Steven Ramkumar

Building @extradotemail

[Steven Ramkumar @steveram]

One of my favorite things about @extradotemail is helping me plan weekly date nights

[extra.email @extradotemail]

If you're an iPad user who's been waiting for an email app that treats your device like the actual computer it is, the iPad version of Extra is live now.

Try it out now: https://t.co/en6rKuYms0

[sree @sreedotee]

used @extradotemail and wow I’m so smitten by the experience. insane level of detail and craft >>

[Akshay @ukieduckie]

@extradotemail this app looks legit, and the onboarding experience was delightful. i’m so excited to use it!

[iVu @WhoCntrl]

@spottedinprod @extradotemail Their intro was out of the world and never seen before. Super excited for this product.

[extra.email @extradotemail]

we launched, we went live on @tbpn! thanks for having us.

[Robert Scoble @Scobleizer]

If you use Gmail this will greatly improve your life.

[Rocket Man 🚀 @WpFactory1]

@Scobleizer @extradotemail @ngavini Calling an email app the best new app of the year in 2026 is actually impressive.

[Eugenia Kuyda @ekuyda]

one of the best product minds I've ever met - and a very cool product! congrats Naveen!

[Robert Scoble @Scobleizer]

Best new app of the year.

The best email client on iPhone I've ever used: @extradotemail

Just was announced this week to a LOT of praise here on X.

Founder @ngavini has a conversation with me about the future of software design.

One of my favorites in years. It improves Gmail 1000x.

I'm not compensated by them, but they gave me 100 invites to use. Code word: unaligned

See replies for more about this video.

By the way, another founder, @ekuyda, who runs @wabi, another really amazing iPhone app, praised it, which is why it caught my eye.

I was the 79th user of Instagram because another founder praised it and took me over to the two guys who were putting the finishing touches on it.

It always catches my eye when a company founder praises another founder.

I can not recommend Extra enough.

[Robert Scoble @Scobleizer]

On Twitter we used to do "follow Fridays" where people would recommend who to follow here on X, formerly Twitter.

I asked my AI: "Who are the best consumer product thinkers on X?"

My AI made me a list. (I just interviewed Naveen, video up tomorrow, he has developed one of the best products I've seen in years. My AI says it is exceptional and I agree).

My AI, an agent built by me and @blevlabs that reads all of X's tech community, tells me "you should interview xxxxxx."

Is AI your boss? It quickly is becoming mine.

++++++++

Here are the 20 people who are best at building consumer apps with AI right now. They are building products that are delightful, consumer-first, AI as the enabler not the product.

THE TIER 1 — Proven consumer AI founders with track records

1. Eugenia Kuyda (@ekuyda) — Wabi + Replika (35M users). Two successful consumer AI products. The most proven consumer AI founder alive. She was right about AI companions before anyone else, and she's right again with Wabi ("YouTube of apps"). The person Robert mentioned first.

2. Naveen Gavini (@ngavini) — Extra email / BuildForever. Former SVP/CPO at Pinterest for 12 years. Co-founded with Steven Ramkumar and Albert Pereta. The Extra philosophy — "solving user problems, not pitching AI" — is exactly the right consumer AI mindset. Just launched April 21.

3. Noam Shazeer (@NoamShazeer)— https://t.co/S2Wnrxjlee co-founder. 20M+ daily active users. One of the most retentive consumer AI products ever built. Shazeer left Google to build this before it was obvious.

4. Aravind Srinivas (@AravSrinivas) — Perplexity CEO. Consumer AI search with 100M+ users. Turned a research tool into a consumer product people use daily.

5. David Holz (@davidad) — Midjourney. Bootstrapped, no VC, tiny team, millions of paying subscribers. Legendary consumer AI product built on Discord. Philosophical approach to AI creativity.

TIER 2 — Building the next generation of consumer AI

6. Mikey Shulman (@MikeyShulman) — Suno. #15 on the a16z Top 100 Gen AI Consumer Apps list. Consumer AI music generation. One of the most retentive creative AI products.

7. Demi Guo (@demi_guo_) — Pika Labs. Consumer AI video generation. One of the fastest-growing creative AI apps.

8. Cristóbal Valenzuela (@c_valenzuela) — Runway ML. Consumer AI video. Has been building this longer than anyone.

9. Mati Staniszewski (@matiii) — ElevenLabs. Consumer AI voice. On every a16z edition since 2023. Voice cloning and dubbing that regular people actually use.

