Channeling Brian Armstrong's og thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3754664
I built min. https://getmin.ai to solve my own pain with team emails. There are some incumbents out there, and after trying them all I realized there's still a huge gap. Just applied for the W26 batch, got interviewed twice prior for different ideas with a different cofounder. That cofounder decided to quit a couple of months ago. We've been grinding for 2 years together, and he really wants a steady paycheck for a bit (can't blame him). I'm good to grind for longer, optimized my lifestyle for this grind.
Anyways, existing shared inbox solutions are all too rigid, and built for large support teams so if you want to configure something quick for a simple use case outside of support stuff, you really can't. Other side of the coin are these Chrome addons that turn your Gmail into a CRM, I tried at least 3, and they seem kinda useful allowing you to assign emails, track contacts etc. But extensions are clunky, and data models are not customizable, also you are completely tied to Gmail's crappy UI, and it shuts down all possibility of building something truly amazing.
When I talked to a small manufacturing company around town and saw what they were doing with their emails, it all clicked. They had a person that would watch their inboxes, and when emails come in, they'd determine what category the email is (request for quote, questions, POs, shipping updates etc) and then create a row in Airtable and then assign it to someone. Light bulb went off.
What if we make the inbox UI Airtable like? With AI, emails (very unstructured) can be structured, therefore sorted and grouped by any piece of extracted data you want. If you can add a column to any thread (or threads just like it), shit's super powerful, you can customize an inbox to your team's specific use cases without coding. I spent a few months exploring and built it. Been dogfooding it myself for a few weeks now, and I can't imagine going back.
Gist: This is like Notion for emails, collaborative, made up of building blocks like legos.
Now I'm looking for someone to go on this journey together. I want someone who embraces the grind because without it you'll just give up. Technical person required even though GTM is the highest priority piece because product is everything, whole thing hinges on organic growth via viral loop.
I'm basically ready to go to war with the right person. PLease let me know if you or know anyone.
I built min. https://getmin.ai to solve my own pain with team emails. There are some incumbents out there, and after trying them all I realized there's still a huge gap. Just applied for the W26 batch, got interviewed twice prior for different ideas with a different cofounder. That cofounder decided to quit a couple of months ago. We've been grinding for 2 years together, and he really wants a steady paycheck for a bit (can't blame him). I'm good to grind for longer, optimized my lifestyle for this grind.
Anyways, existing shared inbox solutions are all too rigid, and built for large support teams so if you want to configure something quick for a simple use case outside of support stuff, you really can't. Other side of the coin are these Chrome addons that turn your Gmail into a CRM, I tried at least 3, and they seem kinda useful allowing you to assign emails, track contacts etc. But extensions are clunky, and data models are not customizable, also you are completely tied to Gmail's crappy UI, and it shuts down all possibility of building something truly amazing.
When I talked to a small manufacturing company around town and saw what they were doing with their emails, it all clicked. They had a person that would watch their inboxes, and when emails come in, they'd determine what category the email is (request for quote, questions, POs, shipping updates etc) and then create a row in Airtable and then assign it to someone. Light bulb went off.
What if we make the inbox UI Airtable like? With AI, emails (very unstructured) can be structured, therefore sorted and grouped by any piece of extracted data you want. If you can add a column to any thread (or threads just like it), shit's super powerful, you can customize an inbox to your team's specific use cases without coding. I spent a few months exploring and built it. Been dogfooding it myself for a few weeks now, and I can't imagine going back.
Gist: This is like Notion for emails, collaborative, made up of building blocks like legos.
Now I'm looking for someone to go on this journey together. I want someone who embraces the grind because without it you'll just give up. Technical person required even though GTM is the highest priority piece because product is everything, whole thing hinges on organic growth via viral loop.
I'm basically ready to go to war with the right person. PLease let me know if you or know anyone.