AI Startup Negotiates Your Calendar for You
▼ Summary
– Kais Khimji, a former Sequoia Capital partner, has founded the AI calendar-scheduling startup Blockit, which is based on an idea he began developing a decade ago.
– Sequoia Capital, his former employer, led Blockit’s $5 million seed round, expressing strong confidence in the company’s potential to become a billion-dollar revenue business.
– Blockit uses AI agents to autonomously handle the entire scheduling process by negotiating directly between users’ calendars, aiming to be more seamless than predecessors like Calendly.
– The system learns user preferences and context, such as meeting priority and schedule flexibility, to function like a human executive assistant.
– Blockit is already used by over 200 companies, including notable startups and VC firms, and operates on a freemium model with annual subscription plans.
For professionals drowning in the endless back-and-forth of meeting coordination, a new AI-powered solution promises to finally bring calendars into the modern age of automation. Blockit, a startup founded by former Sequoia Capital partner Kais Khimji, is launching with a $5 million seed round led by his former firm. The company aims to replace manual scheduling with intelligent agents that negotiate directly on your behalf, positioning itself as a sophisticated alternative to link-sharing tools like Calendly.
Kais Khimji spent years as a venture investor before deciding to build his own company. He revived a concept he first explored as a Harvard student, transforming it into Blockit. His background at Sequoia proved instrumental, as the firm not only backed his vision but led the seed funding. Sequoia general partner Pat Grady expressed strong confidence in the venture, stating in a blog post that Blockit has the potential to grow into a business generating over one billion dollars in revenue.
The core idea behind Blockit is to create a network where calendars can communicate directly. Khimji describes the current state of scheduling as fundamentally broken. “I have a time database, my calendar. You have a time database, your calendar, and our databases just can’t talk to each other,” he explained. Blockit’s AI agents are designed to solve this by handling the entire negotiation process. When two users need to meet, their agents converse to find a mutually agreeable time and location, eliminating the need for lengthy email chains.
Users can activate their Blockit agent by copying it on an email or messaging it within Slack. The AI then manages the logistics, adhering to personalized user preferences. These can include which meetings are fixed, which are flexible, and even daily adjustments like whether skipping lunch is acceptable. The system can be trained to understand subtle cues, such as prioritizing a request signed “Best regards” over one ending with “Cheers,” based on the perceived formality and importance.
This approach leverages what some investors term “context graphs”, the hidden logic behind decisions that typically resides only in a person’s mind. By capturing this “why,” Blockit’s agents aim to operate with the nuance of a human executive assistant. The startup differentiates itself from earlier automated schedulers, like the now-defunct Clara Labs and x.ai, by utilizing recent advances in large language models (LLMs) for more seamless interactions.
Already, more than 200 companies are using Blockit, including notable names like AI firm Together.ai, fintech company Brex, robotics startup Rogo, and venture capital firms a16z, Accel, and Index. The app offers a 30-day free trial, after which pricing is set at $1,000 per year for an individual user. A team license supporting multiple users costs $5,000 annually. With its focus on deep integration and understanding user context, Blockit is betting that the future of calendar management lies not in sharing availability, but in deploying intelligent agents to negotiate it for you.
(Source: TechCrunch)
