For millennial working parents Mike and Maddie Bell, scheduling meetups with friends seemed to take the equivalent effort of solving a robust calculus equation.
At the very least, it required dozens of back-and-forth text messages comparing schedules and navigating nap time blocks, yoga classes or soccer games.
After seeing the scenario play out over and over again – and after “becoming so obsessed with the problem,” Mike Bell said – the couple launched Get Together AI last year. The scheduling startup’s software aims to find time for social gatherings, work meetings and appointments in seconds.
The company is using new funding, including an investment from Ohio’s largest venture capital firm, to further increase its footprint nationwide.
“People consistently say, ‘I want to better Calendly.’ I want to spend less time scheduling and more time getting together. This presents that option,” Maddie Bell said. “We believe where you spend your time is the single most important decision you make every day, and we’re passionate about helping people do that and do that well.”
Both Bells are Fortune 100 veterans-turned-startup founders
Mike Bell quit his vice president role at NielsenIQ in March 2021 to launch Get Together – essentially leaving his post the day after the company was accepted into Ocean Accelerator’s seventh cohort.
Maddie Bell, respectively, has logged more than 10 years at Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble, currently as a brand director.
The initial goal was to build an automated, predictive calendaring app – one for even the busiest of friends – that would comb their synced calendars to suggest the best opening in real time.
Get Together’s goal now is to allow for frictionless scheduling “anywhere someone sends a message,” whether it be text, email, Slack, LinkedIn or Teams, using either voice or written prompts.
That makes it ideal for work meetings – both internally and across organizations – and everyday appointments too, the Bells said.
Get Together differs from Calendly, which has more than 10 million users worldwide, or even Doodle, another scheduling app, because it doesn’t shift the burden to just one user. It responds fast even as group sizes increase.
With Get Together, calendars are also never shared.
Maddie Bell said the average employee wastes four to five hours a week scheduling meetings, while the average adult wastes 50 hours a year on hold for health and wellness visits.
“As we dug into this, we found more and more use cases,” she said. “At work, people are still struggling to find time with each other, particularly in this hybrid work environment. When I meet with people outside of my organization, saying, ‘Find time on my Calendly,’ makes me sound like a jerk. And even though you get a bajillion text reminders for vet appointments, hair appointments, AC repair appointments, no one has introduced direct appointment scheduling over text message.”
Company lands investment from Drive Capital, 11Tribes, Cincinnati groups
So far, the company has raised $1 million, including a recent infusion from Columbus-based Drive Capital, an Ohio venture juggernaut with $2.2 billion in assets under management.
Drive is now its largest investor.
"The perfect scheduling app has yet to be cracked,” Andy Jenks, general partner at Drive Capital, said. “Scheduling with Get Together feels 'magical' when you experience it. Now you can schedule anything instantly just by typing a message.”
Funding also comes from 11Tribes, a Chicago-based early-stage venture fund and recent backer of Ocean Accelerator; and 333 Ventures, a micro venture capital firm in Cincinnati. Get Together also won a Main Street Ventures “Launch” grant last year and the company took first place in respective Slack and Square “hackatons” this year.
Using Slack, for example, employees can add @GetTogether to a group direct message or channel, tell it what to schedule. The company’s patent-pending scheduling algorithm will immediately “triangulate message context, calendar availability and individual user scheduling preferences in order to find the best overall time for the group.”
Via Square, Get Together will be able to enable text-to-schedule services for each business on that payments platform.
The Bells said they’ve been able to make connections fairly organically – with both customers and investors. They said the simplicity behind the product has resonated. “We’re finding there’s other people passionate about the problem,” Maddie Bell said.
The Bells plan to use the new funds to add at least one new hire. Get Together is currently a team of four.
The next phase also includes further tech buildout with plans to expand sales and marketing efforts. So far, Get Together successfully interpreted more than 3,000 scheduling commands and counting.
Maddie Bell said Get Together’s text message platform remains free. It’s popular with book clubs, those looking to find tee times, or small church groups, she said.
Its email solution is expected to be released in beta in the coming weeks.
On the enterprise side, Get Together has onboarded 100 organizations, which collectively represent tens of thousands of users.
Currently, the company is working off a base of 600 beta testers to study usage patterns and more.
Onboarding new customers slowly is intentional, the Bells said.
“We want to delight users first, and then go find more, because those 600 users will create the next 2,000 users,” Maddie Bell said. “We want anyone to schedule anything on their favorite messaging platform in seconds without any back and forth.”
