When this pitch came across our editors box on Friday it was like Eureka. Los Angeles startup Contur has done something amazing with email. They’ve created a platform that beefs up the functionality of email, and the most important part of that, they’ve turned it into tasks.
When we have an idea for a longtail story or a feature story that requires more indepth reporting we typically add it to starred email and then set a reminder in the calendar to go back and work on it. The problem is the important starred email box fills up and the calendar does as well. This is hardly an effective process. Unfortunately with the volume of email we get, we sometimes get a reminder email from the startup we’re working with on the story.
If we could turn email into tasks, projects and add notes to them it would make our work flow go much better. Now thanks to Los Angeles startup Contur we can do that. The Contur app lets users treat any of their emails as tasks, organize them by projects, and add notes and non-email related tasks. Contur makes email more manageable and easier to put into context, manipulate, prioritize and search, moving users closer to “Inbox Zero.”
Contur CEO Justyna Wojick validates the fact that our current method of starring messages and making calendar entries is outdated at best.
“Contur is aimed at the 90 million knowledge workers and professionals in the United States who are experiencing email overload,” said Contur co-founder and CEO Wójcik said in a statement. “Contur takes email beyond such outdated tools as tags and priority inboxes, which have long lost their power to help users not only tackle the ever-growing volume of their incoming email, but to act on that volume as well.”
Monday-Friday we typically receive 300-500 email messages a day, making us power users by Contur standards. Contur was designed for power users and hopes to help get people to “inbox zero” something i haven’t seen in years.
“The demand is high for a solution like Contur to manage email inboxes; 500 people have already signed up on the Contur waitlist. In the United States alone, over a billion dollars are lost each year due to workers having to do necessary, but unproductive, tasks related to email, such as organizing them, keeping track of follow-ups, and other tasks. Contur will help recover some of that lost time and revenue,” added Wójcik.
Contur launched out of Start Engine the LA based accelerator founded by Howard Marks one of the co-founders of Actvision.
We’re on the Contur waitlist and can’t wait to use it. Contur is compatible with pop email and also gmail, or Google apps mail so most business power users can use it.
Linkage:
Check out and sign up for Contur here
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