tl;dr
We're launching a bunch of AI-powered capabilities to mark the start of a week of announcements and demos.
It's also easier than ever to build automations. In fact, the Automation Assistant will build them for you. Join the Beta to try it out.
How we got here...
We started Bardeen three years ago with a mission to empower everyone to automate their work using AI. In the first phase, we made creating automations effortless with features like MagicBox, which unlocked the ability to build automations with everyday language.
The next phase of our journey is focused on capability - increasing the scope of what Bardeen can automate.
Today we starting this new phase by launching five new AI-powered capabilities.
Wait there's more! This is just Day 1 of a week long launch we're aptly naming Gen-AI-uary. Expect exciting product launches, use case demos, and more creatively named surprises.
But before that, let us quickly recap our journey here so far.
The problem with apps
Since the beginning of the internet, all forms of work have moved into their own specialized apps. It started with just a few but eventually exploded into an unmanageable mess of tools. We counted. Our team uses about 50, apparently this is much lower than average.
Individually, these apps work great, but the experience is dreadful when used together - hours spent clicking, navigating menus, and copy/pasting across countless tabs. Getting something done is like cooking a meal with ingredients scattered and hidden across your home.
First-gen automation tools
Automation tools of the past promised to solve this problem by connecting apps together, but we found out the hard way that using them often takes longer than just doing the task.
Most have steep learning curves, confusing interfaces, and limited functionality in the apps we use the most.
This is a problem. We think the people who can benefit the most from automation are those who are actually doing the work - closing deals, finding opportunities, and directly solving customer problems. But it’s these same people that don’t have the time to learn these complex tools.
Bardeen, the automation tool for doers
Bardeen has a simple premise. Imagine if repetitive tasks could be automated with the click of a button and eventually with no clicks at all.
Our goal is to empower everyone to automate their own tasks. Why? Because you know your own workflows best and should have full control over how they're automated.
We are still early on this journey, but we’ve already made massive strides.
To reach our goal, there are two things we need to do well.
1. Capability - Be capable of performing all the tasks people want to automate
2. Usability - Enable anyone to create and run automations
Our week of launches presents meaningful advances in both. So, without further delay…
Announcing Bardeen AI Actions 🤖
Starting today, Bardeen comes with a new toolbox of actions that let you bring AI to every workflow. They span message writing, classification, and even generating entire research reports.
Why did we do this? Foundation models, like OpenAI’s GPT-4, are incredibly powerful, but they are general tools. Generating great results requires a great prompt. The best ones can be thousands of words long, multiple steps, and enriched with information from a variety of sources.
With Bardeen AI Actions, we do this work for you while providing the right amount of control so you can customize the output to your needs.
Lets start with the most exciting one:
Browser Agent - Your army of AI teammates
The Browser Agent works in real-time using your browser to complete any task you give it. Here we ask the Browser Agent to describe the value proposition of a list of companies. To do that, it traverses the website, finds the information, and summarizes its reasoning - all you have to do is ask. These could be target accounts for your sales team, a recruitment candidate’s place of work, or even competitors you want to monitor.
Today the Browser Agent like a smart intern. Our goal is to make them smarter and more capable over time!
Categorizer - Label, group, and qualify anything
Train an AI to categorize emails, leads, and even full-page documents. In this example, we build a workflow to flag interesting partnership opportunities in our inbox. You can also use this to qualify sales leads, categorize candidates based on experience, or even filter out those pesky cold outbound emails from your inbox.
Message Generator - Create emails, social messages, texts
A message is only as good as the information you use to write it. Bardeen is unique in the range and detail of information it can gather for you automatically - here, we directly generate a sales email from the LinkedIn profile of a lead. You can also use the Message Generator for LinkedIn messages, timely email follow-ups, or even text messages.
Research Generator - Multiple sources, one report
You don’t need to spend all day Googling and scouring multiple websites; use this instead. Our Research Generator uses AI to craft a report using information from sources like LinkedIn, company websites, and even Apollo.io. Here we create a detailed company overview packed with details from LinkedIn, Alexa, and Apollo.io - all you need to provide is the target company’s website address.
At the platform level, we've also been busy. Today Automations are even easier to create with...
Announcing Proactive Automation with the Automation Assistant
No two workflows are exactly the same. This is the reason it's difficult to build automations that work for everyone. You’ve probably browsed countless recipes from different automation apps without finding the exact one you need.
Our vision with Proactive Automation is that you don’t have to.
Early on in the development of Bardeen, we made the decision for our product to live where work happens - the browser. Our eventual goal with the browser extension is to learn directly from users to proactively build hyper-personalized automations you didn’t know was possible.
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Today, we’re excited to announce the Beta for the Automation Assistant - a big step towards this goal.
We’ve learned from users that repetitive tasks are often hidden in plain sight. With the Automation Assistant, Bardeen securely analyzes your actions to automatically find patterns of actions that can be automated. We'll be making frequent updates based on feedback in the coming weeks.
We want to hear what you think! If you’re interested, sign up here to test it out.
