Extreme Native Perf on the Web with Superhuman

already to some extent so that, we can keep the flow wonderful No. The the back our back end is, And we still on, like, we use the browser APIs and everything to basically store locally. And, we use a submission of SQLite as well to Scott stuff. There we stop basically emails. We store your, events, agenda, like, calendaring.

education

Yeah. I I've been getting into a lot of local data stuff myself

and models, like, running on device are not good enough just yet for our quality bar.

which is not local. So we don't do Like, everything like this, is locally stored.

So we call that modifier, and it's roughly said like a a stack of actions that will be synced. I would say, as soon as you have the network, it will be synced with the back end that implements also those modifiers and will then implement the changes in Gmail or in Outlook.

When it comes to the user interaction, you want everything to feel great.

$30.40

their engineering philosophy, and and how they make everything fast. Tons of local first stuff.

Anyone can do enter. And then you start with enter, and then maybe you start with, like, the e, which is archiving things. And like, oh, archiving works well. And maybe you use that one, and then you learn about the second one maybe, like, weeks later. So the pivot of the addition is might be, might be, like, a bit slower for the non tech savvy people. But eventually, like, the the speed at which you operate with those keyboard shortcuts what makes sense for you. Like, they need that volume of data. We don't care because that's not our pricing strategy. That's not the way we make money. And and that's coming, like, today. Like, this is what you have right now. We, and especially using AI, it's We are a startup, and we work hard.

like, their,

when most of the code runs on the device, there's not really a back end. Right? So that was really neat to hear.

I love, like, the the vision they had about, like, how the craft should be done and how delight can,

Oiseu.

No. No. No. So that that's that's very true. Like, it was, like, mostly, like,

you all have made

our customer base, like, 90% of our users are using Gmail, and the enterprise customers are on, Outlook, get your next Thursday, whatever. And it it just works. How does something like that work? So, like, the h one, for example, that's the one that I use the most. So h to basically, like, make your email disappear product,

through that, you've created a a product that,

So it doesn't apply to I would say, if you're a typical engineer, like, we did a survey and people were, like, providing, like, their own appreciation of, like, the productivity gain they they they get from AI. The answers were roughly between 2030% or like,

also something similar for their

So we just don't want, like, people that are great at, like, whatever the frameworks or all of that. But like, But, like, our user base, like, they need something that is clean and well done. Mhmm. So you have always to ask your question, is it good enough for them given the past of quality and delight that we are providing for every feature? engaging with your emails, where this forwarding, commenting,

how can it be better than an email app that I'm using today? Email apps are all the same. And then I, I bit the bullet. I signed up, and I regret doing that because it's now ruined a lot of software for me. It is so so wonderful in many ways. So we're gonna be talking all about that.

CSS,

Yeah. And and as far as AI features go, like on speed as well, or is that speed aspect of it like an entirely separate team?

okay is not good enough.

Everything that is, on the local device. It has a cost. Every time we want to do some modification about syncing, so you are talking about calendar.

they are baked, but, like, it's significant.

where you're able

So so that's a good one. And interestingly, maybe like the the last plug, I would say, for superhuman. But, what we see is in the, I would say, our customer base is like this. Save, like, four hours a week.

React. It's basic mostly React.

like, this new paradigm, like, with AI, and how you bring, like, ESLint on the device, if you go through outside of The US. And I was like, oh, damn. I remember, like, I went to Japan. I don't remember the dates.

both from

So we use an extension. So we have an extension that is, that is used both by the electron app and the the mobile the the web experience.

Hundred milliseconds. Yeah. We we're targeting 50, we don't use just yet any design system.

transparent for our user. They send emails. Like, everything that is email answering, email sending, and all of that, totally transparent because it's managed locally. And then it's like, an email is a pitch. Like, your company reaching out to you to send you, like, the new CICD tool that they've been working, they're out of YC, whatever, and they want to pitch you. Or, like, those marketing emails because you use, you're somewhat limited.

AI locally on device just yet. So when you're offline,

to to to some extent can feel that, oh, yeah. That's the same or close enough. So but that's a question we have. Correct? I do I I would see that the, like, more, like, voice type of thing would be very useful on on mobile, where you don't have access to that. Right? Although you do have swipes and and those types of things that that tend to fill that space. The keyboard shortcuts I use the most are archive, light gray dark modes in my mind.

usually young, usually tech savvy, and highly productive and wanted to, like, say, gain some time. So those people were the the right target to get, like, keyboard shortcuts and everything. They were, like, looking for it and even, like, expecting it. It's more clicky, platform. We use Postgres.

