy email. "Sent from an iPhone" at the bottom of emails became passe a long time ago.

        Perhaps let people know that you've been green-washed by adding "Think of the environment before printing this email" in the signature, so that when the email is printed, the only thing on page 3 is that message.

    • Sorry, was going to mod you insightful, but the mouse hit and I went redundant instead. Replying to undo my mod:)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nagora ( 177841 )

      I think I save much more than that by using Emacs and mu for my email. Straight out of the box it eliminates shitty HTML and images unless I specifically ask it to put them on for a particular email. That's an hour a day saved with the volume of email I get, never mind an hour a month.

  • ...that is all.

  • There is only so much you can do to optimize it. In reality, not a lot. You can mess it up somewhat (like Microsoft does) though.
    That said, I do pay around $30 a month for the pair of VMs I run my own MTA on, but they are also used for DNS, webserver and online storage.

  • Poor Interpretation (Score:3)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Tuesday July 02, 2019 @01:44PM (#58861924)

    He showed me a photo of a gluten-free cake sent to Superhuman's office by a person who was hoping to score an invitation

    Gluten-free? Are you sure that wasn't an assassination attempt?

    • Cake doesn't need gluten, you want it to be soft and it works fine with gluten-free flours.

      That's also why you don't over-stir the cake batter. It gets bread-y.

  • but for email....

  • but in the process have reduced ISP costs by $30/mth and gained unlimited usage for the first time ever.

    And this all came about because my old ISP decided to disband their email services. They had me forever beholden to them with that email address. Go figure on their logic. They even sold the business since the change. The prices are still stupid so I'm pretty sure the new owners will be bleeding customers now.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by evanh ( 627108 )

      PS: The primary reason for me paying money is to get a local server and local company ownership.

      Company ownership of the prior ISP is something that had already gone overseas before they'd shutdown the email services.

  • "Fast email"? WTF is that? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sjbe ( 173966 ) on Tuesday July 02, 2019 @01:46PM (#58861938)

    It's an invitation-only service that costs $30 a month and promises "the fastest email experience ever made.

    Since when has speed ever been a particular limitation of email? The whole point of it is to be asynchronous so you can get to it in your own sweet time. I've never once been concerned about "fast email", whatever the hell that is supposed to mean. I have been concerned about secure email.

    Then, if you're approved for access, there's a mandatory session in which a representative gives you a videoconference tutorial. In my case, Mr. Vohra spent a full hour teaching me how to use the app's features.

    That sounds remarkably annoying. It's email. If it takes an hour of training to figure it out then it probably sucks.

    The app was rumored to have a waiting list of more than 100,000 people. "We have the who's who of Silicon Valley at this point," Superhuman's founder, Rahul Vohra, told me in an interview. The waiting list is actually 180,000 people long, he said, and some people are getting desperate.

    Riiiiiight... This doesn't sound at all like marketing hype with no factual basis. [/sarcasm]

    Or the scheduling feature, which sees that you're typing "next Tuesday" and automatically pulls up your calendar for that day.

    WTF would I want that? Just because I type those words doesn't mean I'm scheduling something. That sounds like Clippy V2.0.

    Superhuman promises to help V.I.P.s get through their inboxes twice as fast.

    Ahh, so they are targeting self important asshats who aren't good at dealing with email or have never heard of administrative assistants.

    • Since when has speed ever been a particular limitation of email?

      The email program itself can be slow. It's a bit annoying when Gmail these days takes 20 seconds to open in my browser, due to the massive amount of Javascript that has to be loaded. (But, notably, not annoying enough to cause me to switch to "basic mode" much less a different email provider.)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by msauve ( 701917 )
        I'll lease you a copy of Thunderbird for $30/month.

      • Slow? (Score:2)

        by sjbe ( 173966 )

        The email program itself can be slow.

        Even if it is, so what? I've never seen one THAT slow that I even gave it a second thought. And it's not like there is a dearth of options if you don't like a given program.

        It's a bit annoying when Gmail these days takes 20 seconds to open in my browser, due to the massive amount of Javascript that has to be loaded.

        I use gmail daily. If it takes that long to open it almost certainly isn't the fault of your browser. It means your computer or your internet connection are dirt slow.

    • It's an invitation-only service that costs $30 a month and promises "the fastest email experience ever made.

      Since when has speed ever been a particular limitation of email?

