Why Web3 companies use Skiff Mail, Calendar, Pages, and Drive

How distributed, high-performance teams leverage Skiff's products for communicating and collaborating.

Cursors collaborating with pages, mail, and drive logos.

While Web3 might seem like a general term that characterize an abstruse set of technology, infrastructure, and finance, it may transform and re-shape every aspect of the world’s technological stack. Web3 encompasses many different areas, from cryptocurrencies and the metaverse, to decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and new layer-one blockchains. A key underlying philosophy of Web3 is the core ideological belief of moving control of platforms, information, and services away from a centralized authority, and instead spreading this authority in a democratic way, where participants, creators, and individuals can govern organizations and providers, from new email services to storage layers.This may mean owners of a particular token get to vote on any new changes to the currency’s governing protocol, such as the Ethereum Naming Service (ENS), or creators of NFTs being compensated for their work without requiring traditional media and organizations to earn exposure and make a living.The possibilities of Web3 are endless - partly driven by the space’s ability to attract talent and teams all around the world - in particular, Asia (Singapore/Taiwan), North America (New York and California), and Europe (Germany and more).There is no playbook on what a successful Web3 company looks like, where there team lives, or how they operate, but there are several common practices that have been adopted by the ever-growing number of web3 companies and organizations.

Where Web3 companies work

There have always been hubs where certain industries have concentrated. For example, financial services is largely concentrated in New York’s Wall Street, entertainment in Los Angeles, and tech in Silicon Valley. Web3 startups are not born in any geographical location and instead share one important similarity: They are all almost always working in distributed teams. Distributed teams help Web3 companies leverage employees and team members not only in different cities but often even in different countries and time zones, from New York and Paris to Warsaw and Auckland.The biggest advantage to distributed teams is their ability to attract the best talent no matter an individual’s geographic location. The cons include coordination and communication challenges arising from coworkers living in different time zones - a real and serious issue that can be alleviated or mitigated by using the right tools. GitLab has an excellent and comprehensive guide to remote work.

What productivity tools Web3 companies use

Any Web3 company needs a complete software stack to operate successfully. Requisite needs include the ability to communicate efficiently and effectively across an organization, write and collaborate on projects synchronously and asynchronously, and the ability to store company files for easy retrieval at a future date. Many teams also opt for significant community engagement, and tools that allow for community management functionality may be necessary.There are no shortage of Web2 productivity apps, email solutions, and file storage products that accomplish this. For communicating efficiently and effectively, millions of teams opt for Slack, Gmail, or the Microsoft suite. For collaborating synchronously and asynchronously: Google Docs, Notion, and the Office suite. For storing files on the cloud: Dropbox, Google Drive, and Box are popular.Yet, these tools generally fail to suit the myriad needs of distributed teams working on complex technical problems.Firstly, these companies’ modus operandi is antithetical to the philosophy and beliefs that underpin the distributed web. Most companies listed above store your data on centralized servers with minimal to no oversight. They also frequently monetize and collect your data and sell it to third parties, or sell ads directly to you - all not ideal traits for teams that want to move towards democratized and decentralized organizations and collectives. For example, Gmail is not an end-to-end encrypted communication platform, and all message or email content (as well as all attachments) are accessible by the technology provider.Finally, distributed teams using a combination of the products above may constantly have to context switch to stay productive during the workday. Swapping from a traditional email product (Gmail/Outlook) to Discord, Notion, and Dropbox can be a dizzying experience which undermines focus, efficiency and the overall enjoyment of any work process. It also becomes challenging for teams to remember where the most critical information is stored.While many Web3 companies still use a combination the products listed above, numerous organizations have migrated to using Skiff Mail, Pages, and Drive for communication and collaboration.

Skiff: Privacy-first, Web3-native collaboration

Skiff is a comprehensive communication and collaboration ecosystem that integrates end-to-end encryption, complete privacy, and powerful collaboration into an easy-to-use experience. Today, Skiff’s product suite includes:

Skiff Mail - Privacy-first, end-to-end encrypted Web3 native mail for email and wallet email.
Skiff Pages - Privacy-first, end-to-end-encrypted real time collaboration for notes, wikis, and documents.
Skiff Drive - Privacy-first, end-to-end encrypted file storage that is also integrated with IPFS (distributed file storage).

All three products, available through any mobile or desktop browser (as well through an iOS, Android, and MacOS app) make Skiff the ideal collaboration tool for Web3 companies.We designed Skiff to meet all the most critical needs mentioned above for distributed and high-functioning teams. These include synchronizing information and communication into one platform, keeping all sensitive data private and end-to-end encrypted, and enabling seamless real-time collaboration.Skiff Mail lets teams communicate internally and externally with ease and security. Every email sent between Skiff Mail users is end-to-end encrypted, and, even for unencrypted external providers, Skiff never stores a copy of any messages sent. Furthermore, Skiff Mail is available on iOS and Android, so co-workers never need to worry about missing any important email.Skiff Pages empowers co-workers to collaborate both in real-time as well as asynchronously on a fully end-to-end encrypted feature-rich document editor. Using comments, mentions, and replies, team members can have engaging discussions over a period of days.Skiff Drive enables individuals and companies companies to store files of all types on an end-to-end encrypted platform that is also fully compatible with the InterPlanetaryFileSystem (IPFS). IPFS storage ensures that files and data are not stored in any centralized server, increasing censorship resistance and data accessibility. For many teams around the world, particularly in Web3, this is a necessity.Skiff’s full suite of products also solves the two big issues that Web3 companies may experience using a chaotic combination of Web2 tools: A lack of privacy and the challenges tracking information across numerous tools.In contrast, Skiff is built on a privacy-first platform that uses public and private keys for encryption and identity. Skiff allows teams to store data decentralized on IPFS, and allows users to sign-up, log-in, and link crypto wallet to their Skiff account. Skiff currently supports MetaMask, Coinbase Wallet, Phantom, Brave, and Unstoppable Domains, with more coming soon. Unlike typical email providers, wallet addresses are a first-class form of communication on Skiff.Skiff also allows Web3 companies to switch seamlessly and effortlessly between its products, meaning that companies no longer have to jump across several different products. Furthermore, this enables the cost-saving measures of paying for a single subscription for multiple products. Today, the world is only at the beginning of Web3, but Skiff is working tirelessly to provide the best collaboration platforms for the future.You can sign up here, or watch some of our video tutorials on our YouTube channel here.