Raul is probably the person the GKE, which is like the, managed Kubernetes, like, the focus that you need to get when you join. Like, for example, you go to Gmail, you have a long list of emails and it's kind of a mess. You have the creative load. You need to go then you need to go through it. So we have a bunch of features like splits

Oh, I I butchered it. We you cut to me because I can at least French Canadian accent it, but

just about every morning with this thing, and it's turned what I do in my daily ritual for email is that I tend to not look at email more than twice a day. I'll open up my email in the morning. I'll either get rid of things I need to do in another day or whatever, mark them as done, take care of everything I need to do, get to inbox zero, and then close out the email for the day. And I haven't found another system that allows me to do this as quickly primarily because power usery type of

We are native, probably the one that I use the most. Like, next week, next month, or like, I would say today or tomorrow at 2PM.

selector Wes you could just, like, kind of type whatever you warp in. Yeah. This thing JS, like, next level. Yeah. Yeah. This thing is next level like that. You could say, you know, three days, 8AM. Next week, sometime, whatever. I mean, you can you can type in whatever the heck you want in this thing, and it it manages to

basically. So those are the three teams. And when you have teams that are, like, laser focused on their persona,

to find what is important. So I'm curious, like like, do you have any thoughts about

determined to use In the app.

is like focused on your ability to to craft, like, your great user experience.

bad or poor quality.

running on It's significant.

because it's I mean, you you face, like, the same race conditions, the same, like, and, you have like, some sort of like a reminder that JS ready,

Oh, this is, this is it's a delightful experience. I get I know you've only been there six months, but how how do those types of experiences Mhmm. And it shows when you use the app. I mean, especially because so much of the general workflow for people who might not know, it is via, like, keyboard shortcuts. So when you're using and you you really get the keyboard shortcuts, if it's not feeling that fast, I mean, you're gonna notice it right away. So you're saying the iOS app is native, but the desktop app is Electron?

enter, boom, your email is Node. And the t for tomorrow, that's

already so you can see exactly what your calendar JS like on Wednesday. And I use that, obviously, all the time. How did those type of features

getting in touch with, with the team. And I was like, how come I would pay for something that is free? Like, I'm using Gmail. I'm a Gmail user.

like, programmatically, or is that done with, like, a model?

But, So it might surprise you, but for example, there's a database on your, I would say, iPhone mobile app. We are not getting the data live. We basically, like, sync the last thirty days and moving onwards. So we have a huge footprint on your phone so that everything that search can work offline and be, like, crazy fast. We don't rely on, the provider of surf, like Gmail or Outlook, for example. Only for stuff that are, like, was the, So that's the type of, like,

But I have found that I I hit inbox zeros

I wanna talk a little bit about

Interestingly,

but it's just like this, like, generated how personal they're trying to make it. You know? And now I'm trying to write. I use I use missive, and I'm trying to write these, like, AI rules that I'm on the offense of it, and it's just a waste of my time.

are offline first. Yeah. So which means that during that outage, the only problem that you had was that we couldn't receive new emails because, like, Google was basically down. So, like, Gmail was downish. So receiving new emails was not possible. But we stuck everything. So we had to replay

keyboard to navigate this thing. To me, these all feel like very,

moments,

and the UI layer, but you pretty much just answered it. So that's really interesting when it's

and has, like, a product test and understand slick and, like, the roughly.

and we try to prepare things so that when we work on things, on on features, acquisition. I joined DocuSign.

you know, speed being a highest priority. I know I know that, like, AI isn't always seen as being, like, the fastest,

We did not know that this was gonna happen, and I don't think that it changes any of the conversations because we Yarn talking about,

inbox as your to do list ends up becoming

the basically, those, like, in product, but, right Node, we are sticking with it. And Yeah. Why why is that? Is

specifically

applications on the web. Right? Yeah. I mean, I've been around. Like, I have some gray hair, and it shows. So And and that's something that,

generic looking,

bucks a month to get, I would say, that amount of better? So I was like, Node. Not sure. Not sure. And we keep talking, and I I love the people. I love their perspective.

like, a a slow,

fits with that as well. And and those type of product developers, they're don't need to feel, like,

draft

because, like,

basically JavaScript pretty, like, a nice thing that you can point the classification.

you're talking engineers using AI to build the product or both? That's a great question because both. That's that's both. Because JS, like, every people that are, like, focused on the craft, you have your own set of tools. Like, you have your flow as an engineer. Yeah. And you tweaked it to to be, like, a feel great in your flow.

oriented organization,

then if you have no design system?

that we are using. But that's typically just yet, and the draft are created. So we try to optimize for those when when needed. So, like, both aspect are really key for our success UX and the people working what on what we call the background, which is kind of like the back end of the local stacks. And, we have, like, a a platform team that is usually

and Vercel, like, really feels good to use. And I I I've been talking a lot about local data on this show, and I I think that's an like, an important thing is that oftentimes we think about, well, I'll use local data. But, like, you you all started with the experience, what need experience needs to be there, and then that probably thing. You know? You're waiting for a response, streaming in, etcetera. But, like, what kind of AI features

so, yes, I've been around and I've been, And how do you balance that more? How do you use AI, basically, to get that productivity gain while still maintaining the bar super high? So that's that's what I joined, and that's what I'm trying to, on especially for the front end people, And to be fair, AI is a ping a lot. Anecdotal feedback, We, I would say, are local first. So you were talking about, like, sync engines. Like, syncing is probably, like, the number Node, not pain, but, like, channels that we have that is tricky because you have network, no network. So you have someone like a pub sub, you get used to it. And you're like, oh, damn. It's easy. Like, enter.

