Email Is (Still) Amazing

There is something magical about emails, they're like throwing telepathic thoughts between each other, helping us move things forward.

And they're incredibly adaptable, flexible enough to work on any project.

But they're not letters, they're badly formatted tasks. And so our inbox has become a to do list.

Which would be the end of the story. Except for the fact that the things that make email incredibly useful - it's a simple, basic system that anyone can use - also make it utterly chaotic.

In fact it has been called a $650B drag on the economy.

So in a desperate attempt to fix the problem, we try to impose separate task and project managers. And then we end up with two problems… We have the rigid backbone of shared ideas and projects in one tool, and dynamic communication and information in email.

The Inbox Foundry - the company behind ActiveInbox - has a single reason to be. We're building a tool to compliment human frailty, that works the way you naturally do, to give you uninterrupted flow in achieving what you do in the world.

ActiveInbox's Roadmap

We were the first tool to turn Gmail into a task manager, back in 2006.

There are 3 major stages to our goal:

1) Get email under control

Empty your inbox, never forget a task in Gmail, focus on the big picture of projects, export things into other tools; and supported by a simple mobile app to achieve inbox zero on the move.

2) Integrate other tools

Close the gap between the dynamic discussion happening in email, and the backbone of your team's chosen project management tool.

3) Transform the way email works, to create the ultimate to do list in your life

By using email, the world's most popular communication method, instead of fighting it we have the greatest chance of finally creating a personal management system that transforms our lives. It's ambitious, it's going to be difficult, but we're quietly confident.

Join In With Us

For over 6 years we've built ActiveInbox with our community. A community that shares problems and riffs on solutions in our public forum.

We supply: software built on the tenets of elegance, speed and fantastic support.

You supply: your pains, your daily workflows, your hopes & dreams for better solutions.

(By the way, competitors have noticed and built products around requests by the community that we couldn't do, and we don't mind - we want more people experimenting with solutions to email so we can learn, compete and improve together.)

So please feel welcome to join the community, knowing that one way or another, your input will improve real products to support you better.

Core Team

Andy Mitchell — maker of lovely products

Just a chap with an itch to scratch - I built GTDGmail (as it was known before lawyers got involved…) as a simple way to do customer support in Gmail for another startup. This was nurtured steadily in public for 6 years, and now with the confidence of our history, we're ramping up our resources to solve a big frustration in the world.

From a vague sense of duty, and at the risk of vanity, it will be a pleasure to share as much inside information as I can about our experiments in making ActiveInbox, in order to help you grow your own projects and businesses. I'll tweet links to anything I write on my personal, and mercifully rarely used, Twitter account: @andymitchell.

You can reach me any time at andym@activeinboxhq.com. Or find out more from LinkedIn.

Pete Lambert — designer of lovely products

Pete tries his best to make things look pretty, splitting his time between drawing pretty pictures and making them work on the internets.

Prior to working on ActiveInbox Pete slept most nights. He also designed and built websites and UIs for web apps.

Lisa Reynolds — meeter, greeter, supporterer

Lisa delights in thinking like a user and member of the community first, and being part of ActiveInbox second. It gives her the extraordinary gift of empathy to listen to any problems you have, help you solve them, and fight your corner with getting requested improvements put in when Andy is stamping his feet.

Mark Perkins — hacker spirit extraordinaire

Mark, in addition to being the nicest human on the team - or possibly anywhere - is a champion of The Right Way. Deterred by no technical challenge, he isn't just driving ActiveInbox towards ever more refined functionality, he's ensuring it's done to the highest standard of software craftmanship AND considering every devilish detail of the user experience.

Tom Parslow — technical True Grit

Tom, aside from being a well known speaker on the wonderous power of Python and entrepreneur behind an energy drink of very niche brand, sees the big picture of the systems he builds, meaning even the most complex projects get simplified in a way that keeps them as easily maintained as a Model T Ford.

Dan Flanagan — narrator

Being a bunch naturally inclined towards making products, our language is most suited to the arcane and technical details of making software… the kind that reduces even the most sprightly of folks into a coma. Enter Dan - he's on hand to keep you cheerfully awake with scintilating stories about what's happening and where we're going.