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Launch HN: April (YC S25) – Voice AI to manage your email and calendar
Hi HN, we’re Neha and Akash from April (https://tryapril.com https://tryapril.com). We are building an AI executive assistant to help you get through emails and manage your schedule, hands-free while you drive to work, or whenever else you prefer voice interaction.
Here's a demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISKwEyuQQEo#t=50 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISKwEyuQQEo#t=50
...and here's a second one showing more complex use cases: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8APprJ3-eY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8APprJ3-eY.
While driving 40 mins daily from SF to Berkeley, my inbox would flood to 30+ emails and I'd have back-to-back meetings lined up. I'd reach work already behind, then spend another hour just catching up. We figured with recent advances in voice AI, we could solve this dead time problem and start doing things on the go.
You can just speak to April and it can:
- Summarize important emails and flag what needs attention
- Send replies that I dictate (it handles the formatting and tone)
- Review my calendar and reschedule meetings on the fly
- Pull context from email threads for each meeting
- Archive/organize emails into folders
April is built using Deepgram for STT. Eleven Labs for TTS - built on top of LiveKit. We built our own MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers for Google integration, which handle auth, rate limiting, and maintain conversation context across email threads.
The most interesting part has been optimizing for lowest latency given we are a tool call heavy application. We are also trying to optimize the interruption handling and turn taking to make it feel more natural.
April is available on the AppStore (iPhone/iPad). You can try us out here https://apps.apple.com/us/app/april-ai-executive-assistant/id6747432952 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/april-ai-executive-assistant/i...
Free 3-day trial, then $14.99/mo. We'd love feedback on: Which email /calendar workflows are most painful for you? What tools beyond Gmail & Google calendar would be most valuable with a voice interface?
We’ll be in the thread all day to answer any questions, share more technical details and learn what would make April most useful to you. Comment away!
- puma4 1y ago[flagged]
- dang 1y agoEdit: when I replied to the parent comment, it consisted of the text "she?" and nothing else. (If you're going to edit a comment once it has replies, please do it in a way that allows the replies to preserve their original context. For example, you can always add "Edit" and then post additional text.) ---- original reply: ---- Can you please not post like this? We want substantive, thoughtful discussion on this site. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: the top text had this bit which I've replaced now: “she” (sorry, I can’t help anthropomorphizing) can
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- iamflimflam1 1y agoSounds very cool. Do you have concerns around what’s Google are doing themselves in this space? What will differentiate you from them? Hope the above doesn’t come across as negative - just interested in how you see this market developing.
- monkeydust 1y agoGoogle native AI integration to Gmail and calendar frequently disappoints be it on desktop or phone (Pixel), it's like Apple and Siri. Should be better given resources but way of base when compared to our expectations.
- rockwotj 1y agoShortwave has had all this and more for over a year and still nothing in Gmail.
- vedhsaka 1y ago(cofounder here) Honestly, we were hoping Gemini would nail this so we wouldn't have to build it ourselves, but here we are. The main difference is we're not bounded by Google's ecosystem - we're starting with Gmail but already working on Outlook and other integrations. Also, the goal is to build an executive assistant, not just a voice client for email and calendar.
- bfeynman 1y ago[flagged]
- dang 1y ago> amazing that stuff like this still gets funded. This sounds like a 2 day project Ai yai yai - you can't dismiss someone's work that way, especially not in launch threads. HN has additional rules when people are sharing their work, because it's particularly important not to be a jerk in such threads. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html as well as https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, we'd appreciate it. Thoughtful criticism is fine, of course, but supercilious dismissals are something we'd really like people to avoid here.
- svota 1y agoHow are you handling the attack vector of in-context commands[1]? [1]: https://guard.io/labs/scamlexity-we-put-agentic-ai-browsers-to-the-test-they-clicked-they-paid-they-failed https://guard.io/labs/scamlexity-we-put-agentic-ai-browsers-... (currently on the front page)
- melvinmelih 1y ago> we could solve this dead time problem and start doing things on the go Interesting idea, but how do you address car safety concerns? Studies consistently show that cognitive distraction, even with voice interfaces, can significantly increase crash risk. Wouldn’t managing emails and calendars while driving still fall into that category?
