New Productivity App, Ocean

A new personal productivity app called Ocean is launching to help you triage your overloaded inbox, take action on your emails by turning them into tasks, and share your availability for meetings with others, all in one app. Gmail so heavily dominates the email market that few challengers emerge. Understanding this, Ocean made the decision to work with Gmail, not compete against it. As a third-party client, gaining a footing in the market can be difficult, but successful email apps have proven lucrative acquisitions. Yahoo bought email app Xobni for $60 million and Microsoft snapped up Accompli for $200 million in the previous decade, for instance. This market opportunity attracted co-founders Martin Dufort and Scott Lake — an early Shopify co-founder — who created BigWave Labs in early 2019 and began to tackle email. This work ultimately resulted in Ocean, an app focused on more efficient email management. The app works with Gmail or Google Workspace accounts, allowing users to turn their emails into tasks and action items so they’re not forgotten.