Will HEY be successful?

HEY is a new email service that takes a very different opinion.

My HEY email invite finally arrived last night. I set it up today and tried to find a reason to use it but couldn't. Eventually I closed the app and went on with my day.

That's a really interesting moment as a Product Manager. I went from "sign-up early excited" to "not for me" in one use. What happened there? And does it mean HEY is in trouble?

I agree with the HEY team that "email is a chore." I haven't enjoyed using email for a very long time. I check occasionally; often don't reply for a day or two; I find the UX experience unpleasant. HEY fixes a lot of that, streamlining workflows and making it easier to focus on what's important and not even see what's not. HEY does make email better, but that's not enough.

While the user experience is a big focus of any product, but it's only part of the consideration as a Product Manager. A tool as entrenched in our lives as email has many roots that run deep, and changing email is like uprooting and replaing a tree. The whole root system needs to be considered in the purchasing decision.

The first deep root is that people already have email addresses and HEY doesn't allow you to bring them over. HEY is a fully integrated, hosted service that doesn't support IMAP or POP. You can forward emails to your HEY address, but your replies won't be from that original address. This makes HEY one more thing to manage and actually adds work to you life. Not good.

Another root is that most people don't feel their email is a problem. I mean, they wish they got less email maybe but they use it, it's fine enough, and there are more important things to think about. People who *do* care about email (and HEY's significant improvements) are likely to be power users, but power users have high switching costs because switching requires giving up their special workflows, extensions, app integrations, organizational systems, and muscle memory.

Somewhat of a selling feature for HEY is privacy. Problem is, most people don't care about privacy, except when it's convenient, like when using an iPhone improves privacy but it's also a good phone. Only the most privacy-focused people would consider suffering the switching costs to move email providers, but those people are more likely to go all the way with a private key encrypted email service (which HEY isn't).

These are all huge barriers to a new product and you have to assume the HEY team knew and thought about them all. So why did they not solve for them, and how can they succeed despite them?

I believe the answer is that the HEY team isn't trying to get people to switch from their current email addresses. They're targeting people who care about email and need a new address. (Custom domain support is also coming soon.) The bet is that email isn't going away (a safe bet) and that people will choose a better email experience given the choice and no switching cost (also a safe bet based on how much better the HEY experience is).

That brings this to another point. Not going after the market of existing email addresses seems like a business limiting move, but I believe that Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson, and co. are playing a different game. They're not interested in a huge business or making as much money as possible – their approach with Basecamp has shown this over and over. HEY is as much a statement about email and a design and dev skills flex as it is a business. Not to mention a testbed for their theories on building a different kind of company and living lives on their terms.

HEY will be successful but not by the measure of the industry, but by the measure of the team, because to them there's more to building a product than just money and users, and HEY epitomizes that understanding.