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TechCrunch50 – One Year Later
Wow, has it really been a year since we launched into beta at TechCrunch50 in September, 2008?
It was a lot of fun to attend TechCrunch50 2009 as an exhibitor and attendee this time, and not have the pressure of presenting. It's still an incredible networking event and I really enjoy seeing the company pitches. TechCrunch was very generous to invite their alumni companies back and to give us space in the demo pit.
The skinny
So what's happened since then? We came out of beta and launched three new products – our Premium service, Gmail integration, and Yahoo! Mail integration. Partnering with Yahoo! Mail has helped us to reach a critical milestone of 100,000 users! We have a strong upgrade rate to the Premium service and a very high retention rate.
What do we need to improve? We've had some growing pains as we've scaled the service. We are implementing some major database improvements this week that we think will address a problem that made our website slow to use and also slowed down the frequency at which we check Yahoo! Mail and Gmail accounts. We also need to improve the way our IMAP server works and fix some bugs that have been lingering.
- We need to make things faster.
- We need to make things more reliable.
You can expect to see some big improvements in October!
SXSW
Well, we launched to the public at South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) in March 2009 and at the same time released our Gmail Organizer. SXSW was a LOT of fun! If you didn’t come by our booth to hang out with the OtherInbox Team, try to win a mailbox full of cash, or get the chance to take a picture with Mr. Spam, you missed out! We had a blast spreading the excitement about our launch; we even have the pictures to prove it! Most importantly, we enjoyed meeting many of our beta users in person!
Yahoo! Mail Automatic Organizer
Yahoo! Mail is the largest email provider in the world and has always been an innovator – so of course we had our eye on them. When Yahoo! introduced their Applications platform, we jumped at the opportunity and fortunately they were already familiar with us because of TechCrunch50. In June we launched the Automatic Organizer beta in Yahoo! Mail and in September opened it up to every Yahoo! Mail user in the United States.
Click here to try it out on your Yahoo! Mail account!
Gmail
We released our Gmail Organizer in March and then got straight to work on the Yahoo! Mail Organizer. Now we're taking another look at Gmail and identifying how we can improve it. Please read this blog post for more details and add your comments!
Giving back to our Community
We're proud to live in Austin, Texas and we give back to our community by volunteering and supporting local causes. This year we helped the Austin Entrepreneur's Foundation to paint a local school and packed bags at Meals on Wheels. We also host the local Austin on Rails user group meetings at our office once a month.
What a team. We're hiring!
None of these successes would be possible without an amazing team. The OtherInbox Team is a group of talented individuals who are dedicated, high-spirited, and enjoy working together. They are absolute rockstars. We all work hard but we have fun doing it. We are also looking to expand, so if you know anyone who enjoys a fun and flexible startup environment and values a sense of community, check out the open job positions!
What's next?
- We're working to make our Yahoo! Mail Automatic Organizer faster and smarter
- We're upgrading our premium website to make it faster
- We're adding more calendar functionality
- We're looking at how we might integrate with Google Wave
- What else? Give us your suggestion here
Thank you
I want to sincerely say thank you for believing in OtherInbox and supporting us over the past year. A year from now I hope to be celebrating our 1 million user milestone!
Joshua Baer
Founder & CEO
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