I'm a friend of the superhuman CEO and have been following this company over the time it's been around, both by talking to him and from interactions with the official channels. Here is my $0.02.
SH started out like any other startup, with the best of intentions and a cool idea but it just didn't take. The issue is that they're on the line to deliver and they haven't had the traction they'd like so I've seen it slide, slowly, over an extended period, into a desperate place that leaves them doing ugly things. You should read Rahul's blog on finding product fit, it tells you much.
Personally, I now think they're in a position where they are trying to mooch everything they can off of users in order to try and build a better product coupled with finding ways to be "unique" that will make them money/attractive. This means they end up in sketchy territory i.e. the pixels, forcing people to reveal how they use gmail in order to sign up, tracking every-single-aspect of how users are using their site, hyped up bullshit etc. I don't know if they're harvesting actual user data.
The fact is, they're between a rock and a hard place. They aren't profitable, and there's no real exit. Whatever features make them unique can be copied in months, if not weeks by any other provider. Why would Google buy them? Also, the feature set, as good as it is, only appeals to a tiny subset of users of email. Other aspects like corporate email not being allowed to be accessed by third party clients etc makes a difference too.
I wish them all well, but by God I would not want to be a part of this thing. It stinks.
People often use throwaway accounts to post sensitive information to HN, but that mechanism is easily abused as well. Given the information in the replies you've received, as well as details of and about your comment, I'm leaning to the explanation that you've made this up. I don't know that, of course, but moderation is guesswork. Until we get substantiating information to the contrary, I'm guessing that this is fabricated and am going to moderate accordingly.
3. The comment also claims that the company is floundering and desperate....they literally JUST closed a $33M round from A16Z...obviously they have a ways to go, but the claim that they are lost and helpless is simply absurd...here are pages upon pages of people begging for invites: https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=super...
There's probably a healthy debate to be had about email tracking, but this comment is not contributing to that.
So the company chooses to build email. EMAIL! Ok. What about their engineers or product concept was SOO different that building EMAIL would draw customers? Looking at their first page, the ONLY item that is unique here is "ENSURE YOUR EMAILS ARE READ". This almost seems like a parody sight - like it's not even real. Something is seriously fishy.
> They end up in sketchy territory i.e. the pixels, forcing people to reveal how they use gmail in order to sign up, tracking every-single-aspect of how users are using their site, hyped up bullshit etc.
You're passionately asserting a strong claim, but when you get to the "evidence" part of your comment, it seems you haven't added any supporting evidence beyond what's in the parent discussion.
It's a tough business. What email app has ever had a real business model? The opportunity for acquisitions seems to have closed with Accompli being the last big one (bought by Microsoft to turn into Outlook on iOS).
Also the founding team is from rapportive and rapleaf which are part of the shady data brokers that HN discusses often. It's best to assume good intentions first but there is precedent here.
This doesn't read as accurate at all. Nobody has copied Superhuman's features. I'm sure you can't name another app that has. It's substantially faster to use than other email apps.
While I don’t know about the company traction, or sales tactics, I think it is fair to assume the feature set on email can be fairly easily replicated by the big players if they want to. Gmail added a lot of the Boomerang features as well as suggested autocomplete, etc. pretty quickly IMO.
SH started out like any other startup, with the best of intentions and a cool idea but it just didn't take. The issue is that they're on the line to deliver and they haven't had the traction they'd like so I've seen it slide, slowly, over an extended period, into a desperate place that leaves them doing ugly things. You should read Rahul's blog on finding product fit, it tells you much.
Personally, I now think they're in a position where they are trying to mooch everything they can off of users in order to try and build a better product coupled with finding ways to be "unique" that will make them money/attractive. This means they end up in sketchy territory i.e. the pixels, forcing people to reveal how they use gmail in order to sign up, tracking every-single-aspect of how users are using their site, hyped up bullshit etc. I don't know if they're harvesting actual user data.
The fact is, they're between a rock and a hard place. They aren't profitable, and there's no real exit. Whatever features make them unique can be copied in months, if not weeks by any other provider. Why would Google buy them? Also, the feature set, as good as it is, only appeals to a tiny subset of users of email. Other aspects like corporate email not being allowed to be accessed by third party clients etc makes a difference too.
I wish them all well, but by God I would not want to be a part of this thing. It stinks.