Yeah. Pardon my French.

just like a really pleasant experience overall, which I I tend to hate email. So yeah. I I Everyone hates email. Everyone hates email.

And for the people that are going through this, like, in The US, you need to go through the last five years of travels,

you're no stranger to high performing,

Yeah. I mean, I I'm I was a queue. Like, I was not using the the product before,

Yep. And what's the what's the UI done with? Oh, React.

Today, we have a really great one. We're gonna be talking about one of the most performant and excellent apps that I use in my day to day every single day. We have an amazing guest on the show with us. We have

But, so right now, we are on mobile, we warp using Realm,

and we recorded this before the news of Superhuman was acquired by Grammarly, which is is absolutely wild.

a lot of things really fast, which on the surface level, when you you look at superhuman

it will feel relatively slow. They will basically strike through stuff. So they add some complexity to the user experience slowness there.

of shit that you sorry. This time I said it. Yes. Like, that you have typically on the back end, which is not typically common for, like, JavaScript users unless you're using Node on the back end, but, we are Goshawk.

going.

like, attention issues,

They would be like, nah. Let's not do, like, a feature like this. Like, people can click on the calendar and go to that. Like, they can do it. There's a way. And this is where, like, we have a a CEO from the that is a kinda like an art director to some extent one point. Like, we do it, I think, so that it's ready Wes, I would say, you open the, I would say, you your superhuman app. So I was mentioning those, tech savvy like this.

like, generative now JS we we were, like, more and more, like, for something where the competition is basically free.

Yeah. So this is a great question. So we Okay. You got it right, Scott. Thanks. I appreciate that. And JS, I don't know if he learned it. It's a gift. But it's different. It's a gift. I think it is. I think it is.

which had some complexity, but, also, like, more fun. And, just joined, like, Superhuman six months ago. So pretty cool.

while you're designing, Because usually, we do the vector search to do something. It's like the vector search is only one piece of the feature that you want to to provide. So I will give you some example, but we do Node, Like, it's kinda like a Vercel of that. I I don't want to enter, like, the founder mode, like, discussion. Like, it's a really great founder that we have and we we love him. But he has that. He always ask those questions. He always try to, architecture to some extent on the back end. So here here's a question.

You need a bunch of senior people. You need to hire engineers that are product slash design engineers. So you need people that just have an eye for something that feels off and that can, like, make it right. So we are very intentional in the people that we hire. We don't hire, like, software engineers. I mean, it's kinda like a a caricature to say that we hire, like, product engineers. Everyone is saying that they they hire, like, product engineers. But a good portion of our interview process is focused with design system, Hey. Can you find the tickets, It is. It is. It is on PLG motion, like product like growth motion.

add, like, a lot of, like, you know, a ribbon. Like, I can't imagine having a ribbon with, like, a different actions for people that are very outlooky, I would Sanity help the team, I would say get better with. Are you talking, like, adding AI features to the product, or also provide that after the show. Node clearly, this is, this is doable without, without LMS. Yeah. Which is so nice because, yeah, it it that allows it to be No. No. Thanks for having me. That was super cool, guys. Great discussions, and, I would say, indoor list of contact and all of that. Asking for, like, a slot. And, like, hey. Can we meet, somewhere next week, please? on the, mostly for iOS and Android for that purpose. Being native JS a cost, we could have used Flutter or whatever, like, It make things, I would say, faster.

So, like, the education in product a module, one second, and it's ready. So you can go through, like, a 100 of emails a day, which is roughly said what I receive, like, mechanism on every single device pnpm every single choosing what to do with them? Yep. Totally. This is the type of features that might feel overkill for, like, a typical b to b SaaS company.

graph API Wes really good. And after three weeks, I was like, holy cow, this JS fast.

sending lots more because it's good for business, but then on the inbound,

to some ESLint, but and this is where the I I was mentioning in the beginning, like, the PLG motion and the education

the fact that you have so much information

And before joining, I was like, yeah. It's nice. It's beautiful.

on on our side. So the only impact is, like, you will have, like, a small notification. Hey. G Gmail is facing some issues, but that that's about it. That's about it. Alright. I think that's all for today. Anything else you wanna add before we wrap this sucker up? more history, for example, but also, like, everything that is needed for rag systems where we have, like, a dedicated, but, like, ESLint interaction that is taking more than 100 And with the Scott of like a mandate, like, Wes you come as a CTO or as a as a VPN,

I think that's the only thing I've ever submitted to feedback in the app Wes, can you get a real dark Node here?

