[HN Gopher] Grammarly acquires Superhuman
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Grammarly acquires Superhuman
        
       Author : thm
       Score  : 167 points
       Date   : 2025-07-01 14:00 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
        
       | harry2quinn wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | toomuchtodo wrote:
         | It's not a bad play, like PE rollups but arguably with more
         | potential for success from a "founder/startup friendly"
         | perspective. PE, historically, is very good at
         | stripping/optimizing/etc (think Bending Spoons), but I think
         | there is magic in startups PE simply does not have that allows
         | for a different, yet more successful, outcome (growing vs
         | cutting your way to financial success).
         | 
         | We should see more of this as large, profitable startups have
         | grown into long term private companies with no need to go
         | public.
        
           | chii wrote:
           | > large, profitable startups have grown into long term
           | private companies with no need to go public
           | 
           | which i think is a real problem - it prevents "mom and dad"
           | investors from partaking in the wealth creation process, as
           | they are not sophisticated investors and thus barred from
           | being able to invest in these PE investments.
           | 
           | Public listing has become a cashing out operation, rather
           | than a fund-raising operation, if this continues to happen
           | more and more. And the public becomes the bag holders.
        
       | atlantacrackers wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | leovander wrote:
         | I miss waiting in that large invite queue until you were
         | finally let in, what felt like the first inbox zero proponents
         | and possibly(?) introducing the swiping rows with different
         | actions depending how much you swiped.
        
           | atlantacrackers wrote:
           | And, you could reorder the emails inside your inbox!
        
         | diggan wrote:
         | > My history with email clients being acquired is not
         | encouraging.
         | 
         | Ignoring the constraint of "email client", has there been any
         | acquisitions where the acquired product got better post-
         | acquisition?
         | 
         | I can think of countless examples where it got worse, but from
         | the top of my head, I can only think of maybe YouTube, but then
         | only in the initial post-purchase period, and same goes for a
         | bunch of other examples. They seem to eventually always turn
         | sour.
         | 
         | Maybe GitHub? But it traded "no new features - no downtime" for
         | "some new features - a lot of downtime" after the Microsoft
         | purchase, so I guess it's very subjective, probably at least
         | some people like that tradeoff.
        
           | atlantacrackers wrote:
           | Honestly...true. Even Rapportive (same founder) effectively
           | died post acquisition by linkedin, no?
        
           | hiddencost wrote:
           | YouTube. Android. Google maps.
        
           | gghffguhvc wrote:
           | Arm
           | 
           | Diamond Aircraft
           | 
           | Volvo
           | 
           | Cirrus
           | 
           | All retained their culture and brand and the products keep
           | improving incrementally. Parent companies keep a low profile
           | wrt product.
        
             | pickledoyster wrote:
             | Volvo owners I know would disagree vehemently
        
               | jjtheblunt wrote:
               | barely off topic, but your comment reminds me of SAAB
               | (which i had and loved) being acquired by GM (which
               | phased it out, after making it bland).
        
         | latexr wrote:
         | > See Dropbox/Mailbox.
         | 
         | And Google/Sparrow.
        
           | voigt wrote:
           | Really miss Sparrow! To me it was the perfect email client.
        
         | insane_dreamer wrote:
         | Sparrow
        
       | anilshanbhag wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | diggan wrote:
         | Feels like that'd be trivial to build, biggest issue is having
         | to ship large files (LLM weights), but maybe CNNs would be
         | enough, I'm guessing Grammarly started with CNNs or similar?
         | 
         | What are you using Grammarly for, is it just spell/grammar
         | checking or something more? Is the UX particularly good?
         | Personally I tried it some years ago but didn't understand/see
         | what is/was special about it.
        
           | NewsaHackO wrote:
           | I personally used to have a subscription for grammar
           | checking, especially for longer papers. Now, I just use a
           | LLM. I personally don't see the strategic value of them
           | pivoting to using genAI; there is no way I would pay $30 a
           | month for something that will take at most 100k tokens using
           | other LLMs. They seemed to have heavily downplayed their
           | unique aspect which is the deterministic ruleset.
        
         | nwjsmith wrote:
         | Harper checks a lot of your boxes and is getting better all the
         | time: https://writewithharper.com/
        
           | jgalt212 wrote:
           | How does Harper compare with LanguageTool. We use a privately
           | hosted version. It's better than nothing, but in practice
           | it's more like a super-charged spell checker.
        
