Email startup Superhuman today launched its AI-powered instant reply feature, and the company aims to double its AI-powered capabilities this year. This feature provides him with three contextual replies as an option to quickly respond to emails.
Superhuman is built on the idea of getting your inbox to zero in the fastest way. Instant Reply is another feature that helps you receive emails quickly. Instant He Reply can be considered the equivalent of Gmail's Smart He Reply, but Superhuman says the feature is more situational and personal.
However, the core concept is the same. When you click Reply to an email, you will see three reply options. The prompts are short, but when you click on one of the options, Superhuman composes a full-length response.
As the demo video below shows, when you tap “Interested” on an email asking you to speak on a panel, the client will enter the full text, including the sender's name. You can press Tab to toggle between replies and press Enter to send your reply. The company says users who participated in the Instant Reply beta test were sending emails twice as fast.
Add AI to email
Superhuman has already released several products that utilize AI. Last year, the company announced its Superhuman AI, which allows users to draft better emails, with options to change length and tone.
In January, the company expanded this feature to its iPhone and iPad apps. In November, the startup launched an automatic summary feature that displays a one-line summary on top of emails.
Some of Superhuman's competitors are also incorporating AI-powered features into their email workflows. Shortwave, a startup founded by former Googlers, has launched AI questions for email, instant summaries, how to use AI to quickly reply to emails, and more. Readdle's Spark email client rolled out an AI assistant last year. Big technology companies like Microsoft and Google are introducing AI-powered features to Outlook and Gmail.
Rahul Bohra, co-founder and CEO of Superhuman, told TechCrunch that the company's key differentiator in terms of AI-powered capabilities is its tenacity. He pointed out that the average user uses AI to compose emails 25 times a week.
Superhuman roadmap
According to Superhuman, the first step in the AI-powered product was deploying an email assistant. The second step is to use features like automatic summaries and instant replies to make the AI work automatically without invoking it. And in the third phase, certain parts of the user's daily workflow will be replaced, such as using his AI agent to set schedules and compose complete emails on the user's behalf.
Vora said the company could turn a profit at any time and said this was a strategic decision. His CEO of the company said that the runway period he has is 5 years. So a new round of funding isn't something he thinks about on a “day-to-day basis.”
Superhuman has maintained a consistent price of $30 per month since its launch. But Vora said the company may review its pricing later this year.
He said that apart from investing in AI products, the company is focused on enhancing its services for teams.
“Imagine instead of constantly forwarding or writing emails, you could internally just share a thread. And you could post comments and reactions to that shared thread. We're thinking about transforming email from being purely for productivity purposes to a platform for smart collaboration. This is a big problem because historically email has been single-player. It was designed at a time when tools were not collaborative in nature,” Vohra says.
The company is also looking to build special edition email clients, such as Superhuman, for sales to account executives and account managers, using integrations such as Salesforce and Hubspot.