A Year in Review
We’re pretty proud of the way things have gone this year at izi.
We know 2017 has been a tough year in a lot of ways, so we don’t mean to brag, but we’ve made amazing strides. Maybe we didn’t stick to the workout resolutions we made this year (there’s a lot of stress eating when you build a start-up, okay?), but in terms of our company and our product, it’s been an exciting and successful journey. So let’s take a look at how far we’ve come.
We went from nothing, to something (pretty great!)
Plainly said: we’re proud to exist. When we came up with the idea for izi, it easily could have just been an idea, never helping people run better and more effective meetings. We’re happy to have made it into the realm of existence because of our hard work.
“It was hard to create a complicated software product from literally nothing,” Vat reflects. “It’s impressive and humbling to look back and realize how far we’ve come in such a short time. Every single line of code and every interface that makes up izi exists because of the hard work of our teammates.”
We made AI work for our users
Choosing to work with AI is no easy task. Yes, it’s cutting edge technology, but with a lot of under-developed frameworks and fragmented tools. Our users want excellently recorded and summarized meetings, and we made conversational AI deliver the experience they expect. We made some mistakes along the way, had to re-write things a few times, but the final product came out much better than if we had taken shortcuts.
We learned from our mistakes
At izi, we value humility and devotion to our users. That means listening and not being afraid to make the changes we need to. Early focus groups made it clear what we were a little off the mark in anticipation of our customer’s needs. They wanted a system that delivered a great user experience and total recall without compromising quality. To them, AI was a means to an end, and we were happy to oblige.
“Our customers are really willing to help us,” Sharjeel says. “We were 100% honest about our technical limitations, and they gave us great feedback and pointers that helped us build a product with broad appeal.”
We shared moments of joy
It wasn’t all drudgery! Yeah, we worked really hard, but it paid off in some really satisfying ways over the year.
According to Vat, “One of my proudest moments was finally getting all the pieces of the system working together like a well-oiled machine. Also watching the explainer video” (which if you haven’t seen, watch it here. It’s great.) “I knew izi was going to be a great product, but it was very satisfying to hear our users tell us that what we’re building could positively impact their work life.”
“Oh, there have been so many amazing moments this year,” Sharjeel agrees. “For me, the best moment was probably feedback from an early beta user. We got an email saying something along the lines of ‘this is really useful; you guys are on to something.’ Everything we did this year was to make a useful product for our customers, so it was amazing to hear first-hand that we were successful. I must have walked around with the dumbest grin on my face for the next 48 hours straight.”
We grew
We went from two guys with a dream, to an amazing team of programmers, designers, writers and marketers. We went from the back table of a library to our (trendy) co-working space in San Mateo. We went from no one knowing about us, to hundreds of people already using our beta version, and more signing up every day. It’s amazing what can happen in a year.
So, what’s next?
Alright, that’s enough time reminiscing. 2018 is around the corner and we’re already excited for our plans for the coming year.
“We’re excited to get izi into the hands of even more people,” Vat says. “Today, every professional has a computer and mobile phone. We envision that in a few years, every professional will also have an intelligent assistant like izi to do grunt work, so they can do more of the work they love.”
To support a growing code base and long list of requests from users, we want to grow our engineering team as well.
“We’re looking forward to building a great team and recruiting smart and hardworking people to join us in our journey to bring izi to every professional,” Sharjeel adds.
Thanks to all our supporters, beta users, and everyone who believed in us this year. 2017 has been great, and we’re looking forward to another amazing year of growth here at izi.
See you in the new year! And if you’ve made a resolution to be more productive in 2018, get izi to help you run more effective meetings.