Everyone, before we get in real quick, this is an episode with the head of engineering at Superhuman,

I feel humbled, like, now to be, like, joining you there and, maybe, like, sharing some of my, I would say, perspective or, like, experiences if I can provide some some good content. So we'll see we'll see about that. Yeah. Because you I mean, you've been you've been, you know, around a long time. You were at DocuSign for a while before. Right? And that's like a

work? Is it just simply, like, looking for

making those changes make that also takes time. And we Yarn we want to optimize locally. So, like, every single interaction needs to be thought through with dark mode now, and distributed, And, the pubsub is like the I would say that the pubsub from, from Google, approach. I remember Realm. Yeah. On the browser side, the same.

you'll want to check out Sentriads. Yeah. I was wondering about I even had on my question list given that there is, like, there is a calendar integration, and it does seem to be getting more and more. I haven't found it to be able to actually replace my phone calendar just yet, but, like,

you know, like, the how people are using it.

that is already in the team, which helps.

just before COVID Wes it was a bit, a bit crazy. So and there's some fun stories about it. But then I decided to move back to, like, smaller companies, Node start ups. Usually, Node remote setup, make me happy to pay $40 a month, design principles.

initial ICP, And to do that, sometimes,

tools like Superhuman

of the time, but it's just delightful because you you feel you're in the context. And this is something that is really important. Like, you Yarn mentioning the fact that we have a lot of features, So it's roughly said a PubSub mechanism.

things that Node is doing, for example. So we try to get rid of the clutter so that the experience feels, like, really fast, there.

barrier or, like, by extension, creation, for you. So funny enough, Superhuman moved from being the fastest email app to the most productive like, in in mind. But, no. I'm with you. I'm with you. And you know what? Even worse, I'm an Android users, user. And Android is lagging behind iOS. So, like, for my team, I complain about, like, the two things that are lagging. So it's it's it's really bad. It's really bad. I I've noticed that, you know, the two main ways that you interact with superhuman are through the command palette and keyboard shortcuts, which are Wes, most of the keyboard shortcuts are just, like, one character.

always great to to talk about, like, tech stuff. Yeah. I appreciate it. Well, thank you so much for coming on, and, appreciate all your time. Thanks, guys. Uh-huh. Peace. Thank you.

I've I've been talking to a lot of people who are starting to do especially as the

average tenure is probably around, like, three years on average, with people up to, like, six to seven years. So we have a bunch of seniority and knowledge,

how email in the future is going to look

Typical use case as well is like, you ask a question to someone or your back end for front end, like, whatever the the architecture that you're following. But typically, in a b to b SaaS company that doesn't care about speed, you would manage that there and manage, like, the pub serve back on the back end. But we want to be offline first. So you need to have that approach

Yeah. So yeah. Do you wanna tell us a little bit about, yeah, a little bit about

because we have back in history. But, like, the last days, it will feel, like, instantaneous because it's local.

able to utilize these features effectively? like, new updates. So you all are are shipping

or the framework to basically build once and and use everywhere.

so, like, the ideal customer profile, We put in place an organization some of your features, the quality, like, garbage in, garbage out, depends on the user now. How do you so that you can Node people pretty fast, without thinking about it. And to do this, we need some tones. We need some, information about, like, the past emails that you sent to those people, and you need to process the email. And everything that is generative on device is still relatively slow Mhmm. Right Node, so the experience wouldn't be great. So the question is, like, are we okay with somewhat, lightweight that has the most We decided to be, like, a very intentional.

superhuman being so good and was like, the up and down to to traverse them, and then the h to reschedule an email.

something like four or five, and only come back when you believe it will make sense. Good example is like, oh, I don't want to treat that today. I want to focus on this tomorrow.

they're focused their mobile app. And the mobile app does feel like it could be very much the same UI code Bos or anything like that. That's interesting to know that it's it's different.

coming,

maybe Superhuman

You can say like, oh, you know what? This is a great Wes, and this is a question we have internally because Wes,

processors get faster in these phones and and we have web GPU and whatnot,

coming from my board, the local data and then the keyboard shortcuts and all these things. And it really, really, I think worked out in a great way for you all. So But it has a cost. Like, one thing that is really important for people to understand, like, if you're starting your company, and this has, like, a freaking cost. Like, you need to basically understand that, the the complaint that they have, it's easier to get velocity because you know your stack, you know your code base, you know the complaints, impressive product taste. So, like, he's doing every single product reviews and design reviews in the company. Kinda like the Brian Chesky of the world at Airbnb.

massively used app. So,

So h t feels clunky. Doesn't feel superhuman. Feels too complex. We need to do something,

The dark mode, Wes, is one of the disappointingly, a technical choice based on,

the way they use it, that you can go through, And we want to implement that offline. So it needs to be present on every single device.

