Makes me wonder if ohlife.com was an email first startup.

Funny how ProductHunt is also an email first startup eh? :)

Great post. I really enjoyed reading it and feel like my new startup (tinkered.co) is ticking all the above boxes :-) I am a teacher and am learning as I go...thanks for the inspiring words Ryan

We (pegworks.com) went email first because it was the most universal and easy experience with our site. I think we actually prefer it.

Great article. Often forgotten. I'm creating a personalized way to prep college students for internships/jobs and connect them to hiring managers. I see no reason why I shouldn't have a "top daily resource" for people who haven't been let into the private alpha yet.

We've quickly realized how important email is. Email is probably one of the most underrated "platforms" available. It's unsexy but it works. It takes a lot though to get it right. We'll try pushing email products out first for new city launches.

What do you think about SMS-first? We tried validating that way and found it to be a pretty quick way to validate too especially with a demographic that texts more than they email.

Hey Ryan,
A problem I've been running into with my email-first project is sending too many emails. The service I created emails you when a webpage is updated, however if you monitor 10+ pages, that presents the possibility of 10+ emails per day.

One way I'm planning on getting around this is a digest limiting emails per days to a limit 1, but it's something I hadn't considered initially.

Great post. I'm a fan of throwing your idea against the wall and seeing what sticks. If you're interested, let me know and I'll share the project address. Would love to hear your thoughts.

Oliver

Beeminder started this way too (it was Kibotzer -- the kibitzing bot [http://blog.beeminder.com/beenamer] -- back then). Bot emails you asking for your number (eg, your weight) and sends you back a graph of your progress.

Craigslist might have been email first as well.