The state of email.
Early computing pioneers envisioned a future where software could amplify our imagination, extend our intellect, and help us communicate in ways never before seen. We’ve come a long way since then, but our tools today are a far cry from that idyllic vision. Personal computers may be our most powerful tools, but most software today feels anything but personal.
Our north star is building software that adapts to the dynamic needs of each person.
If every person has access to software that adapts to their unique problems, the world will be better at solving its problems.
We’re inspired by companies like Apple, The Browser Company, Notion, and Figma that’ve invented new tools to give everyday people superpowers. We find existential purpose in contributing to this lineage of innovation and creating things that’ll inspire the next generation.
Solution
We want to reimagine email, a tool used by over half the world’s population.
Email is the most universal communication protocol on the internet, but despite how many hours per day we spend managing emails, most people are not passionate about their email client. That leaves a lot of room for opportunity. We don’t want to simply enhance the email experience with new features and more keyboard shortcuts (a la Superhuman). We want to reimagine it completely.
For such a rigid format—subject, recipient, body—it’s incredible how many different things email is used for: airline tickets, convos with co-workers, shopping receipts, and endless solicitations from big-name brands and politicians.
Despite the growing list of things we rely on email for every day, the software that houses this content, the email client, doesn’t change much. While many of our other software tools have improved drastically over the years, the email client largely still does what it did forty years ago—showing a long list of unsorted messages.
We think the email client can do so much more to adapt to the personal needs of each user.
How good can email get?
Tickets/bookings—Imagine an Apple-Wallet-esque interface that collects and visualizes all your upcoming flights, tickets, and bookings. No more hunting for QR codes, flight numbers, check in times, and addresses.
Payments—Imagine if your email client knew everything about your online spending? It could help you track personal finances, make suggestions, and more.
Deals & Discounts—Imagine your email client reads all your promotional emails and only shows you the good deals you might actually care about.
Shipping—Imagine an Uber-Eats-esue experience to visualize all your incoming packages from around the world. If you want to return something, no need to hunt for the return policy on the company’s website. Your email client already did that for you, and it can help you process the return in one click.
Newsletters—Imagine a Substack-esque interface that combines all of your newsletters into a beautiful reader experience. It could even summarize them or turn them into new mediums, such as a podcast. Imagine that - reading through your emails as a podcast!
Scheduling—Imagine your email client knows your schedule and acts like your personal assistant whenever you’re trying to schedule something via email.
Writing—Imagine telling your email client what to say, and it writes the entire email for you in your own voice.
Passive emails—Imagine your email client thoughtfully omitted emails you don’t need to see.
Email is our wedge into all different types of personal, AI-generated interfaces.
Impact
It goes without saying, the market for email is massive. There are approximately 4.3B email users worldwide. 80% of companies use email to communicate with their customers.
We think about email much like The Browser Company thinks about the browser. For better or worse, email is the ubiquitous protocol that products and services use to communicate with people. Owning the interface through which billions of people communicate with products and services will give us enormous leverage in shaping the future of online communication and human interfaces.
If successful, we will save people hundreds of hours per year by freeing them from routine communication tasks. The perfect interface will form itself around your needs, reducing clutter and empowering you to focus on higher-level work—the things humans are uniquely good at. Online communication will become more personal, delightful, and natural.
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the future of email.