Skej: The AI Assistant Revolutionizing Meeting Scheduling
Meetings, love them or hate them, are a necessary part of professional life. However, scheduling them can be a tedious and time-consuming task. This is where Skej comes in. Skej is a startup that offers an AI assistant specifically designed to handle the drudgery of scheduling meetings. Unlike other solutions like Calendly, Skej doesn’t require users to browse through availability to find a suitable time. Instead, it seamlessly integrates with email conversations and scans for mutual availability, automatically putting the meeting on participants’ calendars.
The idea behind Skej was born out of the frustration experienced by CEO Paul Canetti, a serial entrepreneur based in New York. Canetti had previously founded and sold MAZ Systems, a no-code app development platform, and worked on another meetings startup called Bounce House. He found that while platforms like Calendly were useful, they required users to publicize their availability, which wasn’t always ideal. Canetti’s most satisfying scheduling experiences came from having a human assistant who could understand the context of meetings and make adjustments accordingly. This led to the development of an AI assistant that could replicate that level of understanding.
Using Skej is simple and doesn’t require downloading an app or visiting a website. Users can add Skej’s email address to their conversation or, in the future, use its phone number for text chats. The service works with any email platform and integrates with programs like Zoom and Google Calendar, with Outlook Calendar support coming soon.
To use Skej, users only need to add the email address and ask it to find available times in their reply. For example, when TechCrunch was scheduling an interview with Paul Canetti, he simply replied with “Skej, can you offer some times that might work this week?” The AI assistant then emailed back with options and a link to connect calendars. Once a preference was selected, Skej automatically added the meeting to the calendar.
Behind the scenes, Skej leverages various LLM models to interpret the language in emails and feed the data into its proprietary system. The “Skej brain” acts as a scheduling engine, matching different people in different time zones with conflicting preferences to find a suitable time. It then crafts a natural-sounding message using LLM technology.
Skej also allows users to categorize contacts and associate them with different calendars, such as work or personal calendars. In the future, Skej aims to enable this categorization through natural language. Currently, users can set preferences and integrations through a traditional dashboard.
Interestingly, Skej has no plans to develop an app. The team wants to remain agnostic to users’ preferred tools and workflows, adapting to their existing systems seamlessly. Skej’s pre-seed investors include Betaworks, Mozilla Ventures, and Stem AI, among others. The service is currently in public beta and is being used by over 1,000 users. While it is currently free, Skej plans to introduce a paid tier in the future.
In conclusion, Skej is revolutionizing meeting scheduling by harnessing the power of AI. By eliminating the need for manual availability browsing and seamlessly integrating with existing tools, Skej saves users time and frustration. Its intuitive AI assistant understands the context of meetings and negotiates different preferences to find suitable times. With its user-friendly interface and widespread compatibility, Skej is poised to transform the way we schedule meetings in the future.