When I was approached by the founders of Timyo to come on board and help them build an email app, I thought, “That sounds like fun! But…does the world really need another email app? Don’t Gmail and Microsoft already have that in the bag?” As it turns out, no, they do not have it in the bag; in fact, they, like many others, are still looking for a large enough bag to contain this problem.
High Expectations
What convinced me to join Timyo was the very simple premise that Timyo is based on:
Allow the person sending an email to set their expectations right from the start.
Just sending some information and don’t need a reply to an email? Need a reply by next week sometime? Need to ask someone to carry out a specific task besides only sending a reply? All of that is part of the system and it lets the recipient know what is expected of them at a glance. That one simple step can eliminate so much wasted time with back-and-forth and unnecessary emails that we can, in fact, save time for everyone!
“Blue Skies, Smiling at Me…”
“Okay,” I thought, “this is great, but why hasn’t anyone thought of this before?!” As an experienced “product guy” I pride myself on being able to thoroughly research a business segment and figure out what “all the other guys” are doing: Who’s doing it right? Who’s doing it wrong? And what I found was that, quite simply, nobody was doing anything like this at all.
This is the kind of “blue sky” project that I (and I’m guessing all product guys) love. It’s been very exciting to be a part of it!
So, it turns out, the world does need another email app, but not another email app that shuffles around features that already exist in other apps. What the world needs is not just an app, but a sea change in the mindset of how people deal with daily email communication and an app that facilitates that change. That’s where Timyo comes in, by allowing senders to set clear expectations, we are flipping the script.
Up Next…
Like technical details? Me, too! (Heck, I am a product guy.) Check out my follow up post to learn more about the process of developing a product based around a new, but simple idea.
