Email is the central hub where work happens, but getting work done means switching among different tools. What if the data and actions in all of your tools were available everywhere you work? We're building an OS meta-layer that uses context clues to infer what you want to do, automating data flows among the most frequently used software tools, that anyone can use as quickly as they can touch-type.
Right now the two of us, Alex and Zane, work on this full-time. We're also backed by some of the world's best investors. We’re hiring a small team in San Francisco² (maybe you!) to build the future of productivity with us.
Knowledge workers spend their days tabbing and typing among tools to shuffle data around. They could be doing something more meaningful.
Take scheduling, for example, where you get meeting requests in Email but your schedule lives in Calendar so you tab over there, visually scan the interface for blocks of time when you're free, memorize those blocks, tab back over to Email, type your blocks back into the interface, memorize what you just typed, tab back over to Calendar to verify you didn't make a mistake, then rinse wash repeat until you've typed enough blocks in Email to share. That process takes 5-10 minutes every single time, and worse than being time consuming it's unpleasant rote mechanical work that vibrant creative human beings dread and computers can perform in seconds for free.
Software engineers tell machines what to do. Work gets done in integrated development environments that merge all the data and actions into one sandbox. They don't do repetitive mechanical tasks that can be automated into code. Flow state is maximized.
Software tells the other 98% of knowledge workers what to do. They're stuck using the off-the-rack designs someone else spec'd for the lowest common denominator, bought for the whole organization, and ordered everyone to use. Data and actions are siloed in specialized clients forcing people to shuttle data back and forth among screens on their computers. Work should be more meaningful than tabbing and typing.
We're so excited to see what 800M people do with the free time they get back when they can focus on everything else other than manual workflows.
¹ [Not our real name] We're building in stealth with an active ~100 user private beta, but once the pandemic threat ends, we are extremely excited to share what we've been up to since last Thanksgiving
² [What the heck is going on in the world right now] We're opening up these roles to remote workers for the next 6 months. Our plan is to return to working together in one office in San Francisco once social distancing relaxes. We'll make decisions about the future of remote workers on our team after that.