because, like, a lot of my knowledge and content is in my email. The the last example, over the weekend, I was working on my citizenship, So that's I mean, honestly, that's, that's a part of it. Like, we work Yarn. And the the I mean, I have freaking good engineers, to be fair. Most of the team like, the with, like, in a in a big team, so you don't manage third parties, you don't manage a board, you don't manage, like, a lot of people, you will be probably living your life in Slack way more than, hopefully, in in Slack and not in teams or like any other one. So that might not apply. But when you start to be like in leadership roles or your role, maybe you are like you're a freelancer and you spend, Pnpm would say, a lot of time in emails, So we call it carbon. We call it carbon. Yeah. But I I'm a dark mode user, and I'm complaining every freaking day.

Awesome. Yeah. This is so fascinating as a, one, a fan of local data stuff, and two, as a big time user of this app. I I sincerely appreciate all the time you've taken to to break this down for us. Yeah. And maybe, like, you want Node interesting things like our front end engineers and, like, JavaScript engineers. We have two kind of engineers, like, people working on the fast as hell,

So this is, like, typically the case where devices automatic,

So, yeah, that one to me you know, Wes, you really liked Century's

doubling our capacity and on the end users, side of things. So we do a lot locally. We do a lot locally.

So where we had, like, I like all of my setup JS done there. Like, all my filters and all. So I felt productive.

like, hidden text that we try to mess up with the LLM that is doing the classification. Like, it will become like the the typical spam, anti spam, But we all get, like, all those emails. And and honestly, to be efficient and, the number one culprit when it comes to, like,

instantaneously Sick. Wes, do you have anything else you wanna get to here?

productive. And then I tried the product during, like, when I was chatting with, like, their their teams.

certain strings and then,

So, again,

like, programmer type of ways of interacting with an app. Do you see that, like, normal people are

And search with AI as well. You know? Show me the emails that I don't know. Six months ago, somebody emailed me

but we are not cluttering the experience. Like, the experience still looks sleek. Mhmm. It's not a lot of bittains. Like, we are not adding, like, a new button. Like, every time there's a new feature, we want this to be tends to break every new version because they are I don't know what Yarn doing, but, like, they they break stuff, relatively often.

war. And, it's just like the the weapons are different right now, but it it would be Yeah. Like, we get people Node. They will ingest the transcript from the last six episodes, this is typically what people save, and they reply usually, like, 48 provide and only once in your back end, speed of execution was maybe not the first focus and all the quality just depended on us, Like, on engineers, on quality and, like, all the work that you're doing. And all all of a sudden with LLMs So the the the storage capacity JS, like, through Realm, but, like, we have this concept of modifiers.

Everything is running on GCP.

fast. It allows it to just happen. But, like, as you it it's funny that you said delight, obviously, because that seems like really what it is. But the first time it happened to me, that was the discovery moment. When you open an email, all of a sudden my calendar is open, and I'm like,

the scale up IPO So we have a modifier that we basically log, like, every single stuff that you're doing on that email. Archive, unarchived, archived, unarchived if you want to play with it. On top of it, we have, like, the undo capacity. Like, we give you, like, ten seconds because, oh, Scott. I made a typo, a typo, and I didn't choose AI to rewrite my email. No. No. No. No. No. Z, mobile. And, And AI is coming here. It's like kinda like redefining is very important for us and and our success because even the people that are not that tech savvy, our users, they don't accept okay. Yeah. They're paying a lot. Which is probably like the for the problem. Right? Change for me. Well, let's talk about that. Like,

But I just wanted to tell you because there's probably a couple keyboard warriors already in the comments being like, this is a sponsored episode. We would never do that to you. It's not sponsored at all. We've been trying to get somebody from Superhuman on for months now, and it just so happened to line up. So enjoy the episode.

it needs to happen.

about, like, all the engineering principle that we need to apply in the in the way we work. Man, that's wild to know. It it's interesting too, especially because I would have thought, you know, some of the other apps that we've used that have, like, a electron based desktop app that you would use,

to some, to some extent Yeah. Compared to the the number of, like, emails we are we are managing. But, like, the the back end on the device is pretty extensive. What code do you run on your servers? So it's Go.

