Artificial intelligence may not yet find a way to replace Google search, but it could be useful in more specific contexts – for example, dealing with the drudgery of on a regular basis tasks akin to scheduling meetings. This is the premise of a recent startup, Skiswhich offers an AI assistant which you can loop through your emails to find the best time for everyone to meet.
Unlike other scheduling solutions like Calendly, Skej doesn’t require you to view someone’s availability to find a meeting time. In fact, if someone sends you a link to Calendly, Skej will scan the link to find times when you are each available and then put the meeting on their calendars.
“I have never met anyone in my life who loved planning meetings,” says Skej co-founder and CEO Paul Canetti.
The New York-based serial entrepreneur, who previously founded and sold the no-code app development platform MAZ Systems, also worked on one other meeting startup called Bounce House, which was sold to Declare Health, which modified its name to Clickeasy.com, but has since was closed down. Bounce House allowed people to pay to book blocks of time with professionals akin to yoga and piano teachers.
The same founding team from previous efforts and others returned to work on Skej, including: Canettihis brother JustinChief Technology Officer Anindya Mondaland fourth co-founder, Szymon Baumer, who died of cancer three months after founding Skej in August last yr. (The team has tribute page Simon on the Skej website, crediting him with creating “the basis of today’s product.”)
As Paul explains, Calendly is useful and has built “an amazing business,” he says, but he didn’t like posting about every free time he had. The only time he was really pleased with planning was when he had a human assistant, like an EA. Unlike a technology platform, a human can easily understand the context of meetings and know whether to shuffle your calendar to accommodate someone necessary, even if you are scheduled to be busy, for example. This led to the idea of creating an AI assistant that would do the same.
To use Skej, you do not need to download the app or visit the website – just add her email address to your conversation. Later, Skej can even have a phone number that he can add to text chats. This service currently works with any email platform akin to Gmail, Outlook and others. It also currently integrates with other programs akin to Zoom and Google Calendar, and support for Outlook Calendar might be available in the next few weeks.
Using Skej only requires adding an email address to the conversation and then asking it to find meeting times in the response. For example, when TechCrunch scheduled an interview with Paul, he replied, “Skey, can you suggest a few hours that might work this week?” and the AI assistant emailed me options and a link to mechanically connect my calendar to find the time. After responding to my preferences, Skej replied that the meeting had been set and added it to my calendar.
The system works because Skej’s user – in this case Paul – has allowed him access to his calendar. The skater simply sent an invitation from the calendar on his behalf.
However, if I clicked on the attached link, Skej could mechanically book the meeting without having to repeat the booking. This last option works best for internal teams where multiple people need to meet to find a time slot that works for everyone in the group.
Under the hood, Skej uses a number of LLM models, including people who interpret the language of email messages and break it down into data fed into Skej’s proprietary system.
“Internally we call it the brain… and the Skej brain acts as a scheduling engine, almost like a matching marketplace,” Paul says. “So there may be different people in it, in different time zones, with different views, different conflicts and different preferences,” he continues. “And I try to negotiate to find a match. Then… it displays the match or suggested times or data, and LLM helps you create a message that will sound natural once it appears,” notes Paul.
Skej also allows users to categorize different contacts to associate with different calendars, akin to a work calendar or a personal calendar. Paul believes that over time Skej will find a way to enable one of these categorization also using natural language. For now, there’s a more traditional dashboard where you’ll be able to configure your preferences and integrations.
One thing Skej doesn’t plan to do is build an app.
“It’s funny, this is a question we get a lot from VCs…we think, ‘Well, you’ll eventually have an app, right?’” Paul says. But Skej, he says, is designed to “completely ignore tools that you already use and love, and that can be adapted to whatever workflow you’re already doing,” he explains.
“It doesn’t force you to use a specific app or a specific thing,” he adds.
Skej’s pre-seed investors include Betaworks, Mozilla Ventures, Stem AI, Spice Capital, Deftly.vc and Differential Ventures. The round didn’t exceed a million, Paul says. Skej’s remotely distributed team consists of three co-founders and two other full-time engineers.
The service, currently in public beta, is currently used by over 1,000 users. Skate is free for now and the team is gathering feedback, but will add a paid tier later.