It’s a tiny-but-still-annoying part of almost every meeting and phone call — once you agree to meet someone or call them, there’s still another flurry of emails as you try to decide on a time.
Tech companies large and small have tried to improve the meeting process. (I’m a fan of Doodle, myself.) Now Y combinator-backed startup Meetingbird has taken a stab at it with Meetingbird Meet.
Naturally, co-founder Henry Dornier used Meet to set up a call with me. It was a fast, easy process: He sent me a link where I could look at his availability, pick a time, book it and get an invitation sent back to my own calendar in just a few clicks. (And it all worked fine, even though I don’t have a Meetingbird account.)
But how was this different from other scheduling tools? Dornier pointed to a couple of key distinctions. First, he noted that it’s integrated with the existing Meetingbird calendar (which comes with features like collaborative note-taking), so you don’t have to manually enter your schedule into a separate product.
“It’s a great way for teams, especially, to manage all those meetings that they have together while still being able to take advantage of meeting notes and products,” Dornier said. “There’s no friction anymore between your scheduling tool and your calendar … they’re just the same thing now.”
That doesn’t mean anyone can book any empty spot on your calendar. You can also set preferences that block off times automatically — for example if, like me, you don’t like to do meetings first thing in the morning.
Second, and also useful for teams, Dornier said Meet is particularly effective with group scheduling, allowing you to see multiple users’ schedules overlayed on top of one another, and then book accordingly. Next up are further improvements that are specifically designed for larger teams.
“Basically, we wanted to sort of solve the scheduling issue once and for all,” Dornier said.