I would be curious what you think of the idea of Sail and Muddy being... small. Technically complex, but small in the mind of the user. Not lacking in features (you talked about that), but 'feeling small/bounded, and therefore with small divergence' to the user. Does that... fit at all with your mental model of them?
I ask because I feel like Linear, Vercel, Figma, Notion, hell even Airtable... landed 'big' (felt like a big step change) with users when they arrived for most (I was a super super early user of Notion because my friend angel invested).
I used Sail and Muddy back when and... the small vs big distinction feels like my perception of the divergence between those things that get washed out by this effect and those that don't.
I also built a canvas-based, multiplayer product during the pandemic (ohyay).
The product was social-event focused (classes, festivals, etc.) so we focused on multiplayer audio-video experiences rather than general purpose browsing.
One of my favorite memories was when someone used our collaborative YouTube playback to set up a karaoke room. WebRTC added a little latency, but it was close enough to work.
I finally wrote something about my time at sail/muddy, the last startup I was at, where we were trying to build a multiplayer browser, and a few lessons that stayed with me.
I mostly just hope it’s interesting to people thinking about new ambitious interfaces right now. with AI.
This line was golden: Sometimes we were iterating on the vision when we should have been iterating closer to user signal. The difference is subtle but it matters a lot. One converges toward something people want. The other converges toward a more elegant version of something people don't.
I’m building a way for people to build on top of the browser (https://www.hyper-frame.art). One take away for me from your article was GTM is a bigger moat than technicals (which are brutal in the fork route you went)
I ask because I feel like Linear, Vercel, Figma, Notion, hell even Airtable... landed 'big' (felt like a big step change) with users when they arrived for most (I was a super super early user of Notion because my friend angel invested).
I used Sail and Muddy back when and... the small vs big distinction feels like my perception of the divergence between those things that get washed out by this effect and those that don't.
(also DM-ed you!)
The product was social-event focused (classes, festivals, etc.) so we focused on multiplayer audio-video experiences rather than general purpose browsing.
One of my favorite memories was when someone used our collaborative YouTube playback to set up a karaoke room. WebRTC added a little latency, but it was close enough to work.
I mostly just hope it’s interesting to people thinking about new ambitious interfaces right now. with AI.
I’m building a way for people to build on top of the browser (https://www.hyper-frame.art). One take away for me from your article was GTM is a bigger moat than technicals (which are brutal in the fork route you went)