----

Empirically, the way to do really big things seems to be to start with deceptively small things. Want to dominate microcomputer software? Start by writing a Basic interpreter for a machine with a few thousand users. Want to make the universal web site? Start by building a site for Harvard undergrads to stalk one another.

...

I think the way to use these big ideas is not to try to identify a precise point in the future and then ask yourself how to get from here to there, like the popular image of a visionary. You'll be better off if you operate like Columbus and just head in a general westerly direction. Don't try to construct the future like a building, because your current blueprint is almost certainly mistaken. Start with something you know works, and when you expand, expand westward.

The popular image of the visionary is someone with a clear view of the future, but empirically it may be better to have a blurry one.

----

Paul Graham, on Frighteningly Ambitious Start-up Ideas.

http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html

Like Columbus, right.

Isn't that funny that even the metaphor we use for such kind of stuff is some yahoo that got the radius of Earth wrong and survived just by accident?

That's not a flaw in the metaphor. The whole point is that your plans are likely wrong and that the riches go to the ones who execute rather than the ones that spend all of their time on a perfect plan.

I actually like that since I've always thought like that, it's nice to see in reading (and better explained). However it has its downside, it's easy to fall into pitfalls where you can't decide which path to take. As opposite of having a vision, basically means you know where to go and what to do. I am constantly suffering from making decisions that seem important and of similar value.

Do you think no one has fixed email because the problem is too hard, or because there is a lack of creative/ambitious founders?

The main reason is that you need to be backward compatible with 30 years of terrible hacks. That's why there's a ton of vaporware email clients --- there's a huge amount of work that most of your users don't suspect.

Full-disclosure: I work at a company building an open source email client (https://nylas.com/N1) and an API to simplify email (https://nylas.com/docs)

Well, it's from some time that I've been looking for a modern and open source email client, but N1 looks very promising.

Little question: do you plan to support PGP?

It's in development by several N1 users: https://github.com/nylas/N1/issues/96

Maybe because, despite all the noise, e-mail doesn't need fixing? It works, and pretty well too.

I have a project I was at first very excited about but then later paused working on as I discovered more about the email ecosystem. The reason I was excited about it at first was because email is--in theory--decentralized, this part was very attractive to me because I thought this was one potential way to disrupt all existing content silos. However the more I worked on it the more I found out how "centralized" it is when it comes to consumer email. If you take a look around there are only a handful of popular email providers (gmail, yahoo mail, microsoft, etc.) Rest of them are indies. I felt like building a consumer email client (or anything that utilizes consumer email) is as limited as building a twitter client, you're essentially tapping into a big platform. This is why I ran out of steam and put the idea on shelf until I come up with a compelling reason to start working on it again. I wasn't motivated enough.

Sorry, but I personally do not know the answer. I'd like to refer you to dmbaggett of Crash Bandi Coot and ITA Software fame who's currently working on fixing email:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10732512

This isn't about fixing email, it's about building big things off small ideas.

Microsoft didn't just turn into the biggest BASIC software company.

The point is that the outcome can often be unrecognizable from the origin, and not to worry to much about the endpoint, but focus on doing one thing well at the start.

No-one's "fixed" email because of the network effect. You think trying to break into the social networking space is bad? Consider that everyone who does use social networking has an email address, along with almost everyone who doesn't.

It also highly depends on your office culture around email, and how it affects your personal workflow.

At one job, it was like writing letters to fellow warriors across continents. You'd try to be thoughtful, taking a day or more to write really concrete and informational pieces. At another job it was basically the office instant messenger, replies were expected within 10 minutes of almost all email. Having direct reports changes a lot of how you're communicated with as well.

Right now I've been using notmuch+org-mode (to do list management that can link to emails, files, websites, etc), and so now I file tasks called "Read X" if it doesn't need immediate response, or archive/mark as read if I don't need to read it. Things that take less than a few minutes I do right away.

Once you take things as merely inputs to your personal management system, you no longer have to worry about how an app pushes it's workflow on you, you have an external one. This is why text files/physical papers are amazing - it's the lack of an interface that lets you organize things in whatever fashion makes sense.

Then don't use it. It's clearly designed for a specific use case and there's no reason to expect that use case to apply to every user of email.

That assumption is the premise of "Inbox 0" which the author uses for inspiration. It considers email to be a ToDo list that any contact can post to.

I really like emptying my inbox now, but at the same time I sort of agree with you. Inbox's views can give you both, though: You can snooze messages you don't want to deal with right now and space them out based on how soon you think you might want to pay attention to them. Yet you can also at any time go in and look at the full list of messages.

It's nice as one more way of figuring out what to prioritise.

This is how I've come to use email, but the issue is the lack/limit of easy ways to make sure things don't get lost in the feed. It is easy for stuff to pile up, and that's been a real struggle for me to manage. I've given up on having inbox zero.