Email Overwhelm: Why We've Built Deskbot
It was 2 AM, and I was knee-deep in my email archive, searching for a crucial piece of information from a client conversation from months ago. I glanced at my phone and saw a text from Ian (@ianissoawesome): "Found that project scope yet? There's got to be a better way."
That moment of shared frustration was the spark that ignited Deskbot.
Ian and I had been in tech for years, working with clients and accumulating vast amounts of information buried in countless email threads and documents. We were no strangers to LLMs and their potential, but we hadn't seen them applied effectively to this problem - the daily struggle of retrieving specific details from historical conversations.
We didn't need better folders or more powerful search algorithms. We needed something that could understand context, parse through both emails and attachments, and quickly retrieve the exact information we needed. And it needed to work seamlessly with any email provider, without complex integrations or new apps to learn.
The solution seemed obvious: an AI assistant you could simply CC on your emails, capable of understanding and retrieving information as effectively as a human assistant, but with the speed and precision of a machine.
Building Deskbot wasn't about reinventing email management. It was about leveraging the power of LLMs to make our existing digital information work for us. We focused on engineering the right prompts and ensuring the system could maintain context across multiple interactions, making it feel like a natural, conversational experience.
Privacy and security were non-negotiable. Deskbot only sees what you CC it on and doesn't store your data long-term. Everything is processed in the moment, giving you the benefits of AI assistance without the privacy concerns.
Now, when Deskbot instantly pulls up a specific detail from a months-old conversation or helps gather all the relevant information for a client meeting, we're reminded of why we started this journey. We built Deskbot to make the knowledge buried in our digital communications instantly accessible, no matter where it's stored.
As we look to the future, we're exploring ideas like proactive reminders for commitments made in emails and automatic summarization of long threads. But at its core, Deskbot will always be about making your digital information work for you, not the other way around.
If you've ever wished for a photographic memory for every client interaction, or if you just want to reclaim some of the time you spend searching for information, sign up for the waitlist. Your future self (and your sanity) will thank you.
Deskbot is currently in closed beta, but we're excited to announce we'll be releasing it soon. Visit deskbot.cc to learn more and sign up for updates or book a demo.