Wednesday October 27, 2010 marked SaneBox’s first step into Adulthood.  We opened the site up to all gmail users and started taking paid subscriptions.

It felt like a big step so I thought I would commemorate it with a trip down memory lane:

The original idea.  2/20/2010

The first real outside user. 3/31/2010

The first middle of the night page.  4/2/2010

The launch of alpha product 4/22/2010

First major competition launches - Google Priority Inbox - 8/31/2010

The end of the alpha test 10/27/2010

What was accomplished in that 8 months? Small passonate user base, scalable stable product, key features, documentation. Hopefully, we have distinguished ourselves from Priority Inbox. Do I have regrets? I think we should have gotten here 2 months ago but even now, I don’t know where we would have cut back. 

So, you ask, how does it feel to be a 2 day old adult?

Everything is the same and yet completely different.  And all because people have started to pay for the service.  And, in that single difference, I feel enormous change. Each payment feels great - like a personal acknowledgment of the product’s value and the hard work that went into it. About 3 years ago, I started paying for services that I liked on the web and started expecting customer service. I like living in that world and don’t want to ever go back.  Gauging from the number of year and lifetime subscriptions we’ve sold, SaneBox users agree. And, we won’t let them down!