Unified Inbox

Industry	Software Client
Founded	2012
Headquarters	Waiheke Island, New Zealand
Key people	Toby Ruckert, Markus Lehnert
Website	https://unifiedinbox.com/

Unified Inbox is a software client that gathers communication channels—such as email, Facebook, SMS messages—into a single interface. Podium Ventures dubbed Unified Inbox as a startup to watch in 2012. Business Insider ranked the company #11 on its 2012 Startup List. The company is based on Waiheke Island, New Zealand and run by CEO Toby Ruckert.^[1][2]

History [edit]

Founder Toby Ruckert began developing Unified Inbox in 2008 and officially launched in 2012. Ruckert had experience starting several e-commerce businesses—his “great passion”^[2]—including the ultraviolet light bulb manufacturer and retailer Viva-lite.com and the natural health store Wellness-Shop.com.^[3] The difficulty of keeping up with both internal and external communication for Wellness-Shop.com motivated Ruckert to develop the Unified Inbox idea. The founder often cites a study that concluded that information overload costs the U.S. economy almost $1 trillion each year.^[2]

Markus Lehnert, the former global head of a large European software company and an investment banker, joined Ruckert to co-found the Unified Inbox company.^[4][5] Profits from Ruckert’s other businesses, as well as some angel investment, funded the start-up.^[2]

Because of the complexity of integrating so many different channels, designing the Unified Inbox software took some time: it was in development for four years. In 2009, the company applied for a patent, which took two years to be granted. Feedback on early designs of the software led to a complete redesign in 2010. In April 2011, it entered public beta.^[2] Finally, in June 2012, Unified Inbox launched publicly. By then, employees had written 1.6 million lines of code, which Ruckert says was the equivalent of 25 years of working-man hours.^[6] The official kick-off event was a speech that Ruckert gave at the CommunicAsia Conference in Singapore, titled “2012—The Year of Overload.” ^[3][6]

The long development process saw an increase in the number of competitors: Ruckert described the number of competing products as increasing from “one or two a year” when they started to “every week” by the time they launched.^[7] Nevertheless, the company attracted attention by ranking #11 on the 2012 Business Insider Startup List and being the only New Zealand-based company on the list of more than 200.^[1][3]

The company is currently in conversations with internet service providers, telecoms, and e-commerce service providers about integrating Unified Inbox into their systems.^[6] Unified Inbox employs 12 staff members around the globe: eight staff members work in research and development, three in design and management, and one in customer service.^[2] In addition to the New Zealand office, there is a virtual office in San Francisco.

Unified Inbox has been active in supporting other New Zealand start-ups, sponsoring and participating in the non-profit Start-Up Weekend events in Auckland and Palmerston North.^[8][9]

In February 2013, Unified Inbox acquired HelloInbox; a specialist iPhone providor of unified inbox services.^[10]

Product [edit]

Unified Inbox is currently a web-based program, and is accessible on any device with internet access. The program can aggregate accounts from: email providers; the social networks Facebook, and Twitter; Basecamp; Dropbox; Evernote; Google Calendar; and other cloud-based apps.^[11]

As the name of the program implies, messages from all of these sources are assembled into a single inbox that appears on sign-in. The program uses a filter to cut down on information overload, and has a unified archive and folder-sorting system.

Both individual users and teams in collaborative environments can use Unified Inbox. For companies and organizations, the Unified Inbox is designed to integrate external and internal communication in a way that makes it simpler to manage tasks. For example, if a help-desk ticket or a customer complaint comes in to an organization, a user can label the message, comment and hold a conversation on the message, and assign the message to another team member as a task.^[2] The history of actions taken on each message is also available. Unified Inbox’s focus is the B2B market, and e-commerce businesses are its primary consumer base.^[12]

In addition to reading messages from several platforms at once, users may also post to several different platforms simultaneously. An optional bookmarklet allows users to share details from websites on social media or in private messages, without leaving their web browser. Other features include reminders and follow-ups integrated with Google Calendar, and an optional “PowerInbox App-On” that displays a Facebook window directly in the main inbox.^[13]

External links [edit]

• Unified Inbox

References [edit]

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