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There have been many construction issues issues of AI systems. In consumer software, we’ve seen startups being built around it check it out, documentsand meetings. They all want to record what’s happening in your digital life, provide connections to other devices, and allow you to request information. Some equipment went further. For example, Take it back (which became Limitless and sold in Meta) and Microsoft Recall aims to capture everything that is happening on your screen and help you remember everything.
A new beginning was called for A little bird they are trying the same thing with a slightly different approach. While programs like Rewind store screenshots or other types of visual data, Littlebird “reads” the screen and saves the text in text.
The main idea behind the feature is that since it reads your screen all the time, you don’t need to provide any additional features to create productivity. The startup believes that while many AI tools are trying to distract you, Littlebird can work in the background and can appear when you need it.
After installing Littlebird on your computer, you can change the programs you want to ignore and not record anything. The startup said it only ignores password managers and sensitive parts of websites like passwords and credit card information. You can choose to connect other apps like Gmail, Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, and Reminders with this app, as well.
The app lets you ask questions about your data, and gives you pre-made suggestions to get you started, like “What have I been doing today?” or “What types of emails are important to me?” In a few days of use, I noticed that these tips became very personal for a long time.
Littlebird also has a Granola-like notepad that uses audio and background speed to capture notes from meetings and create notes and content based on them. When you open a meeting in detail, there is an option called “Prepare to meet” that takes past events, emails, and company history to provide you with information about the meeting. This feature also pulls data from sources like Reddit to let you know what users think about a particular product or company.
Another tool called Routines provides detailed information for Littlebird to run repeatedly, such as daily, weekly, or monthly. The company lists other ready-to-use features such as daily summary, weekly activity summary, and yesterday’s activity summary. Users can create their own systems and with custom instructions.
Littlebird was founded by Alap Shah, Naman Shah, and Alexander Green in 2024. Brothers Alap and Naman founded Sentieo, a platform for institutional investors, which was sold to the intelligence firm AlphaSense. He also previously founded a health food company called Thistle. Alap was also a co-author of Citrini’s paper on how AIs can disrupt the economy, which led to a boom in various technology stocks. Green has built various companies in hardware, software, and AI.
“We started when Alap introduced the interesting problem that AI will be about your data (of users). Models do not know anything about you, and it hinders their work. We were thinking about different paradigms of UI and OS that would be ripe to be disrupted by AI and started Littlebird as a project,” Green told TechCrunch by phone.
Green said that while Rewind was close to what Littlebird was trying to do, it relied on graphics and didn’t have a great search engine. He added that the startup is still in its infancy and has many challenges to overcome, including developing large language models (LLMs) to understand different types of users.
With Littlebird, users can delete their data at any time, and their data is stored in the cloud and encrypted. Green said that the reason for storing data in the cloud is to run powerful models of different AI processes, which are not possible locally.
“We don’t store any visual information. We only store records, which makes the data very light. I think that was probably another reason why Recall and Return struggled, that is to take a snapshot is very hungry for data. I also think it is very difficult,” he said.
Littlebird is free to download and use, but for limited usage and access to features such as photo editing, users can pay for plans starting at $20 per month.
The startup has raised $11 million in funding led by Lotus Studio, and starring Lenny Rachitsky, Scott Belsky, Gokul Rajaram, Justin Rosenstein, Shawn Wang, and Russ Heddleston.
Most of these investors are regular users. Rajaram, who has worked at Google and Facebook on advertising, said the ad removes the hassle of remembering, retrieving, and redefining your work. DocSend co-founder and CEO Heddleston said he rewrote the company’s business website using the tool, using content from meetings, email, Notion, and more.
Rachitsky, who runs his own newsletter and podcast, said that AI is good as it is, and it doesn’t need much of your day. He said he was looking for a tool to improve his productivity and happiness. He added that for long-term success, the product will need to find a killer user.
“I think that all I find is that the killer must have a problem of use. That’s all that is needed for the drug to be successful at the moment. I know that many people have already found this, and the group is leaning in these cases when they see that these cases of use appear,” he said.
“I’ve had a lot of AI developers on the podcast, and the theme that resonates the most is that you don’t know how people will use your product until you put it out there.” His approach is to release original products, see how people use them, and double down on those experiences compared to waiting for something that has been thought of.