- johnfn 1y agoPhone calls while driving are pretty clearly in the Overton window of 'safe things you can do in a car', and it doesn't seem a priori obvious to me that this is worse. Though I do agree with you that in an ideal world people wouldn't even take phone calls and would instead focus 100% of their effort on not killing me.
- vedhsaka 1y ago(cofounder here) Fair concern - cognitive distraction is real. We see it more like taking a phone call while driving (which people already do). We're purposely keeping interactions simple to make sure features aren't too distracting, and are working on a 'safe mode' that limits you to basic read-only operations while driving. We're actively researching attention management to make it simpler. Safety comes first.
- trenchpilgrim 1y ago> We see it more like taking a phone call while driving (which people already do). And which we know is highly unsafe: https://unews.utah.edu/up-to-27-seconds-of-inattention-after-talking-to-your-car-or-smart-phone/ https://unews.utah.edu/up-to-27-seconds-of-inattention-after... Maybe you can talk about other "dead time" without safety impact - e.g. doing my laundry involves low mental workload but my hands aren't free!
- vedhsaka 1y agoGot it - makes sense. The laundry example is perfect. Moments where your hands are tied or when you want screen-free time
- Lienetic 1y agoHow are you handling the formatting and tone part of the email so that it doesn't sound like AI? I've tried to use AI tools for email multiple times but always end up significantly editing or rewriting the email myself.
- vedhsaka 1y agoYeah - April learns how you speak/correct your emails - it picks up your writing patterns and keeps evolving. The more you use it, the more it sounds like you rather than generic AI.
- Lienetic 1y agoCan you explain a bit more about this? Are you building a profile of what I write and who I write it to? Fetching relevant examples and passing that through some (cloud?) LLM when writing the email? I'm definitely curious on the technicals but there is also a bit of a trust element here - both on trusting that my email (likely some of my most sensitive data) is handled with care and trust that the actual responses are phrased well.
- vedhsaka 1y agoSure, the data stored are (User's relation to the sender) + tone + way of writing. None of the email's actual content is/will be stored (Goes against gmail's compliance)
- Gerardo1 1y agoYour privacy policy and security page say you do not use any user data for training, it also says you don't store any user data. How do you square that with this comment? - https://tryapril.com/security https://tryapril.com/security - https://tryapril.com/privacy https://tryapril.com/privacy
- pacifika 1y agoI’ll use email filters which work when I’m not at my inbox.
- ivape 1y ago[flagged]
- adamkochanowicz 1y agoHuh? What relation does that have to do with setting email filters?
- dang 1y agoPlease don't cross into personal attack in HN posts.
- andrewrn 1y agoI think I watched you guys get into the batch via the mcp hackathon yc had. Congratulations and best of luck with the startup.
- vedhsaka 1y agoYes Yes! The MCP hackathon was our way in. Thank you, really appreciate the support.
- nehasuresh1904 1y agoyes :) thank you for the support.
- TheTaytay 1y agoThis looks cool. Any chance you could wrap my Claude Code sessions as well? That's the thing I really want to be voice-driven for my commute. (serious question :) )
- wrs 1y agoLet me just put in a plug here for not trying to fill all of your so-called "dead time" with so-called "productive activity". Mind-wandering times like driving, showering, laundry, coffee-making, etc. can produce some of your most creative moments and may even be essential to your mental health. [0] [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627323003082 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S089662732...
- netsharc 1y agoDon't worry, AI will take over those for you.. /s
- mashlol 1y agoDefinitely seems like it could be useful, but I'd be worried with giving AI write access to emails. Is there a good audit trail of exactly what actions it takes at each step? I'd personally be worried about leaking proprietary or otherwise private information this way, or having it hallucinate information when it sends out emails potentially causing catastrophic issues.