             | hiatus wrote:
             | On the homepage it has a comparison of figures, presumably
             | indicating response time, though it doesn't speak to its
             | performance in terms of grammatical errors caught:
             | 
             | Harper - 10 ms LanguageTool - 650 ms Grammarly - 4000 ms
        
         | treetalker wrote:
         | For a more-classic, more-human experience (i.e., computer flags
         | potential issues, you decide and correct if necessary) there
         | are proselint and vale.sh.
         | 
         | https://github.com/amperser/proselint
         | 
         | https://vale.sh/
        
         | jakub_g wrote:
         | FWIW: latest Chrome ships built-in AI APIs
         | 
         | https://developer.chrome.com/docs/ai/prompt-api
         | 
         | so it should be a matter of time to have a replacement
         | extension using this local API. However the built-in model is
         | Gemini Nano.
        
           | swyx wrote:
           | yeah i highly doubt people will use Nano for more than simple
           | retitling because we're so used to higher intelligence for
           | ~free elsewhere
        
       | dr_kretyn wrote:
       | > 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.
        
         | abxyz wrote:
         | "Dry powder" is cash on hand to fund acquisitions. Yes, it is
         | one of the worst businessisms.
        
         | paulddraper wrote:
         | Dry powder as in gunpowder.
         | 
         | Perhaps you are familiar with similar phrases "ammunition" and
         | "war chest"?
        
           | dr_kretyn wrote:
           | You mean actual objects/entities or other financial terms?
        
             | paulddraper wrote:
             | As figures of speech.
        
         | diggan wrote:
         | > Dry powder to do what?! Is this americanism?
         | 
         | No, is financialism, which is basically the same thing but I
         | digress.
         | 
         | > Dry powder is a slang term referring to marketable securities
         | that are highly liquid and considered cash-like -
         | https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/drypowder.asp
         | 
         | Finance seems particularly filled with terms with no real
         | connection attached to the concepts at hand, not sure why.
         | Sounds cool I suppose?
        
           | jszymborski wrote:
           | I hate meaningless jargon as much as the next person, but I
           | think the analogy here is pretty clear and useful.
           | 
           | Dry gun powder is ready to use, allowing you to fire
           | whenever. Much like liquid assets, ready whenever.
           | 
           | If your powder gets wet, it'll take you a good amount of
           | drying before it's of any use. Much like illiquid assets,
           | would take some time to be useful, but still useful
           | nonetheless.
           | 
           | I first heard it a few months ago when Chrystia Freeland,
           | then Canada's Finance Minister, resigned and used it in her
           | resignation letter. The meaning was immediately clear to me.
           | 
           | > "That means keeping our fiscal powder dry today, so we have
           | the reserves we may need for a coming tariff war," Freeland
           | wrote.
           | 
           | https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/en/news/2127174/finance-
           | mini...
        
         | burkaman wrote:
         | I don't know if it's uniquely American but I agree it is a very
         | annoying term. It just means cash. Finance bros like to pretend
         | they are "going into battle" or something when they go
         | negotiate an acquisition, so the analogy is that you have a
         | large store of gunpowder ready to deploy at a moment's notice
         | when you want to go to war (go acquire a company).
        
           | kylecordes wrote:
           | On the plus side, when you're a seller, you want buyers who
           | have this attitude. That they are going to war and the only
           | way they can emerge victorious is by deploying an enormous
           | amount in your direction. You want buyers who will brag to
           | their friends about how much they spent.
        
             | yakshaving_jgt wrote:
             | I interviewed at Superhuman almost a decade ago, and the
             | founder did indeed brag [repeatedly] to me about how they
             | bought the superhuman.com domain for $300k.
        
           | dr_kretyn wrote:
           | From the context I figured this was more a "pancake mix" as
           | they have the powder and now they just need to add water. You
           | know, boyz be cookin'. Wouldn't figure out that this is some
           | "war" analogy.
        
             | nemomarx wrote:
             | it comes from "keep your powder dry" (ready) in the
             | military sense, I think.
        
         | fakedang wrote:
         | Financialisms like dry powder are fairly mainstream and I'm
         | just glad that they didn't use consultantspeak.
        
