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Comment by dvt | Hacker News Reader

It's always surprising to see apps like this reach >= $1M ARR, and goes to show that markets are bigger than what you'd think. I mean this is email we're talking about, and there are about 800 clients and 1200 solutions, and yet Missive still carved out a niche.

Congrats!

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> markets are bigger than what you'd think ... I mean this is email we're talking about

I feel like you have it backwards. Email is obviously an extremely large market, so I'm not all surprised they managed to get to $1M ARR.

It's easier to carve out a niche if the market is bigger.

It's counter-intuitive because the Silicon Valley mantra, if not dogma, is to venture where no one else has headed yet.

It would be much easier to fundraise if people saw competition as a healthy barometer for entrance. Google and the search engine is a famous example.

I'm not sure this is a SV mantra. Plenty of companies with products in spaces with lots of players get funded by very good VCs. Stripe. Zoom. Snowflake. 50 other data analytics companies. Arguably Airbnb. Lots of CRMs.

I guess that’s what makes them good VC’s ;)

I guess so. IIRC somewhere Ben Horowitz talks about the fact that you are just going to have to face competition? I (and I guess others) often try to think of "new" ideas when anecdotally "better mousetraps" seem to have a better track record.

I long ago rid myself of any conceit in originality in going to market. There is much more security in aiming at large and compounding markets with such a wedge as this company. The difficult part is in convincing investors who are looking to party. Quite simply: you can't.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel that customer development would be harder in a well-established market with monolithic incumbents.

I feel like it would be much easier because there are bound to be underserved customers, especially on the solo operator/SMB end of the market.

There might be room for 100 small scale products tailored to specific use cases.

I just looked at their feature list and "Team Inboxes" really stood out. Granted details matter, but g-suites doesn't even have a good solution to this problem, I can see this as being their bread and butter.

What can a "Team Inbox" do that a distribution/mailing list can't? ( <- no snark, genuine question, I'm sure there are things that I don't see here)

Allow customer support at scale / efficiently

Yes. But that didn't answer the question.

I help run a small non profit and we have various official positions. Volunteers join for sometime and then pass the baton. A postition could have a team inbox to help with continuity for the next person.

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