The SaaS Podcast

Olof Mathe, Mixmax

Competitive Differentiation Against Gmail Got 10K Users

Olof Mathe is the co-founder and CEO of MixMax, a productivity tool for Gmail. MixMax lets you track emails, set up meetings, save time with email templates, and schedule emails to be sent later. In 2011, Chanpory Rith was a UX designer working at Google. His job was to make the Gmail iOS app better. He proposed adding features like scheduling and email tracking to make Gmail more useful for businesses. But those features just were not a priority for Gmail's broader user base. Chanpory loved his job but hated the killer 2-hour commute. Eventually, he left Google and joined a local startup. That is where he met two guys who would later become his co-founders. Olof Mathe was a product manager and Brad Vogel was an engineer. All three considered themselves communication geeks. They would often talk about how difficult some of their tools were and brainstormed how to make better communication tools. And that is when Chanpory told them about the idea he had years ago to make email for work better. There was just one big problem. The email market was dominated by Gmail. And Google already had a consumer and a business version of Gmail. How could they possibly compete with Google? They realized that competitive differentiation did not mean replacing Google. It meant building a product that would make Gmail better. And that is what they set out to do with MixMax. Their strategy paid off. In 5 years since they launched, they have grown MixMax to over 10,000 customers and generate around $5 million in annual recurring revenue. They raised $13 million in funding and built a team of 48 people - all through competitive differentiation that turned a potential weakness into a strength.