After selling his last startup to Google, this founder now wants to automate mundane tasks with Relay

Some seven years after selling his previous company to Google, Jacob Bank is preparing to launch his next project, this time with a focus on automating mundane, repetitive tasks.

Bank was previously cofounder and CEO at Timeful, a smart scheduling app that helped users make better use of their time through automatically prioritizing their various commitments. After selling up to Google in 2015, Bank joined Google’s ranks and set about integrating core Timeful technology into Gmail and Google Calendar, before transitioning into various roles at the tech giant — including product lead for Gmail, Calendar, Google Chat, and Google Workspace.

Fast-forward to July 2021, and Bank parted ways with Google to found Relay, which has a self-stated mission to “tackle collaborative workflows” with a product that sits somewhere at the intersection of Zapier and Asana. He also said that he’s managed to hire a number of product, design, and engineering personnel from the Gmail and Google Calendar development team.

“From a product perspective, we aim to combine the time saving automations of Zapier with the accountability of Asana, but optimized for repeated workflows,” Bank explained to TechCrunch.

Relay: Automations Image Credits: Relay

Automation for the people

There are certainly no shortage of workflow automation tools out there, Zapier perhaps chief among them, while newcomers such as Bardeen have also been attracting the attentions of venture capitalists. And it’s this desire to reduce tedious, repetitive tasks that Relay is looking to capitalize on too, with specific scenarios in mind — use-cases that are less about “automated mechanical data flows from one product to another,” as Bank puts it, and more about supporting collaborative activities that may require multiple people to work together.

For example, anything that recurs or repeats across the business sphere, such as all-hands meetings, investor updates, board meetings, newsletters, planning cycles, and so on, are within Relay’s scope. As are “function-specific playbooks” such as new-hire onboarding, customer onboarding, or feature launches. It’s basically aimed at reducing time-consuming admin from various business functions, from COO to product management and customer success.