         | echelon wrote:
         | > Dry powder to do what?
         | 
         | This is a very common term for business people and especially
         | investors and startups. It's a short phrase that carries a lot
         | of meaning and packs a lot of punch.
         | 
         | Google Gemini:
         | 
         | > In finance, dry powder refers to readily available cash or
         | liquid assets that a company, investor, or fund manager holds
         | in reserve for future investments or to meet obligations during
         | economic downturns. It's a metaphor, originating from the need
         | to keep gunpowder dry for use in battle, symbolizing
         | preparedness and flexibility in financial contexts.
         | 
         | > In essence, dry powder is unspent capital waiting to be
         | deployed
         | 
         | This one term packs in all of that meaning into two words, so
         | it is quite a useful tool. "Cash" alone doesn't have an implied
         | context, whereas "dry powder" is immediately understood for
         | strategy and positioning.
         | 
         | It's also nice to have analogies that are striking and
         | evocative. It makes language fun and flowery instead of dusty
         | and spartan. Business people have to business all day, and this
         | injects a little flavor and excitement with wordplay. Drawing
         | up images of 17th century battles is nice when the reality is
         | emailing back and forth.
         | 
         | There lots of other phrases like this that you'll stumble upon.
         | Someone should make a dictionary of these at some point.
        
         | turnsout wrote:
         | I guess that explains the Coda acquisition.
         | 
         | Honestly, I wonder what makes anyone think that Grammarly is
         | the right centerpiece for an AI rollup?
        
       | chaosprint wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | icey wrote:
         | They might have a lot more cash than you'd expect:
         | https://www.grammarly.com/blog/company/grammarly-announces-g...
        
           | swyx wrote:
           | and superhuman might be worth less than they raised at -
           | https://x.com/pitdesi/status/1940079704423506401 (or not, we
           | simply do not know)
        
             | solumos wrote:
             | The undisclosed acquisition price/terms implies a down-
             | round exit at best, and a fire sale at worst.
        
         | v3ss0n wrote:
         | Yeah localllms replace that job very nicely.
        
           | nicce wrote:
           | They produce convincing text but the grammar is not actually
           | that good. A lot of missing commas, for example.
        
             | mrkstu wrote:
             | I would generally expect llms to mirror how the average
             | human writes vs the most technically correct firm, so that
             | would track.
        
         | rcleveng wrote:
         | That was my thought as well, but one of my college age kids
         | still likes Grammarly over just using ChatGPT for grammar
         | checking and rewriting, says it does a better job.
         | 
         | Excited to see what they are doing now after the "acquisition"
         | of Coda (seems like a bit of a reverse acquisition or acquihire
         | since they buy Coda and have Coda leadership take over
         | Gramarly.
        
           | FireBeyond wrote:
           | I would actually agree with that, too. Grammarly certainly
           | isn't perfect (it still occasionally struggles with the
           | nuance of some idioms or proper nouns), but it does better
           | than LLMs (I use MacWhisper with its "CleanUp" AI prompt for
           | dictation). But Grammarly's inline use is actually pretty
           | handy (even in this text box, I pause typing for a moment,
           | and there's a Tab prompt that will auto-edit my text live).
        
       | Fuzzy1000 wrote:
       | So many unexpected moves lately. AI is really changing how
       | companies assess their trajectory and business plans.
        
       | JSTucker wrote:
       | > 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?
        
         | cik wrote:
         | I find this particularly fascinating, given the post email
         | world I live in now. I haven't had an email from a contact in
         | over two years. It sounds like a sales tool, in a world where
         | the goal is to distance from that availability.
        
           | saaaaaam wrote:
           | Was this "post email world" a choice or something that
           | happened? How do you communicate rather than by email now?
        
             | cik wrote:
             | In my country, e-mail is now used _purely_ as a sales tool.
             | Notifications from government and schools are also
             | delivered via SMS, and either WhatsApp or Telegram. So..
             | yeah, block everyone.
             | 
             | Turns out the second you do this you eliminate 100% of the
             | spam in your life. Honestly, if I ever lived in North
             | America again, I think I'd also just stop reading e-mail.
        
         | chii wrote:
         | > percentage of emails composed with its AI tools has increased
         | fivefold in the past year.
         | 
         | read: spam has increased 5 fold!
        
         | Vegenoid wrote:
         | "Increased volume of email" sounds like something people would
         | pay to _avoid_.
        
           | rchaud wrote:
           | That's how companies like Slack get billion-dollar
           | valuations. The promise of "less".
        
         | pchristensen wrote:
         | There are many people whose job revolves around churning
         | through emails (sales leads, recruiters, etc). This is a huge
         | win for them.
        
         | mrweasel wrote:
         | A better metric would be: How frequently does the recipients of
         | those emails need to reach out for clarification. The goal of
         | any writing should be to increase clarity and ensure that your
         | message is clearly received.
         | 
         | Why do their customers even need to send 72% more email?
        
         | slightwinder wrote:
         | Why? The amount of work won't shrink just because you can
         | execute each task faster.
        
