Crafting a better work experience

Last month we decided to give ourselves a break from our co-working space and went on a week-long team retreat in the beautiful countryside of Charlevoix, Québec.

We set out to the Petite-Rivière-Saint-François village on a grey Sunday afternoon and arrived in a beautiful log cabin perched above the Saint Lawrence River. The view was stunning.

A change of pace

We knew from past retreat experiences that breaking the routine can be beneficial for productivity and new ideas. From way back into our client-work era, to building Conference Badge and Medali.st, we always got something big out of team retreats.

No specific goals were set for this one. We simply wanted to work more, with fewer distractions and more time to discuss. We firmly believe in work-life balance, but sometimes it’s just good to go all out for a few days. The key benefit was constant focus… with a view.

Working with a view 🌄 #missiveRetreat pic.twitter.com/iPUCwfnUpc

— Missive (@missiveapp) November 11, 2015

In between all the hard work we took the time for good food and relaxing spa sessions. Add a few refreshing runs rewarded with drinks and pool games and you get the dream retreat (let’s not forget Etienne’s classic late-night LoTR viewing).

Sharing the fun

Since the Airbnb “cottage” had enough space to house 12 people, we thought it’d be good to invite friends to come work with us for the week. It was a win-win situation: they got to spend a week in a nice spot and we got to have feedback on various aspects of Missive. Getting raw feedback from people you trust outside the bubble of your team is very important and surprisingly hard to get.

Late night dev is best dev 🤓#missiveRetreat pic.twitter.com/HRU1NsxxdV

— Missive (@missiveapp) November 11, 2015

All in all, going on a team retreat is like changing the tires on a racing car. You come back thirsty for new challenges with a refreshed view on your next steps and memories of good times spent together.

With Dropbox announcing they are sunsetting Mailbox, people are getting upset by the volatility hitting the email space.

The most upvoted comment on the HN thread crystallizes this frustration:

Ugh. Yet another intriguing email startup being acquired and killed off by a more-established tech company (see also: Sparrow). It’s 2015 and I still bounce around email clients every couple months because all of the major options have substantial flaws.schneidmaster

Email is rock solid. It didn’t change much over the past decade and stayed ubiquitous. However, the apps we use to consume it evolve at a frantic pace.

Is this a recent trend? Were email companies bought and sold in the past too?

We thought it might be interesting to visualize the history of all those email clients on a timeline: their start, acquisition, and discontinuation.

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It seems that each time a new platform is released, there is an influx of new email apps released to conquer the new market (web, iOS, Android). Then, big players start to acquire the winners to become the instant frontrunners in those new markets.

In 1998, Microsoft bought Hotmail and Yahoo bought RocketMail. More recently Google bought Sparrow, Microsoft acquired Accompli and Dropbox grabbed Mailbox.

The combined valuation of those last three acquisitions, $320 million, is probably another reason why so many apps are being developed since 2013.

What are your takeaways?

Notes

1. The timeline is undoubtedly incomplete; we probably have forgotten many apps, especially older ones. If so, go ahead and hit the comment section below to suggest missing ones, or open an issue on the Github repo.
2. We took inspiration from the team at sameroom.io and their Brief History of Chat Services.