Announcing Cron

By Raphael Schaad

I’m excited to announce Cron and early access to our product: the next-generation calendar for professionals and teams.

Time is one of the most valuable things we have in our lives. For most of us, calendars are how we interact with our time. Yet, traditional calendaring software wasn’t designed to go beyond displaying a few meetings. By now, we’re using all kinds of workarounds, extensions, and additional services to get closer to what feels like a modern calendaring experience — to schedule meetings, plan tasks, take notes, block time, and track activities.

I’ve personally felt how transformational a better experience can be. A friend and I hacked a calendar extension together to be more productive and intentional with our time. While small, it resonated beyond our expectations with many other people that were also underserved by their time tools.

To move the world closer to a place where everyone makes the most of their time, we’re setting out to create the digital time layer with Cron. Billions of people use a calendar every day, and we’re determined to innovate at the core of this experience. The principles we build Cron on are:

• Design: Superior UX is critical for such a personal tool we use all day, every day. The reimagined calendar interface puts people in control of their time.
• Collaboration: A meeting so often is the starting point for achieving ambitious goals. Workflows before, during, and after meetings become streamlined and bring people together.
• Integrations: Time provides the connecting layer for other best-in-class productivity tools.

With a strong foundation, we’re now layering powerful workflows on top of it. We’ve been iterating with early users daily and shipping features weekly. Visit cron.com/changelog to follow our progress.

Starting today, we’re expanding access to Cron. If you live by your calendar, are on a Mac, and use Google Workspace, Cron is for you. People at companies like Notion, GitHub, and Shopify already use Cron as their default calendar. Request early access at cron.com.

We have partnered with some of the most brilliant minds in tech to bring Cron to life. After completing Y Combinator in winter 2020, we’ve raised a $3.5M Seed round led by Garry Tan at Initialized Capital, with participation from Elad Gil (investor and advisor to companies like Airtable, Brex, GitLab), Jeff Weiner (former CEO of LinkedIn), Dylan Field (Co-founder CEO of Figma), Jeremy Le Van (Co-founder of Sunrise Calendar), and many more. Read TechCrunch’s initial story on how Cron is bringing the Sunrise vibe back.

Thank you to everyone who has helped reach this milestone. We’re at the very beginning of building an iconic product and company. If this sounds exciting, we’re hiring! Check out cron.jobs for our open roles.

Let’s reimagine the calendar for the modern age. It’s about time.