         | mattcantstop wrote:
         | I think Superhuman's CEO in an interview said their product is
         | specifically catered to people who are seeking inbox zero.
         | 
         | For those people this would be a great outcome. The question is
         | should this be the goal of most people? Probably not. But most
         | people are not their ideal customer. They explained their ideal
         | customer in depth in an episode of the Acquired Podcast.
        
         | Aurornis wrote:
         | Anecdotally: The Superhuman users I've worked with start
         | skimming e-mails and sending super-short replies. Sending a
         | "Good job team" or questioning something in sentence 2 that
         | would have been answered if they read all the way to sentence 5
         | of the e-mail is the way to clear their inbox.
         | 
         | The inbox->outbox flow turns into the way to clear the inbox.
         | It's not about better communication, it's about speedrunning
         | their way to inbox zero.
         | 
         | The worst case was a person who would respond to everything
         | with a one-sentence question, then respond to the response with
         | another one-sentence question, and repeat all day long. He
         | could turn a brief e-mail into a thread with 15 one-line
         | responses that could have been avoided by spending more than 10
         | seconds thinking about it.
        
           | cryzinger wrote:
           | This old-ish Newport essay comes to mind:
           | 
           | > The knowledge sector's insistence that productivity is a
           | personal issue seems to have created a so-called "tragedy of
           | the commons" scenario, in which individuals making reasonable
           | decisions for themselves insure a negative group outcome. An
           | office worker's life is dramatically easier, in the moment,
           | if she can send messages that demand immediate responses from
           | her colleagues, or disseminate requests and tasks to others
           | in an ad-hoc manner. But the cumulative effect of such
           | constant, unstructured communication is cognitively harmful:
           | on the receiving end, the deluge of information and demands
           | makes work unmanageable. There's little that any one
           | individual can do to fix the problem. A worker might send
           | fewer e-mail requests to others, and become more structured
           | about her work, but she'll still receive requests from
           | everyone else; meanwhile, if she decides to decrease the
           | amount of time that she spends engaging with this harried
           | digital din, she slows down other people's work, creating
           | frustration.
           | 
           | https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-
           | rise...
           | 
           | I'm hesitant to call the email-skimming workflow that you
           | mentioned a "reasonable decision," but I think the point
           | still stands about how one person speedrunning their inbox
           | can make everyone else's inboxes that much worse.
        
             | Aurornis wrote:
             | > I think the point still stands about how one person
             | speedrunning their inbox can make everyone else's inboxes
             | that much worse.
             | 
             | I think you're looking a little too strictly through that
             | Cal Newport quote.
             | 
             | There's another big problem that isn't external: The people
             | who speedrun their e-mail like this (which isn't every
             | Superhuman user, to be fair) are also harming their own
             | understanding of those e-mails.
             | 
             | From what I've seen in a few people, it turns into a false
             | sense of being productive while they self-sabotage their
             | own communications. Inbox Zero becomes the goal and they
             | think their job is done when those e-mails are all gone.
        
         | apparent wrote:
         | Yeah, if they could increase the quantity without affecting the
         | quality (or improving it), that would be great. But there's a
         | good chance that is not what's happening.
        
       | shortformblog wrote:
       | 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.
        
       | orliesaurus wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | pickledoyster wrote:
         | Those are some of the best customers to have in case your
         | business is under threat and you might need a bailout (M&A) in
         | the future.
        
         | iagooar wrote:
         | You would need close to 90k customers to get $35M revenue as
         | they claim.
         | 
         | 90 thousand customers sounds like a whole lot of users to me.
         | 
         | I use it myself and it is by far the best email experience ever
         | created. Is it worth the money? That depends on your needs and
         | work, I guess. CEOs laugh at the cost. Developers might think
         | the price is nuts.
        
       | briandoll wrote:
       | 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 ;)
        
         | shepherdjerred wrote:
         | Mailmate on macOS is good
        
         | rwc wrote:
         | Mimestream on Mac implements GMail's keyboard shortcuts so
         | there was no learning curve for me and I'm able to enjoy a
         | desktop app experience.
        
           | briandoll wrote:
           | This does seem pretty seamless to swap to, thanks!
           | 
           | Now to figure out iOS ;)
        
           | swyx wrote:
           | chiming in with thanks, i was looking to leave Superhuman
           | also.
        
         | myflash13 wrote:
         | Same here, I recently got frustrated with every email client,
         | tried everything. Few days ago I finally decided to vibe code
         | my own email client with Claude Code and I got a basic version
         | running in a single day. Can't wait to build it exactly the way
         | I want, with programmable rules/filters and AI drafts for
         | specific types of emails I get, conversion to plain text or
         | dark mode for readability, contextual information in sidebars
         | pulled from APIs (such as email history and customer support /
         | CRM info), and one click actions in other apps.
        
