Rize, a San Francisco-based startup, today announced the launch of its recent AI productivity coach. The coach uses machine learning (ML) to investigate users' work patterns and supply personalized insights and proposals to enhance productivity and work-life balance.
“We realized there was no insight into how we spend our time at work. It was an entire blind spot,” said Rize co-founder MacGill Davis in an interview with VentureBeat. “We checked out existing solutions, but they couldn’t provide the extent of detail and beneficial insights we wanted.”
The recent AI-powered coach tracks time spent across apps and web sites, detects when users are focused or distracted, and prompts them to take breaks on the optimal time. According to Davis, it's like having “a fitness tracker for work” that helps you’re employed “healthier and more efficiently.”
A knowledge-driven approach to productivity
Early users have praised the app's ability to assist them take breaks, reduce overload and have more energy at the top of the day. “I end my day way more refreshed and fewer exhausted,” Davis told VentureBeat.
Rize's AI Coach enters a comparatively small market dominated by easy time tracking and worker monitoring tools. The app's user-centric approach and concentrate on improving individual productivity sets it other than many competitors.
“We don’t wish to sell to corporations or violate privacy,” emphasized Davis. “Your productivity data is like health data – it should remain private.”
This concentrate on privacy could give Rize a bonus as concerns about worker surveillance grow. However, more comprehensive corporate financial statements could provide additional revenue streams in the longer term.
Rize's small founding team self-funded early development before raising some enterprise capital, “around $500,000,” in May 2022. Lean management of the team allowed the founders to take care of control and grow responsibly.
“What sets us apart is that we have now this really unusual data set because we're principally tracking the apps or web sites that you simply use,” Davis told VentureBeat. “And there are literally two corporations that truly have this data. It’s Apple and it’s Google – and so they don’t use it or present it in the identical way.”
The AI coach crowns the years of development of Rize's app. The timing seems fortuitous as distant work has exploded over the past 4 years.
If the AI coach takes off as hoped, it could solidify Rize because the market leader in quantified self- and private evaluation. More broadly, it shows how AI can create products that noticeably improve people's lives.
