HEY's ethical, paid design gives it an advantage over Gmail
The main designer of Basecamp and HEY, Jonas Downey, said this on twitter:
The main takeaway: your business model is the foundation of all the product decisions you make. If you start with a respectful business model and an ethical mindset, you will be able to build things that other companies can't (because they're beholden to investors or ad revenue.)
This gives you a competitive advantage. For example, it'd be hard for Gmail to adopt HEY's Screener feature, because the whole point is to reduce the email you get.
But Gmail wants you looking at MORE email so they can show you ads. The two models are fundamentally opposed.
So Gmail is selling attention which means that it's NEVER going to avoid you getting too many emails, or help you check it less!
Also see:
Business Model Based on Manipulation
When you're designing a product, think about who you're putting first: your customers (the real people using it), or your business?
If you can't put people first without also hurting your business, then your business model is probably based on manipulation.
Growing big is often bad for the world
We also have to change our framing for what "business success" means. Growing a company to Facebook's scale looks great on a balance sheet, but it's provably bad for the world. Unicorn growth is a mutant aberration, not the norm. We must aspire to simple sustainability instead.
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