      They read your emails for you faster than anybody else. That's worth $30/mo isn't it?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MikeKD ( 549924 )
      undoing wrong moderation

  • But why? (Score:3)

    by CrimsonAvenger ( 580665 ) on Tuesday July 02, 2019 @01:46PM (#58861942)

    Okay, it's supposed to be really fast at delivering the email.

    But if I need to send something to someone at nearly realtime speeds, I'll just text them....

  • ... and based upon what it sees during the scan, actively acts upon the content. The description seems to paint a rather nice picture of the app always doing The Right Thing with what it gleans from the email. I suspect it will not be quite as good as the hype portrays it. So... would I pay $30 a month to find out just how poorly the app really works? Ummmm... no.
    • ... and speaking of scanning my emails. With whom does the app share any data taken from the emails? How secure is the app about protecting the data it is scanning?

    • The description seems to paint a rather nice picture of the app always doing The Right Thing with what it gleans from the email.

      Not to me. I've got one email client that insists on turning words in an email like 'Tuesday' into some hot link to some damn useless thing, and I can't find the place to turn it off. You can't tell these days if that's because some idiot has actually linked something on that word or it's your client pointing you to a calendar that you've never used before and never will.

      More power to the people who think that's the next best thing, but the rest of us hate it.

  • Um...no? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Tuesday July 02, 2019 @01:48PM (#58861966) Homepage

    To people earning millions, $360/year for an email app isn't even noise. If it lets them support another one of their in-crowd, so much the better. For the rest of us? Um...no. A couple of points along the way:

    - It's built on Google service. That means that they don't actually care about privacy. By now, a lot of us technical types do, and that's only going to increase.

    - It relies on keyboard shortcuts. The kind of people who like and really use keyboard shortcuts are...the techie types who might also care about privacy.

    - It apparently is purely browser-based, meaning no permanent local storage. That's crappy for data security (I want my own backups of my email, and any serious business will as well). It also means that you cannot work offline.

    Finally, TFA notes that "the app was targeted at people who spend three or more hours a day checking their email." With very few exceptions, if you are spending three hours a day checking your email, you're doing it wrong. Maybe three hours a day working on tasks that are coordinated by email, but three hours working with your inbox? No, just not.

    • I want my own backups of my email

      Me too......that's why I print all of my e-mails, and then scan them so that I can store them on my computer.

  • Not even for free (Score:3)

    by registrations_suck ( 1075251 ) on Tuesday July 02, 2019 @01:50PM (#58861996)

    From the description, it's not even something I would use for free, let alone pay for.

    • It looks like something that would take a while to develop, but would be easy to duplicate. The idea is obvious but the design is work; once the design is done, implementation is easy.

      A free browser extension will show up in a week.

  • it stores information locally in a user's browser rather than retrieving it from Google's servers

    And how is that new? I've never voluntarily used a remote message store to directly work with email, usually it's on my local machine, sometimes on the company network, since before the internet became available to us in the days of 300baud modems. Partly because using online portals like gmail was such an underpowered, incovenient PIA compared to even creaky things like Thunderbird.

    Seems the rest of what they

  • Keyboard shortcuts... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by b0s0z0ku ( 752509 ) on Tuesday July 02, 2019 @01:51PM (#58862008)

    "Partly, that's because every command has a keyboard shortcut, so a busy power broker never has to waste precious seconds reaching for the mouse"

    So, sort of like pine or mutt? Everything old is new again.

  • No (Score:3)

    by alzoron ( 210577 ) on Tuesday July 02, 2019 @01:52PM (#58862014) Journal

    I wouldn't.

  • My email opens instantly now, what? it data a mines me to figure out what email i will/might click next? lol no thanks
  • There is no other explanation.

    • Well, sometimes if I see something that has a free giant-ass waiting list, I'll sign up before I think about whether I want it. Then I'll evaluate it when they actually call my number. Seems especially useful to do that with a tech product.

      Now here, I have no fucking clue what could be valuable enough to add to email.

  • might be a viable business regardless of quality.

    • selling an email address saying "I'm a rich VIP" might be a viable business regardless of quality.

      Well, I just bought ImARichVIP.com, so let me know if you're interested in my hosted e-mail service.

  • something something

  • Reading the intro, I was struck by just how similar it read to that of another game-changing offering which all the Silicon Valley leaders were drooling over, some years ago...

    Project Ginger. You remember, the scooter that was going to change how cities were designed?

    I’ve no doubt all these fools spending $30/month on this will report high satisfaction levels though. There’s a lot of self-justification involved. But hey, it’s their money to spend.

