Superhuman + Grammarly: A New Era for Productivity Apps?

Yesterday, I wrote about some initial concerns regarding the Superhuman acquisition.

But what if, as I asked, this acquisition is the exception to the rule, it turns out great for all involved, and we do start to see our longstanding feature wishes come to Superhuman?

Well, then, let’s turn our energy towards positivity for a moment and imagine what we might see that would improve the product?

The good news is, we don’t have to look too far. Superhuman CEO, Rahul Vohra, gave some guidance on what to expect on a recent episode of This Week in Startups.

From Rahul:

We're going to build out calendar and we're actually very close to that. Anyone who's in Superhuman today will see that. Tasks, we're going to connect calendar, tasks, and email beautifully together.

We're going to reimagine chat, redefine collaboration, pulling on everything that we've learned about work communication for the last 10 years. Then of course, as Shishir said, we're going to connect all of this up with a new way of working with agents, which we think is going to free all of us up to be more creative, more strategic and more impactful. I get it.”

So, let’s pull on these strings for a moment and envision the exciting possibilities that could be in store for us:

• New Calendar Features
  • I’m currently bouncing between Notion Calendar, Google Calendar, and Fantastical, as I still haven’t found the one app that checks all the boxes for me.
  • Can Superhuman become my only calendar app? We’ll see, as I’m pretty particular with calendars.
• Tasks
  • I wrote recently about my frustrations with Asana, Todoist, and Linear. Could Superhuman be the Goldilocks solution I’m looking for?
  • We’ll see, but I’m cautious about how Rahul ties tasks directly to Superhuman’s new forthcoming calendar features, and I’m not yet convinced that most of us want to, or should be, time-blocking our tasks, if that’s what Rahul is alluding to.
  • But if Superhuman can take on Asana or Linear, I’m here for it. If they intend to be more like a Motion or Sunsama, I’m probably less interested.
• Chat
  • This is potentially quite the bombshell. Would Superhuman take on Slack? Slack and Teams currently dominate workplace chat, but we could benefit from a new perspective on work chat.
  • But if this is merely a Gchat replacement, I’m probably not going to be very interested.
  • It’s worth mentioning that Notion acquired Slack competitor, Campsite, in late 2024, and is presumably now working to bring its own Slack competitor to the market. Therefore, it would make sense for Grammarly also to take on a workplace chat, if their goal is to be the one suite of tools that most businesses need.
  • I hope that both Notion and Grammarly are planning to shake up workplace chat. We could use more bold thinking, fresh ideas, and competition in this space.

Okay, that’s some speculation based on what we’re hearing directly from the source. But if we pull at those strings a bit more, what other features might we imagine or hope for as a result of Superhuman now having more cash and resources to refine the product?

Here are a few others that have been on my Superhuman wish list for some time:

• better team email features, including:
  • allow teammates to draft emails for one another
  • support for EAs who can help manage a shared inbox
• daily email recaps like what Every is doing with Cora
  • similar to Slack’s morning AI recaps
• better AI drafting like Fyxer and Jace that incorporates knowledge across workplace tools, from information stored in cloud files, to Slack chats (or maybe the above-mentioned Superhuman Slack replacement?)
• more seamlessly save attachments to Google Drive or OneDrive
• enterprise search
  • now that Notion has enterprise search, and Grammarly seemingly wants to take on Notion as the one suite to rule them all, then Grammarly will also need enterprise search, which I wrote about here:
  • I Work Across 7 Tools—So Why Can’t One AI Just Answer My Questions
• I'm curious what happens with Coda during all of this
  • it almost feels like the least interesting part of the new Grammarly is now Coda

What feature are you hoping for now that Superhuman has more resources? Let me know in the comments below or on Threads or BlueSky.