         | umbra07 wrote:
         | I use (neo)mutt
        
         | jag729 wrote:
         | In the same boat. Tried Notion Mail and it wasn't quite at
         | Superhuman's level, though I do anticipate they'll improve it.
        
       | m3kw9 wrote:
       | 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?
        
       | lvl155 wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | ignoramous wrote:
         | Grammarly can cut down their costs if they use those models
         | themselves. The current LLM advancements aren't disruptive but
         | incremental. What's the hurdle you see they can't rely on their
         | existing distribution and expand from there?
        
           | lvl155 wrote:
           | That's true but I can replace Grammarly in a few hours with
           | Claude. 99% of the functionality. Then, I can spend a couple
           | more days to add stuff that they can't add due to copyright.
        
             | StochasticLi wrote:
             | Grammarly has a function that replaces phrases that are
             | typical for LLM output. Good luck coding that in a few
             | hours.
        
               | lvl155 wrote:
               | Last I read, they run it off of MSFT/OpenAI.
        
               | StochasticLi wrote:
               | I'm sure they haven't created their own model. Probably
               | fine-tuned it + constantly updating a database of the
               | most occurring phrases from all LLMs.
        
           | roguecoder wrote:
           | Why would using a more-expensive technology cut their costs?
        
             | rwmj wrote:
             | It's the dot-com strategy. They'll lose money on every sale
             | but make it up in volume.
        
         | JoeDohn wrote:
         | not to mention languagetool
        
         | micromacrofoot wrote:
         | yet they recently received a billion dollars in financing this
         | year?!
        
           | jgalt212 wrote:
           | Yes, does not seem like such a crisis to me.
        
             | micromacrofoot wrote:
             | maybe not _that_ crisis, but perhaps _a_ crisis
        
         | StochasticLi wrote:
         | I'm paying for most AI models top tiers and Grammarly.
         | Grammarly is a phenomenal tool. It's not that LLMs can't do it.
         | Well, they can't, but the more important thing is Grammarly's
         | UI.
        
         | myflash13 wrote:
         | This is such a programmers take. Bottled water is in a crisis,
         | it can be easily replaced with tap water and a reusable
         | container! Yet it's a $47 billion dollar market in the US.
         | 
         | Grammarly's value is not in having a replaceable product, it's
         | in the network, distribution, customer acquisition channels and
         | integrations with tools. Like bottled water, it's about being
         | in the customers face at the right place and the right time.
        
           | lvl155 wrote:
           | You're on the money and that's exactly why I think Grammarly
           | will struggle. OpenAI/Gemini/Claude will get embedded
           | further. Gemini is already on gmail. Getting OpenAI and
           | Claude incorporated is trivial. Guess what? Once Apple
           | figures out what they're doing with AI (which I hope is to
           | buy Anthropic) they will take whatever is out there and
           | incorporate them into iOS/MacOS just as they've done for so
           | many third-party app ideas in the past.
        
       | azhenley wrote:
       | Having applied to YC this round with an email product, this is
       | very interesting.
        
       | nadis wrote:
       | Hopefully this brings some of the Superhuman product magic to
       | Grammarly. Although both products could improve AI functionality
       | significantly IMO.
        
       | stavros wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | apparent wrote:
         | This was not very quick.
        
           | stavros wrote:
           | I first heard about it last week, so it felt quick to me.
        
       | blorto wrote:
       | Looks like Superhuman investors wanted their ROI and Grammarly
       | cant grow on its own that it needs to buy customers.
        
       | voigt wrote:
       | > 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...
        
         | saaaaaam wrote:
         | Zoom was worth around $125 billion at the start of July 2021.
         | It's now worth about $23 billion.
         | 
         | So by that logic, Superhuman may be worth around $165 million.
         | 
         | More interestingly though, let's assume they spent the $110
         | million they raised. That means that each of the ~85k customers
         | they would appear to have based on the estimated revenue cost
         | them about $1300. Though probably more as a proportion of
         | ongoing revenue will obviously be driving sales and retention.
         | 
         | I did see something somewhere saying that they have very high
         | customer retention. That matches my anecdotal experience - I've
         | been using it for several years as have several people I
         | referred.
         | 
         | But yeah... an $800m+ valuation? That feels like Covid-era
         | hype.
        
       | daft_pink wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | noname120 wrote:
         | What do you like about Superhuman that Spark Mail doesn't have?
        
       | dgellow wrote:
       | Oh no. I love superhuman :( Please don't change it
        
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