Post on 04-Dec-2014
description
transcript
David QuailCo-Founder, Zenlike
david@zenlike.me
Thursday, August 8, 13
the problem: An increasing number of repetitive and mundane tasks. Technology
often adds rather than assists. We want people to live more simply.
Photo: The Office (NBC)
Thursday, August 8, 13
“Tomorrow’s secretary will
be an algorithm + a commoditized
human workforce + services.
And it will automate these
mundane tasks ...”
“Help” “Here’s how we can help ...”
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
Human intelligence
Online Services
Thursday, August 8, 13
Artificial intelligence. Machine learning and natural language processing are at a stage where they can be leveraged to provide solutions to these problems.
Commoditized workforce / Crowd computing. Human intelligence has become cheap with services like Mechanical Turk. While others like oDesk have made services and labor more accessible.
Mobile phones which provide immediacy.A truly delightful solution to providing this assistance requires immediacy. Mobile phones provide this.
how it worksZenlike provides deep vertical solutions to problems including those that administrative assistants are already being paid to do. There are 3 core technologies making this possible today.
Thursday, August 8, 13
Zenlike will provide assistance for a wide array of mundane and repetitive
tasks using AI + crowd computing.
But unlike others that focus on broad, low value tasks, our first step is to
build a delightful product that goes deep in solving one very high value task - coordinating meetings - in a
seamless way.
With that, we’ll leverage the technology, user base, and marketing
to automate other high value tasks seamlessly within existing workflows -
namely email.
becoming tomorrows secretary
Thursday, August 8, 13
the first pain point to automateI coordinated a lot of one on one meetings in 2012 during and after selling my last startup to Yousendit. The process was always repetitive, and mundane.
Initiation Calendar Creation
“Wanna get together next
week?”
“How’s Thursday?”
Research locations address + participants
on Linkedin, Twitter etc.
“Send me your phone # just in case”
“Nope. Friday?”
“Sure. 3PM”
Renegotiation
“Uh oh. Friday doesn’t work
anymore. How bout Monday”
Reminders & DataCoordination
“Blue Bottle Coffee?”
Thursday, August 8, 13
I tried to find a solution ...
• Way too much friction.
• Everyone has to change behavior.
• Incremental value.
• After training my human assistant, Zirtual was an elegant solution that fit beautifully into everyones existing workflow.
• But it’s expensive for just meeting coordination
#FAIL #WIN
* Human powered assistant for $200/month
Thursday, August 8, 13
“Holy CROW”
is born
We could use artificial intelligence and crowd computing to create an even more delightful
experience of using Zirtual for meeting coordination ... AND other mundane, repetitive tasks!!!
We could be the best assistant.
Thursday, August 8, 13
enter product 1: meeting coordination• Coordinating manually is time
consuming: ~20 minutes for each meeting (emails back and forth + creating the meeting invite).
• This is hard while on a computer and impossible while on a mobile device.
• It’s not just “saving time.” Rarely do meeting invites include details about participants, or location. They should.
• Existing solutions force everyone to change your workflow, or are expensive. But an Executive assistant solution works beautifully once trained.
Thursday, August 8, 13
1. Add meetings@zenlike.me to email thread where consensus has been formed to meet.
2. Email is parsed by Zenlike and an invite is sent out including dossier information about participants.
* W
orks
from
any
em
ail c
lient
incl
udin
g m
obile
.
demo V1.0: using Zenlike to create a meeting invite from an existing thread
Thursday, August 8, 13
1. Email coordinate@zenlike.me asking to help set the meeting up.
2. Zenlike responds to everyone with available times suggested. A meeting can be booked within this email by selecting the time that works.
* W
orks
from
any
em
ail c
lient
incl
udin
g m
obile
.
demo V1.1: using Zenlike to coordinate a meeting from within email.
Thursday, August 8, 13
Zenlike in 16+ months: Zenlike provides smart assistance in the context where you need it most. After 16 months we’ll be going deep in meetings, broad in tasks, or specific to a functional area depending on what resonates most.
Thursday, August 8, 13
2010 2012 2013 2014
Dec 2010Sold Attassa to Yousendit
Mar 2012Left Yousendit
Feb 2013Founded Zenlike
May 2013Automate meeting invites (v1.0)
Aug 2013Automate meeting time / place coordination (v1.1)
2014 Q1“Smarter” meetings and Assistance for other tasks within email flows.
timeline
2014 Q3 & Q4Continued iteration on product and monetization with additional focus on growth engineering.
2013 Q4Chrome extension. (distribution channel for proactive assistance and other tasks)
2015+ IFTTT for the enterprise. *post seed
2015
Thursday, August 8, 13
affo
rdab
leexpensive
high friction
low friction
Salaried Executive Assistant
“delight”
Zenlike provides the full value of an admin assistant to everyone in a simple and affordable way.
competition
Thursday, August 8, 13
teamDavid Quail• Product. Mobile developer, marketing
• Co-Founder @ Attassa (Productivity solutions for the knowledge worker). Acquired by Yousendit
• Mobile Product lead @ Zumodrive. Acquired by Motorola/Google
Tim Fletcher• Product, web developer, UI, UX
• Cofounder @ Monogr.am
Thursday, August 8, 13
Source: http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes436011.htm
market
0 7500 15000 22500 30000
Fortune 500
SMB
Startups
Meeting CoordinationOther Admin tasks
We’re starting by solving meeting coordination and targeting startups to validate our product / revenue models. Once we do that we’ll scale vertically. Then horizontally.
Bottom up analysis• 900K US Startups = 240M external
1:1 meetings per year.
• Extracting $0.10 per meeting = $24M per year for US Startups
Top down analysis• 803K Executive/Admin Assistants
X ~$50K / year = $40B
• We’re not replacing EA’s but it’s an easy way to size how much people already pay for full administrative assistance.
(Millions)
Thursday, August 8, 13
what we’re looking for
$1M seed round (18 months) for ...• Iterating product & monetization: 7% weekly growth.
Prove customer acquisition cost << LTV.
• Technology & Data acquisition: The more data we have, the better our algorithms get. We’re funding data collection to be in a position so we can easily leverage our technology.
• Growing headcount: 4 engineers (including us), 2 AI Engineers, 1 marketing / community manager
• Overhead: (office space, travel, marketing)
Thursday, August 8, 13