Making Email Feel Like Chat
Jacob Wenger, CPO at Shortwave, on building a standalone business on email
Email is not losing because the protocol stopped mattering, it is losing because chat apps made communication feel faster, lighter, and more social while email stayed heavy and slow. Inside companies, email still owns external workflows like sales, recruiting, and customer communication, but internal coordination moved to Slack and Teams because they add real time delivery, presence, quick reactions, and thread level teamwork that standard inboxes never really built in.
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The practical shift is from one tool to two. Teams now handle customer and partner communication in email, then jump to Slack or Teams to discuss the same thread with coworkers. Products like Front grew by collapsing that split and letting users tag teammates, assign threads, and chat inside the inbox itself.
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On the consumer side, the same pattern played out even more clearly. iMessage and WhatsApp won casual conversation because they feel instant and expressive. Shortwave is betting email can win back some of that behavior by making threads look and behave more like chat, with shorter messages, hidden signatures, and faster feedback loops.
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This also explains the product split among modern email startups. Superhuman focuses on speed for expert users trying to clear inboxes fast. Shortwave is aiming at median workers who need an easier default workflow. The opening is not new email demand, it is redesigning old email jobs so normal people can handle them with less friction.
The next phase is email clients becoming coordination layers rather than passive inboxes. The winners will make email feel closer to messaging for individuals, then add team collaboration, automation, and app integrations on top. That is how email shifts from a cluttered archive back into an active place where work actually gets done.