I've used 1Password since 2014 -- almost 10 years! And my company uses it, so I'm both personal and business user.
Product quality, especially with 1Password8 has deteriorated significantly. A big bag refactor to electron with no telemetry is probably the root cause. Not necessarily poor strategy, but certainly poor execution.
Telemetry is actually a good thing for 1Password users who see product quality decreasing bc it gives the PMs there some information to go off. The product surface area is huge now, and it's natural to lose sight of the most important stuff.
If I was in charge, what would I do?
1. Introduce telemetry and get data into hands of PMs + Designers
2. Pause all new feature development until table stakes features are working flawlessly: 1Password opens under 200ms for most users; auto fill in Chrome + Firefox actually F*king works like it used to before v8.
3. Trim down product surface area by killing features. E.g. decide is the default UX for auto-fill based on interacting with a button inside form inputs OR simply hitting the keyboard shortcut to autofill? Kill the other bc the interaction between these choices is painful.
I'll give them a year to figure this out. In the meantime, a Copilot / ChaptGPT enabled bootstrap founder will come along and build out a trimmed down version with just the basics and start eating their lunch.
There are already a bunch of competitors out there, and some of them seem to have been built quickly. Might be worth checking out if you've become this unhappy with 1Password.
I built https://www.withphoton.com that helps people overlay multiple calendars in any timezone, and quickly format a message that contains your availability to save time and eliminate typos.
It's a simple keyboard-first electron app that hooks up with your Google / Outlook cal. Target market is folks who schedule meetings outside their org like founders, CSM, biz dev, sales, EAs, etc.
Hey, I had bookmarked this and finally just took a look... and now realizing it's Mac-only, but nice work regardless. I think you are really on to something here... perhaps even more so if you could also include others internal to your company (where you can see availability) and then craft a similar copy/paste block of your broader team's availability (I must do this 10+ times/week!). Do you have any plans to port over to Windows?? :)
Yep - that's correct. My hunch was that people are tired of paying for subscriptions but would drop $20 on something that makes their life slightly better.
GTM is the hardest but mostly through referrals / word of mouth. I want to do more Twitter/LI ads.
GPT chimes in:
In this context, GTM stands for "Go-To-Market." It refers to the strategy and tactics used to introduce and promote a product or service to potential customers.
On the contrary, I just visited in June and it was a miserable experience. 2/3 of the museum was closed and the part that was open was packed full despite the rather strict entrance timing that they seemed to be using. The story of his life as told through pictures was interesting, but we were in and out in an hour. Kind of a bummer after hearing all the hype.