There's no freaking way I can go back to Gmail. And I was like, okay. I need to understand how they do this. I need to understand how they basically

and then they will say something like, oh, I also live in Denver to Scott.

for desktop, we have basically an electron app. But, like, everything like the web app and the, desktop app basically share, like, 90% of the Node. Mhmm. Which interesting using, like, a bunch of the browser capacity for everything that is storage and everything because we are offline first. And we might talk about it, eventual consistency

Also, like, I have found that Superhuman looks different than many apps that I use. It doesn't have that same kind of, like,

that is tricky, like an email because you don't feel right about it. Like, you don't want to go to JPGPT and everything. So, like, come on, Jay, and improve writing. Boom. And you Yarn, like, this being processed.

write and basically, like, the streaming APIs are good enough to to make things, like, feel fast. Basically, it's writing faster that you can read.

processing that can happen, basically, before you open the, the app. Most of the features are like this. We still have some features like augmented writing, like you want to and, like, rewrite, like, tech industry funder.

going to our back end when they have the network.

night and day. So, like, four hours a week,

No. Yeah. Sorry. Endorsement. No. No. You're you're fine. But I have found personally because I I when I get excited about things, folks, I I tend to, like, turn into a salesman for it, so I I apologize for that.

woah.

development methodology,

email app. And part of the productivity and you get mentor, then you see how they operate, you start to build a Vercel, and you start to build, I would say, that taste. It's kinda like drinking wine. Like, We are a GCP shop.

motion is something that, are pretty intentional,

and and you mentioned,

Not yet to the point Wes we want to I would say. That there's, like, a a wide range of people within that, but, like, that's the average.

like, a podcast related or everything that is, What do you propose? So when we want to archive an email.

And, eventually, you accept the modification.

even, like how how do those types of ideas even come to people? Because No. It comes down it comes down to the product taste. So I think product taste is something that you need someone to teach you,

So, like, you know, e or enter, you know, those types of things. Right? Like, I hit e and then immediately marks an email as done. And you kinda j and k, you kinda

So it's mostly like Those startups got acquired by by bigger groups, and you see those, like, c level of startups being acquired Yeah. So so that's

Loic

what you're doing on Superhuman?

basically, like, a stack of actions,

just yeah. H t h t for the stuff I don't wanna do, today. I can take care of it tomorrow. And as somebody with,

treating those, heavy on design systems, implemented the dark mode because of the request, but we didn't do it everywhere. And as we are not

delights people.

we're gonna be talking all about how the heck this thing is so good. You Node? It it's got a army of super fans, and, I was kind of one of those people who saw a lot of people talking about,

No. No. No. Speed is not a team. Speed is like, I would say, part of the quality process. So Yeah. Everyone is looking at speed JS, something that is mandatory as part of the user experience. So it's not an afterthought. And and Mike, our chief architect, would basically say that speed needs to be, like, the first thing you would think about rather than the last thing you think about. Like, if you think about, like, building a feature, you need to understand how this would be fast I Wes I made for, like, white and clear, like, mode for, like, a long time. And then we, basically, especially when you're a see label, there are some stuff that are really crazy important and that clutter that you would love to get rid of. And now we get rid of it. Like, our users, like, everything that is marked as a pitch or marked as a marketing email, you can select auto archive it. So you don't even see it. It's not even showing up in your in your email. And then you can do some, and delight and, like, that speed is something that is an investment.

So everything is bespoke mostly I use I use this AI search, like, almost on a daily basis,

You know? Or they'll ingest, like, three episodes No. I I think that's good. I was I I was specifically going to ask about that of, like like, the logic layer it's it's awful

you know, company wide philosophies of it it being fast in quality. Right? And and you made your check technical choices to align with that, to use local data. And

understand, like, how far are you from getting to that wow moment? Like, how many steps to hit? And I've been here, like, only six months, and now I'm asking those questions. Now I'm looking at the the demo that my team now are doing. I'm like, the UDP application. And that's why we moved to, like, offline first. It's not because we wanted to support offline. It's because like, oh, everything has been treated. And you don't have to mark stuff and read because you you want to get to it at some point and everything, which is which is like the typical flow for like Gmail or Outlook.

Louis, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me, guys. I mean, I listened to some of you on I was at previous show, and it was, like, super interesting to, obviously, to listen to it. And, because that was, like, one of the design choices because we have this hundred millisecond rule for every interaction in the product, and you have to be, like, intentional about it. How many milliseconds? Notion AI to rewrite some content,

to do embeddings, like, fairly fast on device.

Welcome to Syntax.

And and that's a big part of it. Here's a product question. Will there ever be a true dark mode?

application.

Mhmm. Showing they do something.

considered is creating for you drafts that are ready to be sent. Like, you don't even have to think about it. Someone ask you a Wes, we look at your I would say Sanity, and we provide some answers that hopefully are 90% of the time. Right? And you just have to hit send. Boom. You're done.

metric that we have, and some people are crazy,

How do you mean consistency

capabilities, And the the back end is kinda like replaying everything. So we had like a a long stack of emails that we're waiting for the outage to be done and tack, tack, tack, tack, tack, tack. We basically managed, we managed that. We had some issues because of the attachment, and there were some issues with attachment because, like, we had the one bug. So it was like Yarn is crazy. And it's interesting because there's a a lot of discussion about, like, the change of user interaction with devices and voice becoming more and more important. I still believe that keyboard shortcuts, like, so much easier to detect whether

even, like,

Gmail has, like, no interest No. It's in the model. It's programmatically done. So this is typically the a place where, like, with the right reg apps and everything, like, token detection and all of that, there's a bunch of libraries that can do this. Honestly, I would need to check, like, which one we're using, discoverable, So that's, obviously, the type of things that, I I use a lot because I want to reach Bos Deno. Wes, like, one thing, like, that is really key for our users is reaching inbox zero because you just get rid of the cognitive load. And when you reach that point where you have nothing, here and there for caching.

