EXPLOSIVE GROWTH: 1 million users in 1 year.
This is what a new email client named Skiff has managed to do.
Of course, this is nothing in comparison to Gmail’s total user count of 1.8 billion
users.
But, this is also what makes Skiff so impressive.
In an era where Gmail is ubiquitous, Skiff has managed to grow to a million users from
scratch within a matter of months.
On paper, Skiff doesn’t offer anything remarkable per se.
They’re just an encrypted email client with a solid UI.
What’s even more interesting is that Skiff is able to get away with a much more traditional
avenue of monetization.
Nowadays, all the craze is to make everything free and come up with super creative ways
to monetize users whether that be collecting data or running ads.
I mean this was literally the selling factor of Gmail: a free invite only email with extraordinary
storage capacity.
But, this comes with its own set of disadvantages.
For one, Google is an ad company who makes money by getting to know you as well as possible.
And what better way to get to know you than reading our emails.
This was actually a big controversy back in the day and Google apparantly stopped reading
our emails back in 2017.
But, certain smart features suggest the opposite so you can take that for what you will.
Skiff on the other hand can’t read your emails even if they wanted to because everything
is end to end encrypted.
As such, they have turned to a more archaic mode of monetization where people actually
pay the company directly for the service.
Maybe some of you are too young to know about this but this is how companies used to do
business and Skiff is trying to bring this model back to one of the most competitive
industries in the world.
While they do have a generous free tier with 10 gb of storage and even custom domain support,
the only way they make money is from people who spring for the Essential or Pro tier.
Given their user count though, it doesn’t seem like this is really slowing down their
adoption.
They even have some super notable users like Vitalik Buterin.
But, it’s not all sunshines and rainbows.
To get this point, Skiff has had to raise over $14 million.
Also, while Skiff does have quite a bit of momentum right now, it’s not clear if they’ll
be able to maintain this momentum after they burn through the privacy and UI centric folks.
The reality is that while the average person would like to have more privacy, they’re
also too lazy to change anything they’re currently doing.
So, join me as we take a look at whether Skiff is truly the next big thing or if it’s just
a niche product that’ll never be more than just that.
THE CASE FOR SKIFF: The main appealing factors of Skiff are pretty
simple.
It’s probably the best looking mail client on the market and it has privacy that even
experts seem to like.
In fact, all of Skiff’s code is open source, so if you’re a coder, you can take a look
at exactly what the platform tracks, how it encrypts your emails, and whether they’re
actually being honest.
Even if you're not a coder, you can rest assured that everything truly is private as Russia
has given it the seal of approval by banning it.
Skiff is also trying address traditional shortcoming regarding mail filters and centralization
but really the selling factors are the UI and privacy.
That’s pretty much it, but oftentimes that’s all you need.
When you’re addressing something as established as email, there’s really not much you can
change but that’s ok.
You don’t need to revolutionize email, you just have to make email noticeably better.
I mean this has been Google’s secret sauce the entire time.
They were never first to anything they did.
There were plenty of search engines before Google, plenty of emails before Gmail, and
plenty of browsers before Chrome.
Fun fact, Google’s own CEO, Eric Schmidt, was strongly opposed to building Chrome as
he felt that entering the browser wars was futile.
In fact, he single handedly delayed the launch of Chrome by 6 years but that didn’t stop
Chrome from being the biggest success the browser space has ever seen.
The truth is that while first movers do indeed have an advantage, that’s all it is: an
advantage.
It’s not endless monopoly over a certain domain.
I mean, ChatGPT is disrupting Google as we speak which brings us into the our next point
for Skiff which is the sentiment surrounding Google.
One of the biggest reasons that Google was so successful was because of their underdog
nature.
People loved to support the scrappy startup that was Google.
Their motto of “Don’t be evil” resonated with users.
Why support hotmail and internet explorer, products from the evil tech monopoly, Microsoft,
when you could support Google.
But while this worked in Google’s favor back in the 2000s, this is no longer the case.
Today, Google is very much the evil tech monopoly that Microsoft was back in the day meaning
that Google is primed for disruption.
I mean just take a look at how quick people were to laugh at Bard.
Sure, Bard made a mistake but if Google was still a scrappy startup, I bet people would’ve
focused on the millions of items that Bard did correctly as opposed to the few that Bard
didn’t.
But since Google is a giant the sentiment is: oh Google is a trillion dollar monopoly
and can’t even get this right?
What a joke?
This shift in sentiment is subtle but it makes all the difference.
All of a sudden, a service like Skiff that actually respects your privacy is worth a
shot.
What’s the worst that could happen?
It sucks and you come back to Gmail?
Clearly not very high stakes.
Speaking of high stakes, Skiff doesn’t have a very high barrier for entry.
One of the advantages of entering an established market is that people are already familiar
with the product.
People already know why email is useful, how to send an email, what cc and bcc mean.
