Shortwave's bet on email UX
Jacob Wenger, CPO at Shortwave, on building a standalone business on email
The real point is that bundled distribution does not kill a category when the daily workflow still feels clunky. Zoom proved that companies will pay on top of Google Workspace for a communication tool that feels faster and more reliable in practice, and Pitch shows the same pattern in presentations, where teams pay for cleaner creation, collaboration, and sharing. Shortwave is making the same bet on email, a huge habit driven workflow where even small time savings compound every day.
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Shortwave is not trying to replace Gmail infrastructure first. It sits on top of Gmail, keeps sync with the underlying account, and focuses on the part users actually touch, inbox organization, notification control, bundles, and a more chat like interface for team communication.
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The comparable with Superhuman clarifies the wedge. Superhuman built a real paid business on top of Gmail and Outlook by serving high volume power users, reaching an estimated $35M of revenue by June 2025. Shortwave aims at a broader workplace user, with simpler workflows that do not require expert habits or heavy keyboard use.
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Pitch is another proof point that people pay to escape a bundled default when the paid tool improves the core job. Its product adds polished templates, real time collaboration, branded sharing pages, and analytics, and it reached an estimated $9.4M ARR in 2024 despite Google Slides being included in Workspace.
This category is heading toward specialized layers on top of the big suites. Google and Microsoft will keep owning mail delivery, storage, and admin, while companies like Shortwave win by owning the surface where people triage messages, coordinate with teammates, and increasingly use AI to turn the inbox from a backlog into an organized work queue.