Heyday lands $6M to build a knowledge base from the services you already use – Nob6

Ever spend a lot too lengthy making an attempt — and failing — to rediscover articles you’ve partially learn? This reporter’s been there, and it appears I’m not the one one. In line with a 2021 Carnegie Mellon study on browser tab utilization, many members admitted to feeling overwhelmed by the quantity of tabs they stored open however had been compelled to not shut them out of concern of lacking out on priceless data.

Samiur Rahman is accustomed to the sensation — a lot in order that he co-created a product, Heyday, to alleviate it. Launched in 2021, Heyday is designed to mechanically save net pages and pull in content material from cloud apps, resurfacing the content material alongside search engine outcomes and curating it right into a information base.

Buyers embody Spark Capital, which led a $6.5 million seed spherical within the firm that closed as we speak. Summary Ventures, Packy McCormick’s Not Boring syndicate, Experience Ventures, Spacecadet Ventures and several other angel traders participated.

“I co-founded Heyday in 2021 with Sam DeBrule. Sam and I had just lately shut down a product within the information administration area that did not get traction,” Rahman advised Nob6 through electronic mail. Rahman was beforehand a software program engineer at Amazon, whereas DeBrule co-founded two startups, Ventfull and Tempo, earlier than becoming a member of Heyday. “Within the means of constructing the product, we met a bunch of early adopters who felt underserved by fashionable information administration instruments that require fixed guide enter. We had been nonetheless obsessed with serving to individuals deal with data overload, so we determined to make use of our experience in machine studying to construct a product that depends closely on automation to free individuals up from repetitive duties and use their data extra successfully.”

Heyday, whose shopper comes within the type of a browser extension (for Chrome, Firefox, Courageous, Edge and Vivaldi) and apps for desktop or iOS, can pull in information, hyperlinks, browser histories and conversations from platforms together with Google Docs, Dropbox, Slack and Twitter. Throughout setup, customers point out subjects of curiosity to them, join their accounts and optionally join a each day “Flashback” electronic mail that resurfaces just lately researched topics. Searches may be performed within the consumer’s public engine of selection (e.g. Google, Bing) or from Heyday’s search interface, which acknowledges prompts for issues like calendar occasions, file varieties and even recipes and Twitter profiles.

Powering the system is an AI mannequin educated on greater than 15GB of English textual content scraped from the net, which performs “similarity scoring” for every search to match content material based mostly on its semantic similarity. For each piece of content material (e.g. net web page or doc) a consumer views, one other mannequin — fine-tuned on Heyday’s personal assortment of articles and tags — predicts associated subjects that might be urged to that consumer. Extra fashions classify content material by subjects a consumer has already adopted and generate summaries for content material.

“With this, we will counsel new subjects for customers to observe and counsel content material for them to curate into present adopted subjects, to allow them to mechanically fill their very own information base,” Rahman mentioned. “The problem for founders constructing within the information administration and productiveness area is that early adopters who’re most enthusiastic about making an attempt new instruments are unlikely to be consultant of the bigger inhabitants of people that nonetheless default to Google Docs and Apple notes. We see new merchandise come alongside that get a ton of preliminary consideration from people who find themselves obsessed with productiveness, however then they fail to interrupt by to mass adoption. By constructing a product that optimizes for ease of use over depth and suppleness, founders like us have the chance to win the market.”

I’ve solely been testing Heyday for a quick whereas, however I can confidently say that it’s been useful in diving again into forgotten rabbit holes. Inside minutes of putting in the Chrome extension, Heyday highlighted articles I’d searched final week whereas researching a characteristic on “purchase now, pay later” apps.

Heyday crunches a variety of private data. However Rahman says that the platform encrypts all knowledge such that nobody however customers see their respective timelines. Any knowledge related to customers who decide to not pay for Heyday after the trial interval is deleted, as is knowledge belonging to prospects who decline to resume their subscriptions. (Heyday is free for the primary 14 days and $10 monthly after that.)

Rahman says that “individuals who do a variety of studying and analysis on-line” — content material entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs, traders and the like — are among the many preliminary Heyday adopters. It’s early days, however finally, Heyday plans to construct an expertise for groups that’ll pool collectively content material from particular person customers right into a shared information base.

“Heyday competes with instruments and different cobbled collectively techniques individuals use to recollect issues — like leaving a whole lot of browser tabs open, sending content material to themselves, and leaving electronic mail newsletters unread,” Rahman mentioned. “[We’re] well-positioned to climate potential headwinds.”

Whereas declining to disclose income figures or the dimensions of Heyday’s buyer base, Rahman mentioned that the closing of the latest spherical offers Heyday a runway that’ll final for greater than two and a half years. Heyday has 4 staff based mostly out of its San Francisco, California workplace; it plans to rent 4 extra by 2023.