So, Skiff doesn’t have to convince people on adopting email, they just have to convince
people that Skiff is the best platform for email.
And given that most people are relatively tech savvy nowadays, getting them to give
it a shot isn’t too hard.
This is why we see so many apps blow up basically overnight.
In fact, if you truly have a winning product, it’s easier to go viral today than ever
before.
TikTok gained 100 million users within a matter of 9 months.
More recently, ChatGPT was able to garner 100 million users within just 2 months.
20 years ago, such traction would’ve been impossible regardless how good the product
was.
Nowadays, information is simply shared and absorbed so quickly that if you have momentum
on your side, you can go extremely far.
So, trying to challenge even something as big as Gmail is very much possible but there’s
of course some pretty big hurdles along the way as well.
THE CASE AGAINST SKIFF: Likely the biggest elephant in the room is
who cares?
Nowadays, we all see articles about Facebook and Google and basically every other company
invading our privacy.
And while I do believe that everyone should have the right to privacy, realistically speaking,
I think the vast majority of us have become numb to the idea.
I mean, is having a truly private email really going to change anything?
Are you also going to find alternatives for Instagram and YouTube and Google Search and
TikTok and basically everything else as well?
I’m gonna guess probably not.
This isn’t to say that these companies are in the right for collecting data on all of
us.
But I guess it’s simply a reality that most of us have just come to accept as reality.
So, it’s not clear if the privacy argument will really hit as well as you might think.
Speaking of privacy, it’s also not clear how much people actually care about privacy
when it comes to email in general.
I don’t know about you but virtually all of my email use is professional.
The last time I actually emailed a friend was like 2011.
So, there’s not anything espeically personal that I send through email that I would want
to protect to begin with.
Most people use email for work or school to contact coworkers, managers, professors, and
so on.
Or they use it to sign up for newsletters and create accounts but very rarely do people
use email for social communication.
So again, not sure how much people will care about privacy here.
Something else to note is that people don’t really choose what email client they use for
work or school unless its like the Apple mail app.
They just use whatever the school or company uses.
Skiff’s new feature that allows people to use a custom domain for free does technically
make this possible but we’ll have to see how many people actually care to take advantage
of this feature.
Also, there’s no way we can discuss the future of Skiff without mentioning ProtonMail.
If you’re not familiar with ProtonMail it’s basically just an older Skiff.
ProtonMail launched back in 2014 with the promise of better privacy and a more refined
UI and they’re doing pretty good.
They have over 70 million accounts but this brings up the question: what does Skiff really
offer over ProtonMail.
Well, we can’t really make an argument based on UI because that’s subjective.
And to be honest, they both have a great modern UI so it’s really just personal preference.
There’s also of course some minor differences in terms of pricing and features but really
the main difference seems to be the encryption standard.
ProtonMail uses something called PGP encryption which has been the standard for decades.
Skiff argues that PGP encryption is outdated and that there are far better encryption standards
out there and they could be absolutely right.
But how many people actually care about this?
As far as the average user is concerned, both email clients are end to end encrypted.
Also, all email clients will claim that they have the best encryption.
So unless you really understand these encryption standards, it doesn’t really mean anything
to the average person.
And all of that brings us into likely Skiff’s biggest shortall which is monetization.
Every dominant email that has ever existed has come from a tech giant whether that be
Aol, Yahoo, Microsoft, or Google.
And the main reason for that is that email simply works much better as a side business
than a main business.
You simply have to reach extraordinary scale to start make any sort of profit.
ProtonMail for example is only possible because of the generosity of its community.
And it seems that the only reason that Skiff and their generous free tiers are possible
are because of insane VC money.
VC are willing to go quite far nowadays in terms of funding but it’s not the same Google
launching Gmail in 2004 and subsidizing the cost themselves.
As far as Google is concerned, even if Gmail is a breakeven effort indefinitely or even
a slight loss, that’s a massive win as 1.8 billion users are even more integrated into
the Google ecosystem.
For Skiff, on the other hand, monetization has to eventually work out and they have to
fundraise in the meantime.
Otherwise, their toast.
THE FUTURE OF SKIFF: While launching a new email client in the
2020s may seem crazy, it’s actually way more viable than you think.
The sentiment against Google paired with the insane virality potential of modern apps makes
a new email client quite viable.
Combine this with some extra privacy and a better UI and Skiff may very well have a winning
product on their hands but their success is by no means guaranteed.
Several companies have picked up on this trend of adding privacy and UI to replace offerings
from big tech companies.
Some other examples are Signal, BeReal, and ProtonMail.
Some of theses anti big tech offerings end up panning out while others end up dead in
the water.
Only time will tell if Skiff has enough mojo to convince the general public to make the
switch.
Schools are already ditching Google in general so that may be an opportunity for Google.
Check out this video to learn more about why schools are ditching Google.