Sanity emphasis on local optimum.

would be, like, so much easier than voice, like, for, like, doing the archive for a while. Sure. Like and and things like this. So so, yes, we are talking about it.

like, AI search is definitely something that is, I Wes, like, crazy good. The the next piece that will be, like, very interesting and probably will ship that early q three JS like someone asking, like, a friend of you already in your, like, We have a, like, small cluster, to some extent. And, JS

Wes a print of a sticker. You know? I I hate having to, like, try to hit all the keywords properly.

as what it is, and then also

that is pretty domain centric. So we have three big domains in Superhuman. The calendar experience, which is a new Node. The triage experience. So we have a team dedicated this is important. This is important. And and it's working great. It's working great. So that's that's Node, like, one way. But the same, like, you can expect those marketing people, I would say, to build some outreach,

style to it. So I would imagine that that designer kind of product developer

like, as wide as this. And my board are, like, people like this and this and this. So you can write poems now in Superhuman to classify your email so that you can see I I wouldn't say, like, services, but, like, we have one monolith.

We don't do that. Like, we basically, like, like this. So it's it's kinda like trained to some extent by being exposed to Rahul that has that,

date

there's always some sort of, like, a mandate. And and my goal was to, and the goal is to help the team embrace,

really get used to using the

it's different business strategy. The business strategy here was a a bit like Apple. We might not be the first.

So you don't need those extra stuff and those extra And then it it's kinda like using some UX tweaks to make it feel that it's instantaneous.

It's fast. Now the question is like, okay. It's better. But then would I pay in the end user. And this is typically one. You open this calendar and boom, we can we see there's a date, because the perceived quality was way more important.

so that you don't send the email. So, like, you need to have, like, and I can, like,

And they'll they'll try to make it personal.

So that's kinda like the ninety ten is like the Mhmm. The the way Wes think about it. Like, think about Gmail.

our users, they love the product, But it's stored like like JS, we Scott the emails, but, like, we have, of course, some back end capacity where we store more stuff, there. So pretty, pretty lightweight.

cold outreach that I get. I probably got 15 already this morning, and I'm I'm I'm kinda at my wit's end with my email right now. I'm just I'm sick of it because it's it's so hard

There's some, I would say, Redis,

and 10 of my last Instagram stories, and, like, they'll

is the network. Especially Wes you're talking emails and you're on your mobile phone, you have a shitty network. Like, you don't want this to be felt, drafts or, like, the classification of your email. Everything is happening on our back end. And when we open the you open the app, all your emails are filtered automatically

just, like, email overload and being able to find what is important. Because this is something I think a lot about right now JS that

a pitch that somebody had, sent me, and it clearly labeled as pitch. I didn't know you could set up your own custom auto labels, though. I haven't done any of that yet.

It is

in getting rid of the spam or, like, the marketing spam. Mhmm. Mhmm. Because, of course, Gmail is a marketing ESLint. Like, Google is a marketing engine, and that's Wes we said they are kind of like bread and butter. So they cannot just help you this way into, like, the, like, fifteen minutes at the end of the day. It's pretty awesome. I don't want the audience to think this episode is a but hidden,

Yeah. I I I I just popped open my little latest updates thing because it feels like there's always,

given that Wes level of expectations. Like, like, present of the market. So basically, all startups Wes, yeah, I would say, and still are using, like, superhuman.

remote and hybrid, in every single pieces of the, of the product. Wow. But yeah. That's that's intense.

when you when you talk about, like, this, like, top tier software that is expensive but worth it. You Node? People always think about, like like, Panic, big IO or big macOS and and iOS applications. They they produce really nice stuff. And almost always,

and sync engines and CRDTs and and those types of things. Can you can you maybe, like, talk a little bit about the tech behind what local database you are using and how the same process works? Yeah. So take everything with a grain of salt. I'm the VP edge. I'm not the engineer. Neither I'm, like, the the chief architect.

And I've got one, I would say, feature of all our users. Like, they are vector database, Well, it's, It feels so great. And to do this, basically, you postpone stuff for to when it makes sense. So usually, like, oh, yeah. I know that I want three to three, like, those type of email on Friday. H f and Friday. Beam. It's done. And, than before.

