
Superhuman - yarapavan
https://a16z.com/2019/06/27/superhuman/
======
_zachs
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.

~~~
Timothee
FWIW, Andreessen Horowitz _is_ an investor in Superhuman. :)

~~~
alexandercrohde
Well then it's kindof a worthless endorsement, isn't it...?

~~~
jmvoodoo
One could argue the investment represents a better endorsement than the blog
article. Perhaps a redundant endorsement but certainly not worthless.

~~~
alexandercrohde
The investment itself is a meaningful business endorsement. However I said
this article is a meaningless endorsement (given the major conflict of
interest).

In fact, the "hype-factor" and unwillingness to describe in simple terms what
the product is makes me more skeptical than I was to begin with.

------
sushilewis
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?

~~~
kareemm
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
What does it provide that other email clients don't?

~~~
kareemm
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.

------
andrewstuart
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.

~~~
nostromo
I wonder if charisma is actually an anti-pattern.

Paul Graham is an interesting example -- he's not a great speaker. He's not
smooth. But he's obviously smart and interesting in a less polished way. In a
way this makes me believe what he's saying more, because I don't think I'm
being sold.

Have you ever heard Elon Musk speak? Or Mark Zuckerberg in the early days?
They almost have the _opposite_ of polished charisma. And yet they're
extremely successful entrepreneurs.

~~~
andrewstuart
You don't need charisma for "success", but charisma can bring success to the
charismatic.

History is loaded with highly charismatic people and those who, for want of a
more positive term, "fall under their spell". Steve Jobs is an obvious one.
Google "reality distortion field".

------
cyberferret
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
> 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.

------
eterm
> 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
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.

~~~
jschwartzi
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
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.

------
wnscooke
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
> 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-
installat...](http://www.startupengine.org/2013/08/the-collision-
installation.html)

~~~
lonelappde
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.

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

~~~
nickpsecurity
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
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?

------
ksajadi
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.

~~~
brianpgordon
Fastmail and Protonmail also don't commodify your data, and they're a lot
cheaper than Superhuman.

------
comex
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
I'm not sure if it is specifically Electron, but it does have Chrome Dev Tools
in it.

~~~
Shank
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.

------
mxwsn
A relevant NYTimes article about Superhuman was also published today:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/technology/superhuman-
ema...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/technology/superhuman-email.html)

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.”"

------
alexandercrohde
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
It's a commercial, hosted on the seller's website.

~~~
alexandercrohde
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?

------
lanrh1836
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
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
You have to block loading of ALL external resources. Smarter trackers will try
to load much more than just images.

~~~
dheera
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.

------
jason_slack
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
Funnily enough, top comments say it works only for people with one account :)

~~~
kareemm
Not true. I have 5 and it works just fine. But they don’t support a Unified
Inbox (which suits me just fine).

------
LynxInLA
The Acquired podcast just released an episode on them today:

[https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/superhuman](https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/superhuman)

------
metroholografix
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.

------
wenbin
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
Superhuman founder & ceo is doing quite a few podcast interviews recently
[https://lnns.co/65uTMm9nytW](https://lnns.co/65uTMm9nytW)

------
jbrun
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
What made it great, did it genuinely free up time?

------
kristofferR
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.

------
pault
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
Superhuman has read receipts. AFAIK no email clients offers that outside of
email marketing software.

~~~
dheera
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.

------
arittr
> 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!

------
Shank
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.

------
User23
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.

------
ChrisMarshallNY
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.

------
mkr-hn
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.

------
nikolay
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.

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

------
alphagrep12345
Why can't we use a Gmail extension to do something similar?

------
iphigenia
why did i just spend 5 min reading an ad

------
HillaryBriss
IIRC, gmail was once invite-only

------
adamnemecek
Does anyone have an invite?

~~~
underyx
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?

~~~
jwilliams
> 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?

It'll be tough for sure. And depends on what the startup is prepared to do.
Have you spoken to an immigration attorney?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=proberts](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=proberts)
does AMAs on here regularly and it might be worth contacting his firm for
advice (also take a look through his AMAs).

Things I've seen work:

\- Work remote, visit SV regularly for work. To be frank, I think that can be
the best of both worlds. But YMMV.

\- If you work for an overseas subsidiary for over a year, you can try for L-1
to transfer to the US. Generally the "startup" needs to be big (big) for this
to be practical. You don't outright need a degree, but 5-years experience is
probably on the lower end. If SV is your dream, it might be a case of finding
a bigco startup that is prepared to do this. A stepping stone might be working
for one of them in the EU first (e.g. Dublin in particular has plenty of
satellite offices for SV companies).

\- There are other options like the O-1 and H1-B, but these are extremely
competitive. Again, immigration lawyer would have a better idea.

In all cases I'd probably give Peter a try first.

~~~
underyx
Thanks a lot! I did talk with lawyers but somehow adam already helped me via
Twitter DMs a lot more :D

Remote work with visits is a great option in the meantime. L-1 I'm not too
comfortable with as I'd be entirely tied to that company. O-1 seems like the
easiest path, I'll try to find a book deal to start out with.

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

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

------
sonnyblarney
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
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.

