📬From $100 Million to Inbox Zero

Plus: The Power of Asking Questions; A truth-seeking chatbot.

Author

Chai Sip
April 19, 2023

ISSUE #054

☕ Good Morning! Sippers,

In the fast-paced world of tech startups, some achieve meteoric success, while others fall just as dramatically. Join us as we explore the story of Mailbox, an email app that sold for $100 million just 37 days after launch, only to ultimately fail.

But don’t worry, we’ve also got key lessons for startups that can be learned from Mailbox’s journey.

In today’s Issue 📬 :

  • The Rise and Fall of Mailbox.

  • The Power of Asking Questions.

  • A truth-seeking chatbot.

SIP WORTHY

The Rise and Fall of Mailbox: Lessons for Startups

In early 2013, Gentry Underwood and Scott Cannon launched Mailbox with three game-changing innovations: swipe gestures, email snoozing, and auto-swipe. To generate buzz, Mailbox employed a masterful velvet rope strategy that created a massive waitlist.

Their viral video showcasing never-before-seen features amassed 100k views in just four hours, sparking a buzz across social media.

📈 The Hype Builds ⬆️ Over 800,000 people signed up for a sneak peek of the app, with Mailbox fueling the excitement by displaying a live counter of individuals waiting to use the app. To avoid server crashes and potential harm to the brand, they made the app available for free instead of charging users on the first day, which only added to the hype.

💰 Dropbox Acquisition 💸 After a month of extreme popularity, Mailbox had garnered 1.3 million reservations and was delivering 60 million messages per day.

The app was struggling to keep up with the high demand, and Dropbox stepped in, acquiring Mailbox for an astounding $100 million. The entire Orchestra team behind the app joined Dropbox.

📉 The Downfall of Mailbox 📉 Despite its early success, Mailbox ultimately failed due to several factors, including copycats, strategy misalignment, and no clear monetization path. In 2016, Dropbox shut down the Mailbox app.

🔍 Post-Mailbox Ventures→ The founders continued to work on other projects within Dropbox before eventually leaving to pursue new ventures. Underwood co-founded a startup providing a productivity tool for sales professionals, while Cannon became the CTO of Lattice, a performance management platform for businesses.

📝 Key Lessons for Startups 📝 Generate buzz, innovate, prepare for scalability, align with strategic partners, establish a monetization strategy, protect your intellectual property, be adaptable and resilient, and learn from failure.

Mailbox taught us a masterclass in waitlist strategy and remains a fascinating case study for startups and entrepreneurs alike.

Despite its failure within Dropbox, the Mailbox team provided valuable innovations that are still in use today. Their story serves as a testament to both the potential for rapid success in the tech world and the harsh reality of sustaining that success.

IMPROVEMENT SIP

The Power of Asking Questions

Starting on the path to self-improvement can be daunting, especially when you don’t know where to begin.

However, according to author and speaker Byron Katie, all you need to do is ask a question. By asking yourself a simple yet profound question, you can unlock answers and insights that will help guide you on your journey.

One of the most powerful questions you can ask yourself is,

“How can I be a better [insert role or trait here]?”

By asking this question, you are opening yourself up to self-reflection and self-awareness, which are essential components of personal growth.

Asking questions is also a valuable tool in developing meaningful relationships. By asking your friends, family, or colleagues how you can be a better friend, partner, or coworker, you are demonstrating your commitment to improving your relationships and showing that you value their opinions.

Research has also shown that asking questions can lead to better decision-making. In a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers found that people who asked more questions were seen as more likable and intelligent, and were ultimately more successful in negotiations.

As Byron Katie puts it, “If you want to understand something, ask a question. If you want to change something, ask yourself a question.” So, don’t be afraid to start with a simple question and see where it takes you.

HOT SIP

Elon Musk Plans to Develop a Truth-Seeking Chatbot

Photographer: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg via Getty Images

What’s sipping? ☕ In a recent interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk revealed his plans to develop a chatbot called TruthGPT, which will be “a maximum truth-seeking AI.” The Twitter owner aims to create a third option to OpenAI and Google with the objective of “creating more good than harm.”

🙊 According to Musk, creating an AI that cares about understanding the universe is unlikely to annihilate humans since we are an interesting part of the universe. He also criticized OpenAI, which he helped set up, accusing the organization of training AI models to be politically correct, which he considers “another way of being untruthful.” He previously criticized the company for becoming “closed sourced” and “effectively controlled by Microsoft.”

😵‍💫 Musk is not new to expressing his concerns about AI being too powerful to manipulate public opinion or even cause “civilizational destruction.” He recently signed a letter to pause the training of models more powerful than GPT-4 for at least six months.

🤷🏻‍♂️ It’s not clear if Musk wants to build a Large Language Model (LLM) that rivals the offerings from OpenAI and Google, or if he wants to push for research in other areas of AI like fairness in training models. However, the Financial Times reported that Musk has been working on an OpenAI rival and has recruited former DeepMind employee Igor Babuschkin for this task.

Although TruthGPT might be a temporary project name, as OpenAI has applied for a trademark for the term “GPT,” Musk doesn’t need to develop a cutting-edge product to make ripples.

As TechCrunch’s Devin Coldewey noted in his story, “often all it takes is billions of dollars. And that is something Musk reliably seems to have at his disposal.”

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TWEET