AI-Powered Productivity Startup Hoop Announces $5M in Seed Funding for To-Do List that Updates Itself
QUICK TAKE
- A productivity app for the age of AI and remote work, Hoop automatically captures tasks from video calls, email, and Slack to create a master to-do list that updates itself.
- The company was founded by three early Trello employees who each led product, ops, and marketing at the project management platform.
- Hoop has announced $5 million in seed funding, led by Index Ventures, with support from a diverse collection of investors including every member of the early Trello leadership team; Wade Foster, CEO of Zapier; and Job van der Voort, CEO of Remote.
- The team will use the funds to build new platform integrations beyond Zoom, Google Meet, and Slack, deepen Hoop’s AI capabilities, and develop collaborative features. Available to individuals now, Hoop will also soon launch for teams.
INDEX PERSPECTIVE
By Damir Becirovic and Neil Rimer
Hoop is a tool I use in every meeting, every day. It's there in the background listening, identifying, and extracting tasks. Not only that, it’s finding any actions for me in Slack, and adding it all to one to-do list, without me having to lift a finger – no searching messages and transcripts, no copying and pasting. As someone who takes many meetings each day, it’s an invaluable tool.
As a convert, you might not be surprised to hear that I’m sold on the product alone: but really, the team is why we are backing Hoop. As early employees of Trello, Stella, Brian, and Justin helped define what a modern productivity app is. Stella led marketing, Brian ops, and Justin product. All three have been known to Index for over a decade: Neil, who co-leads this investment with me, led Index’s investment in Trello back in 2014.
Now, we’re incredibly excited to see the team building something as founders. With an unrivaled level of expertise in this space, we expect them to redefine what a productivity platform looks like in the age of AI. Removing some of the stresses and distractions remote work and meetings have created by automatically identifying and tracking tasks is, after all, a prime example of AI making our working lives better and easier – for me, it’s something Hoop is already achieving.
THE DETAILS
Slack, Zoom and Google Meet all make remote meetings and work a possibility for millions of us. But it has also created a lot more noise, with teams and individuals often left searching through various Slack channels and trawling video call transcripts or chats to find actions. Often, it can be difficult to recall which channel details of a task or assignment were shared on.
Hoop fixes all of this through AI. The tool automatically aggregates tasks, creating a to-do list that writes itself – leaving users to get on with the business of work and being creative.
In contrast to the surge of AI platforms that provide seas of meeting transcripts and summaries, Hoop orients users around the tasks and actionable items that emerge from meetings and chats. It means users can be confident that everything they need to do is in one place and that nothing important will slip through the cracks.
Hoop is the brainchild of three former Trello executives – Stella Garber, Brian Schmidt, and Justin Gallagher. Trello is one of the most successful project management tools in history, and Hoop’s founding team members were early pioneers at the company. Justin led product, engineering, and design for over a decade. Stella led marketing and Brian headed operations, finance, and legal. They came together to launch Hoop in 2022 with a vision for a more sustainable way of working, free from the distractions that plague synchronous work.
“Teams increasingly work across multiple – sometimes dozens – of tools. While these technologies foster remote work, they’ve also contributed to a feeling that work is everywhere and anywhere. Keeping track of all of it only creates more work, not to mention that nagging feeling that you missed something,” explains Stella Garber, co-founder of Hoop. “We built Hoop to make it easier to get work done, giving people the confidence that they can go about their workday knowing the important stuff is being tracked, without having to play notification whack-a-mole across all their tools.”
“As companies battle to do more with less, workers are clearly more stressed and exhausted than ever,” adds Neil Rimer, co-founder of Index Ventures who co-led the investment. “Hoop works its magic to ensure that workers won’t miss any important tasks that have been assigned to them. We are already experiencing the benefits from using Hoop’s technology ourselves and are thrilled to be partnering with Hoop on this journey.”
"The Hoop team has pioneered task management before. Now they are reinventing the category again for the AI age,” continued Index Partner Damir Becirovic, who co-led the investment with Rimer. “We couldn't be more excited to back this team given their deep domain knowledge and their clarity on how AI will push work productivity forward."
Today, the company announced $5 million in seed funding, led by Index Ventures, with participation from Origin Ventures, Divergent Capital, and Chingona Ventures. A diverse group, more than half of the company’s investors are women, people of color, or both. They include every member of the early Trello leadership team; Jay Simons, former President of Atlassian; Wade Foster, CEO of Zapier; Job van der Voort, CEO of Remote; Andy Dunn, former CEO of Bonobos; Annie Duke, the first woman to win the World Series of Poker; Maria Katris, CEO/Co-founder of BuiltIn; Maggie Adhami-Boynton, CEO/Co-founder of ShopThing; and Sean Harper, CEO/Co-founder of Kin.
The team will use the funds to deepen Hoop’s AI capabilities, expand its platform integrations, and develop collaborative features. Currently available to individuals, Hoop will also soon launch a version for teams.
Published — June 5, 2024
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