  • It's easy enough to set up filters of what you want and don't want to see. If you can't figure out how to set up the filters. It is also free to find tutorials online for how to set up these filters.

    Or, do what I do. I just don't read my gmail any more unless I am told to respond to something. Work, I have filters set up for server or service generated messages. Rest, I actually do need to read. But my email reading is minimal.

  • There is a market for an email system that is more "official" and is "100% not spam", but current email filtering technology is nearly perfect these days. It still isn't perfect, but it's not $30/month per seat imperfect.

    And email itself isn't relevant enough to real communications between people anymore to warrant a non-free version. We have texting and chat apps like Slack that allow communications in the workplace or at home. As a result (in my case), my email inbox is 10% legitimate marketing/newsletter

  • Companies used to pay a lot for email/calendar/colab systems, in the form of the Outlook/Exchange combo, or Lotus/IBM/HCL Notes/Domino, or Novel/Microfocus groupwise.

    If a company wants to pay for it, and make it an options to their employess, I say, why not?

    If it helps me interface better with (big bucks) paying customers as a consultant, why not?

    Just for the sake of it? Hell no!

    • Outlook/Exchange is still the undisputed king in this area, and given the level of integration into Office and various enterprise mobility products, I don't see its hold in the enterprise being broken any time soon, more's the shame. If they want to be successful, they'll need to work out how they deal with that problem because realistically the only people who will be paying for this in large numbers are the enterprise market. That means it will need to work in a complementary way, either as a plugin for O

  • Just another sign that the tech industry has no clue when it comes to anyone but them. Yes, all of silicon valley might sign up. If that's good enough for them (at $30 a pop every month it should be) then more power to them. But, the rest of the world? They're moving away from email anyway.

  • Invitation only at start to build hype from "not wanting to miss out".

  • This is a shitty fucking GMail plugin. There are dozens like it.

    How much money did they pay for this fucking PR move? Oooooooooh, it's invite only? A bunch of silicon valley retards are in on it!?
    I NEED IT!!!!

    The company will be dead in 18 months.

  • I remember a time years ago when the "rich and powerful" told us that there was an invention coming out soon that would permanently change both transportation and the ways that cities were being designed. Things would never be the same after that. And those rich people were totally buying into this invention because it was like printing money. The invention - the Segway. So yeah, not really impressed that a bunch of rich snobs have to fill out forms to get it and think this is the greatest thing ever.

  • Kind of like how club owners will pay people to come to their clubs in order to generate buzz.

  • $30 a month for email? Yeah no.

    It's cool that they are looking to speed email up through automating tedious tasks but that isn't a major hassle as things stand and it isn't worth the high price.

    Claiming they have a 100k long waiting list to get in and people trying to bribe them with "gluten free cake" does not make me want to join. All it does is remind me again just how out of touch Silicon Valley is with the rest of the world. In the real world people aren't overwhelmed by their email. If you are that im

  • I'd have thought that there'd be more contractors on /. who bill by their customers the hour. The comments here seem to be full of "hell no" and "WTF?" but do the math...

    The app is designed for people who "spend three or more hours a day doing email". If you're doing work that requires lots of email you're probably not on minimum wage. If you're making even $60K/year for 50 weeks of 40 hours then you're on $30/hour. At that rate if you're doing three hours of mail a day 20 days a month then the break-even i

  • Better get those other providers working quick, otherwise this is a product that's going to disappear as soon as Google figures out some upstart is using their email service to compete with their virtual assistant.

  • (1) I wonder how many people who want to use this will really learn the useful keyboard shortcuts?

    (2) I wonder how many months it takes to get back the time you spent filling out the questionnaire and taking the training and actually getting used to its features enough to use them to save time.

    (3) I wonder if the answer to (2) is more than the mean expected time to liquidation for SuperHuman.

    (4) I wonder how all that browser local state migrates in real time between your browser on your desktop and your pho

  • a steep valuation for an app with fewer than 15,000 customers, but one apparently justified by the company's trajectory and its support among fans

    Says the VC who was stupid enough to value the company at 260M.

  • "Would You Pay $30 a Month To Check Your Email?"

    NO.

    Next stupid question, please.

  • I've had the ability to retract sent emails in Gmail since 2013. Not sure if it's the case now, but you had to go into the advanced settings and enable it manually as an experimental feature, but it's definitely nothing new, and nothing worth paying for. Aside from that, this 'service' sounds like it could be replicated by a few Chrome plugins that do basically the same thing.

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