"On Thursday, he announced that he has revived an idea he began working on as a student at Harvard about 10 years ago, turning it into the AI calendar-scheduling company Blockit. In a major vote of confidence, Khimji's former employer, Sequoia, led the company's $5 million seed round. "Blockit has a chance to become a $1Bn+ revenue business, and Kais will make sure it gets there," Pat Grady, Sequoia's general partner and co-steward who led the investment, wrote in a blog post."
"Unlike the current category leader Calendly, which was last valued at $3 billion and relies on users sharing links to find availability, Blockit is betting that its AI agents can master the nuance required to handle the entire scheduling process without human involvement. With Blockit, Khimji and co-founder John Hahn, who previously worked on calendar products including Timeful, Google Calendar, and Clockwise, are building what is essentially an AI social network for people's time."
"While many startups have tried to automate scheduling in the past, Khimji believes that thanks to advances in LLMs, Blockit's AI agents can handle scheduling more seamlessly and efficiently than many of its predecessors, including now-defunct startups Clara Labs and x.ai. (Yes, that domain name ended up with Elon Musk's AI company.) "It always felt very odd. I have a time database-my calendar. You have a time database-your calendar, and our databases just can't talk to each other," Khimji told TechCrunch. Khimji says that Blockit can finally solve this disconnection."
Kais Khimji relaunched a decade-old Harvard idea as Blockit, an AI calendar-scheduling startup that uses LLM-powered agents to negotiate meetings without user intervention. Sequoia led a $5 million seed round and signaled belief in a potential $1 billion-plus revenue outcome. Co-founder John Hahn brings prior calendar-product experience from Timeful, Google Calendar, and Clockwise. Blockit aims to function as an AI social network for people’s time and to solve the disconnect between individual calendars. The company positions itself as more nuanced and autonomous than link-based tools and past automated-scheduling attempts.
Read at TechCrunch
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