Marketing is the Mission

Skiff (acquired by Notion) built a brilliant, feature-rich email/calendar/drive alternative to the usual suspects, and it was privacy-focused and well integrated with emerging technologies. I was an early paying customer, and a bit of an evangelist - it was strong values with strong execution.

...wasn't it?

I understand why this is a great move for Notion. They're getting a proven team (I couldn't believe the feature release pace Skiff maintained) that can aid Notion's ongoing transition from a replaceable PM product into a business's core productivity suite. I get it.

I understand, at least from a VC standpoint, why this was probably a good move for Skiff. A great team takes on the biggest incumbents in the game, and survives to a career-defining exit.

But, like Keybase before, it means - no matter how amazing the tech, or how brilliant the execution - the values played out as... marketing.

My consolation is knowing there are many communities still building things they believe in, and that can compete and win in an open market.

Kudos to Proton for staying the course and expanding over the last few years into an entire suite of privacy-preserving capabilities.

And the epic team at Bluesky Social just opened up the platform to everyone; managed feeds are a beautiful moderation solution that replace centralized restrictions with real user control - one of many autonomy-enabling features.

I know there are many more. Who else is walking the walk?

The original version of this post is on LinkedIn.