Serif: The AI agent that thinks like you - and writes your emails for you

(4 minutes)

Hi 👋, this is the Today in AI Newsletter: The weekly newsletter bringing you one step closer to building your own startup. 

We analyze a cool, industry-shaping AI startup every week, with a full breakdown of what they do, how they make money, how much they’ve raised, and the opportunity ahead.

Let’s get to the good stuff in this email:

• 📥 This tool literally drafts entire emails without you having to lift a finger

• 📈They've written 1M+ emails for over 45,000 professionals to draft emails, manage follow-ups, and tame inbox chaos

• 🚀 The team spent 13 months in stealth, built by just 3 engineers, and still turned down Y Combinator

So what’s the startup and who are the founders behind it? Here’s the story of Serif 📈

Serif is a next-gen AI assistant built to handle every email on your behalf.

It connects to your Gmail or Outlook, trains itself on your voice and workflow, and starts handling your inbox - drafting replies, organizing threads, sending reminders, and even scheduling meetings. 📅

It’s like hiring an exec assistant that never sleeps and knows exactly how you think. 

The vision? To give you peace of mind, starting with your most painful tool: email. 📨

Backstory 👀

Kevin Yang grew up in North Carolina. When his father lost his vision, Kevin became his digital assistant: reading emails, navigating screens, and explaining how software worked. 🧑‍💻

That experience shaped his worldview 🌎: 

"Most software is crap. If I build something, it needs to feel intuitive. No instructions. No learning curve."

He carried that ethos to Stanford, where he met James Liu, an ex-Retool engineer with stints at Uber and Stanford Vision Lab. 

Together they founded their first company, Include - a powerful automation tool. 🤖

The problem? 🤔 It was a cool hammer with no nails. Nobody needed it.

Lesson learned: start with the user, not the tech.

So they did. And the idea for Serif was born.

The Hustle 💸

They built the first prototype of Serif around a painful truth: 

Inbox zero is a myth. Professionals are drowning in email, with no help, no time, and zero margin for error. ❌

Early development was rough. Writing AI email replies that understood tone, context, and nuance (talking to your cofounder vs. your mom??) took months of iteration. ⚙️

After launch, they did 100+ customer interviews in a week. Feedback was clear:

• Some users were obsessed
  
  

• Others quit within days
  

Why? Training wasn’t consistent enough. So they rebuilt their onboarding and built out personal playbooks. 📖

Then they shocked the startup world:

They turned down Y Combinator. 🤯

Why? They felt the pressure to ship fast would kill the product's soul. Instead, they chose to build something right, even if it took longer.

Stats 📊

📈Fast forward to today, Serif has drafted over 1 million emails and is used by over 45,000 professionals.

💌 64% of drafts written by Serif are now sent without edits. This will only get better.

💲 At OpenArt AI alone, Serif helped save about $6,000 per month with just one support person.

💸 They currently have a 7-day free trial, but after that it’s $20/month for Essentials, and $45/month for Pro.

Try it out here!!

The Opportunity 🚀

Serif is just getting started.

Here’s what’s coming:

• 6-month roadmap: Confidently handle reminders, follow-ups, and meeting scheduling without input
  

• 12-month vision: A fully autonomous assistant that takes actions proactively - like pinging your CRM and reviving cold leads
  

• Vertical playbooks: Out-of-the-box assistants for real estate, law, recruiting, and agencies
  

• HubSpot and CRM integrations to turn email into revenue
  

• A future where one person + Serif = a billion-dollar business

Serif isn’t just building another productivity tool.

They’re building a new class of trusted, human-like AI agents that help you run your life - without breaking your flow. 🌊

Before you go 👋

Thank you for reading.

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