David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH)

They build a client for Gmail.

But you're severely constrained if you don't control the email server as well.

If you really want to move the ball forward with email, you have to control both the server and the client.

And that was the audacious mission we set out to do with Hay.

And that was...

What's funny, I thought our main obstacle here would be Gmail.

It's the 800-pound gorilla in the email space.

Something like 70% of all email in the U.S.

is sent through Gmail.

I think their world rates are probably in that neighborhood as well.

They're just absolutely huge and trying to attack an enormous...

established competitor like that, who's so actually still loved by plenty of people and is free, seems like a suicide mission.

And it was only a mission we signed up for because we had grown ambitious enough after making Basecamp for 20 years that we thought we could tackle that problem.

So I thought, hey,

This is dumb.

I would not advise anyone to go head to head with Gmail.

That seems like a suicide mission.

We're going to try anyway, because you know what?

If we fail, it's going to be fine.

We're just going to build a better email experience for me and Jason and the people at the company and our cat, and that'll be okay because we can afford to do so.