[steakscience]

Seems like Proton is chasing the mythical customer that wants to run their company on the Proton suite (mail, calendar, drive, docs), because for some reason being super private is very important to the company.

I don't think this segment exists. Most companies' top priority is a no hassle and reliable stack (Google or Microsoft) and not one that is trying to catch up from a feature standpoint.

They should just focus on their main customer segment: individual users.

[seec]

I agree but I also think that individuals can benefit from this new offering. They don't have to get a Google/Microsoft account for basic office needs.

But I do agree that there are probably some better things to be done, I don't think they can be competitive long term, someone who needs just a little bit of collaboration or more advanced tools will run back to Google/Microsoft very fast.

In a way it reminds me of the Apple Office suite: kinda cool but also very limited in many ways and a nightmare to collaborate with a wide range of people. The things you might want to use it for are pretty niche...

[sdrinf]

Alternative hypothesis on "job to be done": individuals attempting to de-google themselves, at least on the productivity suite. This does involve the rest of the suite as well, as individual users do, actually, have docs on google drive.

[Sammi]

You cannot know whether a customer exists for your product until you make it and publish it.

Proton has been doing this for a while, and they still exist. This means they have validated that some users exist for their product.

[pl4nty]

and the niche customers that do need Proton's level of privacy are often more comfortable with a selfhosted product