Our story

Let's skip the usual narrative. You know the one—three visionaries meet at a prestigious university, have an "aha moment" in a garage, overcome impossible odds, and emerge with a world-changing product. In reality, we're far from those stories.

Here's our actual situation: We're building something different. It's 2025, and we're deeply focused on crafting an email experience that truly matters. No dramatic origin story, no against-all-odds triumph. Just three friends with extensive expertise who are genuinely tired of how email works and committed to fixing it.

The team behind Merin

We're not random strangers who met at an accelerator. Adrian and Michael have been childhood friends. Adrian met Shubhaankar during their first week at UBC. We're just friends who've spent years complaining about our inboxes.

Our backgrounds span machine learning (Adrian has applied machine learning to build AI systems and predictive analytics tools, Michael works at AIModels) and open-source development (Shubhaankar maintains go-chi with 20K+ stars). But our most important qualification? We're power users who are genuinely frustrated with the current state of email.

Our approach: AI-first, not AI-bolted-on

We've all tried Superhuman. We've each paid the $30/month. It's fast and pretty, but after the initial dopamine hit of keyboard shortcuts and minimal UI, we realized something: the AI features feel tacked on, and we're still spending way too much time in our inboxes.

Most companies build a better UI, add some AI features as bullet points on the pricing page, and call it innovation. We're taking the opposite approach: rebuilding email around AI from the ground up. This isn't about automatically categorizing emails or generating generic replies. It's about creating an email experience that truly understands the context of your communications and relationships.

Why open source matters

When we say Merin is open source, we mean that the core email client will be available on GitHub, fully transparent and free for anyone to use, modify, and contribute to.

For users, this means several important things:

• You can inspect exactly how your data is being handled
• You can customize the client to fit your specific needs
• You'll never be locked into a platform that suddenly changes its terms
• You benefit from community-driven improvements and security audits

Our business model separates the open-source foundation from our premium AI features. The core email client—with its speed, design, and functionality—remains open and free, while our advanced AI capabilities will be offered as premium features. This approach allows us to maintain a sustainable business while still contributing a valuable open-source tool to the community.

Where we are now

We're in active development with a clear roadmap ahead. We have the vision, we have the technical expertise, and we're deliberately taking a thoughtful approach to development. We're being transparent about our journey because we want to build with our early supporters, not just for them.

The challenges ahead

Building an email client is technically challenging. Email protocols are ancient and complex. User expectations are high. The competition is fierce. And balancing open-source with sustainable monetization is tricky.

We're going to hit roadblocks. Some features will take longer than we expect. Some ideas won't work at all. But we're committed to sharing this process openly rather than presenting a polished illusion.