For four years, Julia Leibowitz worked as an executive assistant and witnessed firsthand the lack of innovation in the space.
Now, she’s leading Denver’s Cabinet, a startup designed to lighten the load for assistants by organizing tasks on a comprehensive technology solution.
During her years as an executive assistant, Leibowitz said her job involved managing calendars and travel, planning events, coordinating the office, doing financial reporting and marketing. In order to accomplish all of that, she found herself fiddling with a variety of technological solutions, none of which automated more than one specific task.
It took her leaving the role to realize the opportunity in front of her.
“After four years, I left to go to grad school and realized that everyone is building technology for everyone else and the administrative workforce is completely overlooked,” she said.
So, in 2018, she and CTO Evan Kesten began developing executive assistant software startup Cabinet.
The goal was to create a software solution that brought together the disjointed tools assistants were using under one roof to streamline their jobs. During Leibowitz’s time as an EA, she said the multitude of tools she was using caused a negative effect.
“There’s so many of them out there, that it’s beyond saving you time,” she said.
While it has big ideas around tooling, Cabinet has started with a scheduling solution that sits on top of calendars like Outlook and Google Calendar.
And, to build that product out further, Cabinet recently closed a $2.6 million round of funding led by Harlem Capital and followed by Good Friends Capital, with participation by earlier investor Parade Ventures.
"I met Julia in late 2020 during her Techstars program and have been extremely impressed with her and Cabinet’s growth this past year,” said Henri Pierre-Jacques, managing partner of Harlem Capital, in a statement. “Cabinet has built a robust product that enables executive assistants at various organizations to become superstars in their roles.”
The company was selected as a startup member in Techstars NYC Accelerator in 2020 and has seen rapid adoption since launching to the public. Leibowitz recently moved to Colorado, in part for a lifestyle change, but also for the local Techstars connection in Boulder.
The three-person company is set to grow to around eight by the end of the year and will use the proceeds from this round to fuel its hiring plans.
“We’ve always been a small team, and now we’re experiencing a lot of momentum and we want to invest in the technology and to get our scheduling software into more people’s hands,” Leibowitz said.
The company is also focused on growing its product capabilities and is targeting inbox and travel management as its next pillars.
