Scheduling is complicated.
The focus of four years of my life.
The Problem
No one wants to share their calendar with strangers on the internet, or worse, someone who wants to sell you something. ` Tony Ockleshaw, head of Sales at Tigerspike, has said that “Getting the first meeting feels as good as making a sale,” but how do you get that first meeting?
Without transparency into your lead’s calendar (which you’re not going to get) there’s a lot of friction and pain as you play phone or email tag to try to negotiate a timeslot.
So how do you build trust?
The Solution
Foogi.
A secure, private platform that lets you visually and intelligently compare your calendars without sharing any private data. Foogi lets you transparently book meetings with clients without sharing any calendar events, just live availability.
Integrated into your email and calendar across Google Apps, Office 365 and soon iCloud.
But this is just the first step.
Currently under development is the technology to securely build insights into our users’ calendar data without ever exposing that calendar data to Foogi or anyone else.
In other words, we are building an intelligent, private suggestion engine that never exposes any personal data to either party or Foogi.
When it comes to scheduling tools, people often say “Fast, Simple or Secure: Pick two”. We believe you can have all three.
Epilogue, Written in 2026
The copy above is preserved from the original version of this site, written while Foogi was alive. The rest of the story: we raised over US$400k in seed funding, shipped to real users across Google Apps and Office 365, and came within a whisker of being acquired by Microsoft before winding down in 2018.
It remains the densest learning experience of my career, and the reason the rest of my timeline makes sense.