10. Anton Osika (@antonosika) — Lovable. Consumer vibe coding. On the a16z Top 100 list. Making software creation accessible to non-technical consumers.

11. Amjad Masad (@amasad) — Replit. Consumer coding with AI. Making programming accessible to everyone. Also an angel investor in Wabi.

TIER 3 — Consumer product veterans applying AI to existing categories

12. Rahul Vohra (@rahulvohra) — Superhuman. The gold standard for AI-powered email. Exceptional product taste. Angel investor in Extra.

13. Shreya Murthy (@shreyamurthy) — Partiful. Consumer AI event planning. One of the most delightful consumer AI apps. Angel investor in Extra.

14. Josh Miller (@joshm) — The Browser Company / Dia. Consumer AI browser. (Browser Company was acquired by Atlassian.) Dia is the consumer AI browser play.

15. Melanie Perkins (@MelanieCanva) — Canva. 200M+ users. The Magic Suite AI tools have become the most-used AI creative tools for non-technical consumers globally.

16. Ivan Zhao (@ivanhzhao) — Notion. 50%+ AI attach rate on paid plans. AI features now account for roughly half of Notion's ARR. The most successful AI integration into an existing consumer product.

17. Luis von Ahn (@LuisvonAhn) — Duolingo CEO. Duolingo has been more aggressive with AI personalization than almost any consumer app. 500M+ users.

TIER 4 — Product designers and builders to watch
18. Pietro Schirano (@skirano) — AI product designer/builder. Known for building beautiful consumer AI demos that go viral. Works at Brex but builds consumer AI on the side. One of the best product taste people in AI.

19. Suhail Doshi (@suhail) — Playground AI. Consumer AI image generation. Also built Mixpanel — understands consumer analytics and retention deeply.

20. Fidji Simo (@fidjissimo) — OpenAI Applications CEO. Former Facebook VP and Instacart CEO. Now leading consumer AI products at OpenAI. The person most responsible for how ChatGPT feels as a consumer product. Angel investor in Extra.

The pattern across all 20:

They all build products where AI is invisible infrastructure, not the feature. Naveen Gavini literally said "I think people don't really need [AI personal assistants]. People just want some of these basic problems solved." Eugenia Kuyda built Wabi so that "people who have nothing to do with coding or the tech world" can create apps. The best consumer AI builders hide the AI and sell the outcome.

The ones to watch most closely right now: Eugenia Kuyda (Wabi is early but the social mechanics are right), Naveen Gavini (Extra just launched and the product is exceptional), and Mikey Shulman (Suno has cracked retention in a category everyone said was impossible).

[Anoop Kumar @anoopkumar_ch]

Fresh take on onboarding! Love it @extradotemail

[extra.email @extradotemail]

extra! extra! we heard people like our hats. you can have one. just invite 3+ friends to extra this week.

[shreya @shreyamurthy]

When @ngavini told me about Extra I realized it actually wasn’t “better email”

It’s a personal super app; the backend is your email. Abstracted away.

Great consumer apps remove slop from our lives & replace it with joy. Extra is doing just that.

[Akshay @ukieduckie]

@Getthecheckpod @extradotemail @ngavini @Pinterest just onboarded, every product needs to onboard like this. so far, so good!

[Bo Nam @bonam]

@ngavini 24 hours on your app. Loving it.

Switched to yours from:
- Lindy
- superhuman
- openclaw gog

Still honing the categories but this is a great user experience

and omg the onboarding is incredible

[Samuel Hsiung @shsiung]

https://t.co/1EJvLXQ7cc is live on the app store! Use my code SAM100 to skip the waitlist.

[extra.email @extradotemail]

we just gave all users 3 invites. tap the 🎁 to share your invite code with friends and save them from their inboxes

[Clark Jacobson @clarkjacobson02]

Product launches don’t have to be boring.

You can have fun with them, build worlds, and create characters.

You can focus on brand and creative first and then figure out how your product fits seamlessly into that world second.

It’s the only way you will stand out in this digital age.

Thanks to the team at @extradotemail for trusting us to put together their launch vid. The app is just as fun.

[SIP @spottedinprod]

extra · juicy onboarding
by @extradotemail