Mailbox
When Mailbox first launched in 2013 it was a breakout success.
Their viral waitlist (which some would say they pioneered) filled faster than Kanye’s ego, and their new method of organizing email was smoother than Sean Connery on a Saturday night.
Fast-forward 2 years and table “swipe” functions were commonplace in UX (having fully made their way into iOS 8’s stock mail app), and inbox zero proved to be a much tougher goal for the average person to reach.
Yes mailbox still had some tools for power users, but for the mass-market, it offered nothing but an additional search, download, and sign up process.
You see, the average user is a lazy sloth. And sloths don’t replace apps they already have. Sloths download candy crush.
Their own team summed it up best in their final letter to users:
But as we’ve increased our focus on collaboration, we realized there’s only so much an email app can do to fundamentally improve email.
Carousel
Carousel serves as a similar cautionary tale:
I get it, Dropbox wants users to buy more space. How do most people fill space the fastest? Photos. How do you get them to upload photos to Dropbox? Build (buy) a camera roll app.
Good idea. In theory.
Sure the average iPhone user takes 150 to 250 photos a month, and sure everyone hates running out of space, and maybe even a good chunk of them are willing to pay extra for more storage. But what if Apple decides they don’t want to give up that juicy external storage pie?
Simple. They build their own pie — and integrate it into their system 100 times better than you ever could.
And they’ll match your prices just because they can.
And then your pie gets old and crusty in the back of the fridge. Because, oh, Apple also owns the fridge.
The lesson?
You can’t beat stock apps in a long-term battle. The platforms own distribution, they have bigger marketing budgets than you, and they can tap into a deeper layer of system integration to make things work better.
Even if you do come up with something great, without IP protection it’s all too easy for platforms to steal your best ideas and shower them onto their users (Oprah style).
So if you’re in it for the long haul don’t rebuild the stock apps (Mail, Photos, Calendar, Notes, Wallet, Music…), build something new instead.
Both Mailbox and Carousel were great apps, and neither were failures by any means… but if you step back and look at it, it isn’t a surprise to see them go.
Notes
- This problem is less prevalent in Android where the ecosystem is more open, but it’s still an issue to be wary of.
- I’d note that this doesn’t yet apply to messaging … Apple has been slower to innovate in the space and more and more use cases for messaging seem to appear every week.
- If your goal is to be acquired, then you might be able to completely ignore this. It’s worked out pretty well for people in the past: (MailBox=100MM by Dropbox, SnapJoy= Undisclosed by Dropbox, SunRise= 100MM by Microsoft, Accompli= 200MM by Microsoft).
You can follow me on twitter at @anderskravis