- vedhsaka 1y agoValid concern - April does not write emails for you unless you specifically ask for it. Users usually dictate what they want to reply. But do you think a 'safe mode' - where April does only non destructive operation like read/summarize/draft/move emails to a folder would help you build trust? It's in our pipeline - we can prioritize it to mitigate that fear.
- smt88 1y agoSafe mode is absolutely necessary. I'd never let an LLM do things for me. They repeatedly prove that they categorically can't be jailed or trusted.
- monkeydust 1y agoYes, think this needs to be way up on your priority list.
- tryitnow 1y agoYes, a safe mode would be great. I think it's a "nice to have" for a lot of early adopter (type of people who read HN), but it will be a "must have" more corporate types (a much bigger market).
- pavel_lishin 1y ago> April does not write emails for you unless you specifically ask for it. What if it thinks you asked for it?
- jvwww 1y ago
- AIorNot 1y agogreat demo - wonder why isnt google just providing this as part of Gemini plans - I would pay money for it, why is Google so far behind on Gemini integration?
- dizlexic 1y agoooo prompt injecting with my contacts. sounds like fun.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Nash0x7e2 1y agoLooks awesome! I downloaded the app and was able to get it connected to my accounts, and it is working. However, I did notice that connect took around a minute to a minute and a half before the agent was in the call and able to speak. Is this a byproduct of the underlying calling service you're using or the traffic? Regardless, awesome app, curious to see how it continues to improve!
- vedhsaka 1y agoSorry for the bad experience. It is because of the sudden traffic. Looking at it.
- tryitnow 1y agoThe only reason I'm not downloading it is because 3 days not enough for me to evaluate it and I don't really want to have to add another reminder to cancel yet another subscription.
- adamkochanowicz 1y agoI never set reminders. I just cancel right away. 99.9% of the time, it will just end when the trial is over, or if I just want to pay for a month, when that period is over.
- rvz 1y agoWe are just another month closer into the year 2000.
- zacharycohn 1y agoPlease add text messaging and an Android app too??
- nehasuresh1904 1y agoSure - we will add this to our pipeline!
- zacharycohn 1y agoAlso your website pricing is different than the pricing you mention in this post.
- nehasuresh1904 1y agoHey we're running an intro offer with the pricing mentioned here. Updated website to reflect that.
- TimCTRL 1y agoCool Demo!
- nehasuresh1904 1y agothank you :)
- b8 1y agoThe subscription seems high and it doesn't seem practical to me. Goodluck though.
- ankit219 1y agoI like the idea. I also think you may need a mechanism to detect adverse actions before they are executed. This becomes important because an email cannot be unsent, and if I dont review the text, the 1 in 100 chance of the email sounding weird would freak me out. There is also the basic corner cases against AI prompt injection and all those spam and phishing emails that are rampant and more and more plausible sounding. Wonder if you have ideas around how to deal with those?
- nehasuresh1904 1y agoAbsolutely. We will be adding a safe mode where April can perform only read, summarize emails & calendar schedule, create drafts but cannot send or delete emails.
- danenania 1y agoMaybe reading out the draft to confirm before sending could be a nice middle ground? Could help with peace of mind about exactly what's being sent, and you could go back and forth on the message if it's not quite right. Once people use it for awhile and trust it more, they could then enable auto-send. Congrats on the launch btw—cool stuff!
- vedhsaka 1y agoThat happens now - before Send/Delete it will ask for confirmation.
- danenania 1y agoOh nice. Does it read you the text of the draft? Didn’t think I saw that in the demo, but maybe I missed it.
- vedhsaka 1y agoYeah, It does. We mentioned only few of the things in the demo or else it would have been very long. Apart from hard delete, create /edit labels - all operations can be done through April. Create/edit/delete draft are very common use cases as people would like to read before sending.
- vasco 1y agoIsn't this a repost? I swear I just saw this posted and they got ripped for telling people to drive while using it when it made them crash.
- fblp 1y agoHmm I don't think use whilst driving should be the first thing they should point market.
