HN Reader

Superhuman user and former Grammarly user here.

I'm a big fan of Superhuman as an email client and happily pay the premium price for it. I really hope they don't change what makes it great.

I used to love Grammarly until they essentially ruined their product - much like Dropbox did. They took an app that worked perfectly and deprecated it, replacing it with an invasive keyboard replacement that was supposed to work everywhere but performed poorly across most programs and included functionality I wasn’t interested in that is kept nagging me to use. When I complained about the issues, instead of addressing my concerns, they sent form letter responses about their commitment to privacy rather than fixing their intrusive software.

This reminds me exactly of Dropbox's transformation from simple, reliable file storage into bloated software that cluttered my computer with pop-ups and background processes. When users complained, their team never seemed to understand why we were frustrated. Then they started acquiring other services I eventually cancelled as they tried to integrate them into their core service. I eventually moved to iCloud and never looked back.

I hope Superhuman keeps their current excellent email client that I gladly pay for, rather than replacing it with some "next generation" product that nobody asked for and that would likely be inferior to what we have now. I genuinely love Superhuman as it is.

> Superhuman valued at $825 million in 2021, $35 million annual revenue

This is nuts! I used Superhuman for about a year. And honestly, I might still be using it if the pricing weren't so off. It had a couple of nice features, and the keyboard-driven approach was a welcome change for mail clients.

But ultimately, Superhuman had nothing that couldn't be replicated in a relatively short amount of time (maybe even with plugins?).

$825 million? Maybe I should start a mail client company...

This feels like a pattern of grammarly becoming a holdco / following the Salesforce playbook. Find companies with - solid but not breakout growth (and probably slowing) - a loyal cult following - raised at too high a valuation in the peak era - talented teams - still founder led by strong product thinkers

Salesforce did this with Quip, Slack, etc.

This is a bit surprising. I even didn't expect Grammarly to have the cash, I used to be a paying customer of theirs when I was writing papers, but apparently with AI I don't even need the free Grammarly anymore.

Never used of Grammarly and only heard of it in some random feed once a year in the past few years. Is money slushing like water in earth or what?

Having applied to YC this round with an email product, this is very interesting.

Superhuman, the most super-email client experience, that only people in the bay area (and some folks in NYC) actually use.

How much did they pay for this? I hope not much.

I've been looking to replace Superhuman recently. None of their AI or Team features matter to me. I just wanted what they originally set out to build -- a super fast, keyboard driven, desktop email client. There are daily paper cut bugs and search issues that have persisted for many years, and I'm not going to stick around through this transition which will surely make the product worse.

What do folks like for desktop email that's keyboard driven? At this point I almost want to go back to Pine ;)

Grammarly is one of the tools I pay for, and I am worried about the security risks of using it. Really wish there was an alternative that: 1) Does local processing (local LLM?) instead of sending all my data to their server. 2) Had a lightweight Chrome extension that didn't inject many MBs of scripts on each page.

Looks like Superhuman investors wanted their ROI and Grammarly cant grow on its own that it needs to buy customers.

> Grammarly's acquisition of Superhuman follows its recent $1 billion funding from General Catalyst, which gives it dry powder to create a collection of AI-powered workplace tools.

Dry powder to do what?! Is this americanism? I've been here for over 8 years and every month I find some wording that's just bizarre, like as if there was a competition for ways in how to confuse someone.

> The company claims its users send and respond to 72% more emails per hour, and the percentage of emails composed with its AI tools has increased fivefold in the past year.

Is this really a good metric to aim for? Don't we want productivity tooling to result in less email not more?

I, for one, think it’s hilarious that a company that put so much energy into being ultra-exclusive ended up getting acquired by a company with such a mainstream reputation. Grammarly’s target audience is the people who couldn’t join Superhuman in a timely fashion.

Superhuman made one of my accounts wait for four years for an invite.

Hopefully this brings some of the Superhuman product magic to Grammarly. Although both products could improve AI functionality significantly IMO.

The founder of Superhuman has really got this playbook down. I remember his previous startup (Rapportive?) was another email-improving thing that got acquired by LinkedIn fairly quickly and got shut down. Not a bad gig.

Grammarly has an existential crisis. It can be replaced it with free versions of the top models and they are much better (and I can control the UI anyway I want). In fact, many of these “web 2.0” business models are a few more updates away from getting replaced.

My history with email clients being acquired is not encouraging. The history is they are effectively abandoned and/or shut down on the order of weeks and months not years. See Dropbox/Mailbox.

So many unexpected moves lately. AI is really changing how companies assess their trajectory and business plans.

Oh no. I love superhuman :( Please don’t change it