Former Sequoia partner launches a new startup that leverages AI to handle your calendar negotiations

Kais Khimji’s Journey from Venture Capitalist to Startup Founder

Kais Khimji, who previously spent six years as a partner at the renowned venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, has dedicated much of his career to investing in startups. However, like several other former Sequoia partners—such as David Vélez, the founder of Nubank—Khimji has always aspired to launch his own company.

Recently, Khimji announced the revival of a concept he first explored during his time at Harvard a decade ago. This idea has now evolved into Blockit, an AI-powered calendar scheduling platform. Demonstrating strong support, Sequoia Capital, his former firm, led Blockit’s $5 million seed funding round.

“Blockit has the potential to become a business generating over $1 billion in revenue, and Kais is the right person to make that happen,” wrote Pat Grady, Sequoia’s general partner, in a recent blog post.

Reimagining Scheduling with AI

Although many companies have attempted to automate meeting scheduling in the past, Khimji believes that recent advancements in large language models give Blockit’s AI agents a unique edge. He claims Blockit can manage scheduling tasks more intuitively and efficiently than earlier solutions like Clara Labs and x.ai, both of which are no longer in operation. (Interestingly, the x.ai domain is now owned by Elon Musk’s AI venture.)

Unlike Calendly, the current leader in the space—last valued at $3 billion—which requires users to share links to coordinate availability, Blockit aims to let its AI agents handle the entire scheduling process autonomously, eliminating the need for human intervention.

Building an AI-Driven Social Network for Time

Khimji, together with co-founder John Hahn—who has previously contributed to products like Timeful, Google Calendar, and Clockwise—is developing Blockit as an AI-powered social network focused on managing people’s time.

“It always struck me as strange: I have my calendar, you have yours, but our calendars can’t communicate with each other,” Khimji explained in an interview with TechCrunch.

How Blockit Bridges the Scheduling Gap

According to Khimji, Blockit’s technology finally addresses this disconnect. When two users need to arrange a meeting, their AI agents interact directly to agree on a suitable time, removing the need for the usual email exchanges.

To use Blockit, users can simply include the Blockit agent in an email or send it a message on Slack regarding a meeting. The AI then takes over, coordinating the details and finding a time and place that works for everyone involved.

Khimji notes that Blockit can function as efficiently as a human executive assistant. Users can specify their preferences, such as which meetings are essential and which can be rescheduled. “There are days when my calendar is packed, so I might need to skip lunch, and the agent needs to understand that’s acceptable,” he shared.

Personalized Scheduling with AI

Blockit’s system can even be trained to prioritize meetings based on subtle cues, like the tone of an email. For example, a user might instruct the agent to give higher priority to requests ending with a formal “Best regards” over those signed off with a casual “Cheers.”

By adapting to each user’s unique preferences, Blockit is tapping into what Foundation Capital’s Jaya Gupta and Ashu Garg refer to as “context graphs.” In a widely discussed essay, they describe a massive opportunity for AI agents to understand the underlying reasons behind business decisions by leveraging the implicit logic that previously existed only in people’s minds.

Adoption and Pricing

Blockit is already in use at over 200 organizations, including AI company Together.ai, the recently acquired fintech firm Brex, robotics startup Rogo, and venture capital firms such as a16z, Accel, and Index. New users can try the app free for 30 days. After the trial, individual subscriptions are priced at $1,000 per year, while team plans supporting multiple users are available for $5,000 annually, according to Khimji.