- jwilber 1y agoYes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45008239 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45008239
- dang 1y agoThe current thread is a Launch HN that I helped the startup prepare (see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html or, if you really want details, https://news.ycombinator.com/yli.html https://news.ycombinator.com/yli.html). The other thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45008239 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45008239) appeared by coincidence. It looks like it spent quite a few hours on the frontpage overnight, but I had no idea it existed! In any case the Launch HN was scheduled before that. (Btw, I don't think that "using it made them crash" is correct - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45010327 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45010327)
- fuckaj 1y agoI love the idea (also wondering when Google would build this) But the situation where emails are backing upload as you drive to work and back to back meetings sounds like a mismanaged workplace. The real impact (not a startup idea really) is fixing whatever makes the workplace like that. Usually everyone needs to be involved in everything and bad meeting management. Could be bad prioritisation and taking on too much work. Could be busywork. If AI could solve those problems or help it might be good.
- nehasuresh1904 1y agoThank you. Appreciate you sharing your thoughts. There is a category of users who have to deal with emails and meetings as a primary part of their job. For instance our power user is a Head of Sales who uses April to just get a rundown of his day and get context about his customers before the meeting. It's his typical workday and wouldn't be a mismanaged workplace.
- TheTaytay 1y agoEmail is the proxy for work management in many orgs. I think it could be a stand-in for GitHub issues instead, and the desire to process it while not observing the screen makes sense. (But I agree with your overall distaste for managing work that way. “A World Without Email” by Newport speaks directly to to that)
- abraxas 1y agoIs my life so boring that this is of no use to me? I don't think I get 30+ emails in a week (various commercial quasi-spam excepted) let alone that many on a 40 minute drive. I think I represent a typical office employee where I get maybe a dozen emails at work and a few calendar invites. Nothing I can't get through in the first 10 minutes of work in the morning. Usually emails that take time are those that I can't outsource to AI anyway. Nevertheless congrats on the launch and best of luck.
- mandeepj 1y ago> Here's a demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISKwEyuQQEo#t=50 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISKwEyuQQEo#t=50 I felt it was more of a tutoring session!! Wouldn't it be distracted driving if you are using it while on the wheel? If not, then honestly, anyone can do those things faster. Also, if you had organized your inbox, many of those emails shown in the demo wouldn't be there. Anyway, congratulations on the launch. Looking forward to the next iteration.
- doctoboggan 1y agoCan I use this to sort through my backlog of ~15k unread emails? If so, I will sign up now.
- vedhsaka 1y agoYou can - we have seen cases where people have deleted 1600 emails in one voice session. But as the pagination happens - it will be in batches, read/delete everything. We have to limit gmail's rate limits
- doctoboggan 1y agoWhat does that user experience look like? Could I say "move every unread unimportant email to a folder"? How would I do this work in batches?
- vedhsaka 1y agoPersonally I won't do that as LLM's way of judging an unimportant email vs my judgement is different - we are still working on evolving that but again email is so different for different people that it will need a lot of learning. But you can say remove all the emails which have unsubscribe text and it will do that in the batch of 20-100 (based on the app's rate limit at that time)
- azhenley 1y agoYour Terms of Use is a white page when I go to it.
- jngiam1 1y agoCan we connect our own MCPs? We have a remote server we have for internal tools (running on our gateway). I’ve always been interested to use voice more with the tools
- vedhsaka 1y agoNot as of now.
- dcreater 1y agoIts always sad/disappointing/curious when non-american engineers choose to use american accents as their voice choice instead of their ethnicity or literally anything else.
- matt8p 1y agoCongrats on the launch!! How is privacy handled? I would like to try it but I have emails I don't feel comfortable being consumed by third party. Thx!
- nehasuresh1904 1y agoWe access emails only you request for email actions via April. We do not store email data neither do we use it for training models. More here - https://tryapril.com/privacy https://tryapril.com/privacy
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- peterkelly 1y agoIf there's one thing I definitely don't want AI in the middle of, it's communication with other people. The potential for misunderstandings due to hallucination in summaries, both on my end and the recipient's, scares me. There were some pretty bad examples with Apple News. Accuracy matters, especially when communicating with customers or between managers/employees, and I can imagine many kinds of scenarios where this goes wrong.