Last week, Google went down for a couple hours, and it took CloudFlare down with it as well. Correct. Did you have downtime? And what did that look like for your app?

trajectory what even the flow is. And, so that's that's one aspect. The other aspect is Wes are highly qualitative you always, like, in the focus mode. That's something that is part of our Wes, like, one thing that was interesting, like, before talking about the future of emails, like, if you look back, what was the past of email, like, everyone JS, like, basically create a business. And after three weeks, they have this And they kinda, like, trick you into using the keyboard shortcuts.

faster, productivity gain. So it's not

does Superhuman implement or can they implement that

bring us calendar the same way you save email, and and we are working on it. But Wes it means that on every single device, we need to kind of, like, adapt our we're, like, syncing engine for managing, like, the different events to, say, work with the API of Mhmm. Outlook and and Gmail. So it has a cost. It has a cost. But we do believe that, this cost is worth it because I mean, we have, like, what are the feature that will create delight, almost like back end problems

area of it's not necessarily spam,

So you cannot just wait with, like, a spinner saying, like, hey. Reviewing your comment. So for example, like, if you compare to Notion AI, if you're using,

Give it a try. Give it a try. Let me let me know. Let me know how it works. I have found the the labels, the auto labels to be super useful. I I I posted one in our show notes so Wes could see just to look at labeling

but, like, not all the population is And and it's super interesting. So I joined six months ago, very CSS oriented, very, like, detail oriented. So, yeah, you you have to you have to be intentional when you hire. And we have a lot of, like, internal trainings, I would say, coming back and recurring But, like, the same way, I would say, when you work with someone that is just great, No. No. No. I mean, this is a this is a good point. Like, the So for quite a long time, like, everything was bespoke, where feature that would make you wait, or we just don't allow it at all? And coming back to the our principles,

treating your

But the kids mostly not seen, upgrading of, like, the clutter so that you can just focus on the right thing. Wes have a team dedicated to it, and we have a team dedicated with

That parsing of the date, is that done,

responding,

allow you to just send a whole lot more email than you normally would because it it'll you just said it. It'll generate drafts. Right? And so there's there's, like, this new

like, for my trip in Japan that I believe happened in around that timeline? Boom. Boom. Boom. And I I get those emails and I have the dates and done. Like, I was done with it. So this JS, like, city examples.

one of the only things I've perfect. Yeah. First name was perfect.

I think one of the big takeaways I have from Superhuman in general is that, like,

not an incident. Like, it was an incident internally, but, like, not seen by our Wes users. Wow. So we're used to it. Like, your Outlook, We So you drink, like, shitty wine at first. You start to, like, a better taste about it, and you meet someone that is just, like, great at explaining why it feels better. And you're like, oh, you're right. I see the food now. I or, like, I can feel the hook. Now you tell it. And then you build on it, and you become, like, more expert. But you need that first person to sort of, like, open your mind about those, like, different aspects.

I felt like, it's based on, like, self, I would say first. So you need to, you know, like, learn to use them so that the experience always feel

and UI is not, like, changing substantially all the time or doesn't feel like a different app. But here's just, like, four new features I I didn't even know about. So, like, how is your team able to ship so much so quickly?

when it's just, like, high quality software, it's always, like, native. But Superhuman is not native, is it?

Well, we'll be a close second, but we will be the best. So it has a cost. It has a cost. Your sync engine, is that all custom stuff, or is that being done through Realm? Wes have access to your calendar. We have access to your availability. So we can auto draft an answer and propose, like, a slot or a set of slots that are working for you. And then you just have to basically hit Sanity and boom, you're done. So a lot of stuff like this now are possible because of LLMs that used to be, like, just impossible to do before. And if you want to see all of the errors in your application, they don't go elsewhere because the experience is so great.

you don't have AI. And, that's, that's a design choice for now. Maybe it would change eventually, control the perception of the user so that when the result is not up to their bar, they understand that they are doing something wrong and you help them, like, increase or improve their prompting and it's not that complex to find a date, like, in in a text. And boom, you pnpm, like, the, I would say, the right, sidebar. And it's probably working, like, 95% like, nitty gritty, complaining, I would say, to the bigger group saying, like, Node. No. No. No. We wanna keep it. So now we have, like, big companies basically saying to us, hey, guys. We need to standardize in superhuman, content associated with, like, the new features and all of that.

What's the choice for not doing that vector search and embeddings on device right now?

type of companies. I've been in small companies through both in, like, a massive companies earlier in my career in France, like big Scott, only receive, business logic that you would typically

fast, like, async kind of features? Wow.

platform

having to be offensive and try filter for filter all this crap out.

So and and that's tough because we we could, I would say, implement something.

That close. That close.

I think we have

one of the things Superhuman does already really well is contextually aware things. So, Wes, you might not know about this, but somebody in an email will say, like, currently, this is the way they currently work. So they'll be like, what do you think about Wednesday? When you open that email, it will actually pop open the calendar and show you Wednesday

GitHub or GitLab on a daily basis, they send you, like, some marketing but, like, we are moving away. And, we Yarn, like, at the decision process to understand which tech we will, use globally. It's kind of like a secret light,