Launching reMail Search

Quick, what's the most annoying thing about the iPhone's email client? Yup, it's the lack of email search. That's why we built reMail Search for the iPhone. And we're launching a first version today.

reMail Search doesn't just search the subject, to, and from - it's full-text search of your email, on your device.

Even better, reMail Search works offline! You can search your email when you're driving through a tunnel or when you're in a plane. Our server syncs emails you're likely to search for on the device, and you can search them even when you're offline. When you're offline, you can search your entire email archives - with older search results coming from reMail's server.


We've built a lot of smart search features into reMail Search. The feature I use the most is initials search. Typing on the little screen is hard, and the most common type of search query is for people's names. Let's say I need to find an email from Jessica Livingston at YCombinator - I type in "JL", and reMail will suggest a search for "Jessica Livingston".

Sometimes you'll want to do advanced searches from your phone. Stuff like "Only search for everything from Paul that I got last week". If you type in "paul inbox last week", reMail will detect that "paul" is a person restriction, "inbox" is a folder, and "last week" is a time restriction. No advanced search dialogs or typing search operators.

For more, check out our product website at www.remail.com.

Releasing Something New, Every Week

I'm trying something new: For the next four weeks, reMail will be releasing a new feature or product every single week.

Pretty radical, eh? Here's why I'm doing this: I'm a perfectionist and need to be constrained by time rather than "good enough". Here are the three recent events that triggered this experiment:

1. I organized a Post-YC dinner for my former batch and invited Dropbox Fouder/CEO Drew Houston to come and speak. He talked about Dropbox's private beta period, and how early audiences don't care about perfect; They care about new ideas and usefulness.
2. I built reBoxed, an experiment in email prioritization, in 3 days, with that specific deadline in mind. Despite being a work-in-progress at launch, the result was successful and gave me plenty of new ideas.
3. I need to start testing my hypotheses about email users (if you've been reading this blog, you know I have a lot of them), and there's no better way to do that than to give them a product to play with.

I have a couple of these products/features in various stages of completion, so I know roughly what I'll be doing for the next few weeks. I'm also thinking about charging for some of these products and features from the get-go, Eric-Ries-style. "Buy before you try", if you will. More on that later.

I'm leaving for a weeklong trip to Europe on May 26 to visit some friends, and that week will conclude this experiment. Until then, watch this space.