Hero AI: The All-in-One Productivity App | Calendar & More

A Unified Approach to Productivity: Introducing Hero

Many individuals find themselves juggling numerous applications for managing notes, schedules, and tasks. However, a more streamlined solution exists: consolidating these functions into a single platform. This principle underpins the development of Hero, a comprehensive productivity application enhanced with an AI assistant.

The Team Behind Hero

The iOS application was created by Brad Kowalk and Seung W. Lee, both formerly employed at Meta. Their collaboration began while working on Facebook Stories, where Kowalk served as the product manager and Lee as an engineer.

Kowalk’s experience at Meta also included pioneering new AI experiences until his departure in 2022.

The Motivation for Creation

“Our aim, after leaving Meta, was to develop something that actively saves people time, rather than contributing to time wastage,” Kowalk explained.

Seed Funding and Investor Confidence

To date, the company has secured $4 million in seed funding. This investment comes from prominent figures including Instacart founder Max Mullen, Dropbox founder Arash Ferdowsi, Adobe’s Chief Strategy Officer Scott Belsky, Meta’s VP of Messenger Ime Archibong, the musical duo The Chainsmokers, and venture firms Neo and Abstract.

Investor Perspective

Mullen, who initially connected with Hero’s founders through a prior investment, expressed his admiration for the startup’s forward-thinking approach.

“Hero demonstrated a distinct vision for reshaping how individuals interact with AI applications. I anticipate that many consumer apps will integrate voice interfaces and assistants similar to Hero, striving to become essential everyday tools, eliminating the need for multiple separate applications,” he stated in an interview with TechCrunch.

Enhanced Coordination for Groups

Mullen highlighted Hero’s potential benefits for families and friend groups, simplifying coordination without the need for numerous applications.

App Interface and Features

The application presents all essential information on a single screen, displaying your daily schedule, current weather conditions, a to-do list, a grocery list, and your personal notes.

At the top of the screen, a daily brief, styled after Instagram Stories, provides a summary of your schedule, a news update, and an inspirational quote.

Collaboration and Sharing

You can connect with friends, family, or colleagues to view their schedules and share tasks or notes. Users within the app can comment on shared events or to-dos. For those not yet using the app, to-do lists can be shared in a message-friendly format.

AI-Powered Assistance

Events, reminders, notes, and grocery items can all be created using the integrated AI assistant. Leveraging Perplexity’s AI, the assistant can answer your questions and even save web search results as notes.

The assistant also aids in list and note creation. For example, you can create a note titled “Movies like Challengers,” tap the suggestion button, and instantly generate a relevant list.

The Future of Productivity Apps

Kowalk posits that the proliferation of AI tools will lead to a decline in the use of disparate applications for calendars, reminders, notes, and weather updates.

“We foresee a shift towards two primary app categories: a blank slate chat application, such as ChatGPT or Google Gemini, and an application dedicated to showcasing your daily activities. Our ambition is to be the latter – an app that consolidates your entire day and facilitates collaboration with friends and family, all powered by an intelligence layer,” Kowalk stated.

Addressing Distraction and User Appeal

Kowalk pointed out the risk of distraction when switching between multiple apps, potentially leading to diversions like TikTok or YouTube. He also noted that couples and recent college graduates seeking a fresh approach to productivity are particularly drawn to Hero over alternatives like Google Calendar.

Monetization and Future Development

The application is currently offered free of charge, and the company intends to maintain this accessibility.

Currently, users can access Instacart directly from the grocery list to order items, with the company receiving a commission on these transactions. This represents the company’s primary focus for monetization.

Hero is actively working on enhancing voice interaction with the assistant, developing a habits and goals tracker, and implementing a feature to add events, to-dos, and notes from images or screenshots.