Delivering on Tech’s Age-Old Holy Grail: Duckbill, the Indispensable AI-Powered Personal Assistant

Fall 2023

I asked the Forerunner team to share what’s on their to-do list, specifically their most dreaded, long-procrastinated tasks. Their responses:

A UPS insurance claim for a computer monitor that broke while moving across the country
Asking Metromile to reconsider increased insurance costs over a tiny fender bender that was the other driver’s fault
Getting my REAL ID
Aggregating and my filing tax documents
Tracking wedding gifts
Booking travel
Finding a primary care doctor
Canceling an old credit card

Sound familiar? It’s easy to think that procrastination and to-do lists are relatively menial problems that could be solved with better focus or will power. But the issue is more profound: people today legitimately feel much more busy and pulled in different directions than they have in years past — and the stressors are emotional, mental, and structural.

The Burnout Generation:

Dual-income homes are more common than ever, which means more resources but also more competing priorities and less spare time. Experts on time management and human psychology share concerns about the byproducts of larger shares of people taking on the combined “social roles” of worker, spouse, and parent, noting that expectations have risen within each, coupled with sentiments that one has to be great across all or they’re “failing” as a person. Similarly, researchers are critical of the double-edged sword of tech-driven accessibility and enablement, cataloging a startling number of now-common tasks that only started to fall on consumers in the last decades: purging your inbox, managing online passwords, booking your own travel, researching health issues online, navigating online customer-service portals, updating your software, and so on. These sound small in effect, but in aggregate, they are overwhelming and contribute to an ongoing sense that the work is never done.

It’s somewhat telling that to-do lists are not seen as something that should ever be completed in full. In fact, a fully checked-off to-do list might feel strange and signal something was forgotten. We are so accustomed to having a laundry list of unfinished tasks, the alternative feels awkward and imaginable.

Introducing Duckbill:

Forerunner has led the $25 million series A for Duckbill to provide consumers with some much-needed relief from this very problem. Duckbill is a personal assistant powered by experts and AI to tackle people’s never-ending to-do lists. Within Duckbill’s early base of beta customers, we’ve seen people naturally start by assigning out their most procrastinated, painful to-dos, then edging out from there to delegate deluges of seeming small and simple items that they never thought to outsource in the first place. The result is a quickly indispensable service that provides pain relief in areas consumers didn’t realize pain relief was possible.

Duckbill is now fulfilling tasks in over 75 categories, ranging from scheduling appointments and reservations to planning birthday parties, researching purchase options and shopping on behalf of customers, vetting and scheduling a plumber, electrician and cleaner, researching and buying gifts, booking the most economical and efficient travel options, and more. For $100/month, customers can delegate tasks, which are all addressed within 24 hours through Duckbill’s 24/7 service (perfect for when you’re doom-scrolling at 2am, at work, or out for your Saturday morning jog).

Duckbill’s early customer base is 70% women, which may not come as a surprise given that an American Psychological Association report found that 43% of women say they're more stressed out than they were five years earlier, and nearly 25% describe their stress as "extreme." Women under age 33 report the highest levels of stress of any generation, with those 33 to 46 coming in very close behind. The company has immediate opportunity to cater to all kinds of consumers, with certain demographics in clear, immediate need.

A Powerful Human-in-the-Loop AI Model

Duckbill follows our thesis that AI assistants will be the entry point to the internet. We believe consumers will gravitate towards a homebase to start all questions and address daily needs — just as Google was the beginning of all search, an AI assistant stands to integrate seamlessly with user needs and be where users start their day. Natural language is inherently human and social, so putting natural language at the forefront is how consumers take control back from technology and have it work for us.

Duckbill opts for a powerful human-in-the-loop model where consumers get the benefit of both worlds: the nuance and personal touch of someone assigned to see every task is tackled, made possible by the efficiency and breadth of AI tools underpinning the legwork (a “copilot”).

It’s worth noting that the concept of the tech-enabled personal assistant has long been seen as an unattainable holy grail in Silicon Valley: an oft-attempted, never realized ambition. There have been many efforts that failed to deliver on the true potential of the concept — there’s Siri, which is limited to basic questions you could google yourself, TaskRabbit, which has been largely reduced to home-related tasks, and numerous apps that have failed to gain meaningful traction and operationalize a scalable business. It’s not a coincidence that this idea is seeing a meaningful reboot in 2023, underpinned by the best of recent AI advancements, which are essential to a personal assistant in a truly scalable, highly effective format.

If the promise of Duckbill seems nearly unbelievable, especially in the context of being an attractive and compelling business, we would not have disagreed until we met the highly competent and special team behind this company. Duckbill’s team, composed of former Uber, Whoop and Oscar leaders, we believe, is unparalleled in its experience, discipline and vision to take on this bold mission and operational challenge. The Founder and CEO Meghan Joyce is the former COO and EVP of Oscar Health, and prior, the General Manager of Uber in the US and Canada — bringing undeniable expertise in consumer products and leveraging technology to empower capabilities not yet previously proven.

We see Duckbill’s solution as an inevitability in the world of AI and consumer behavior — and essential amid a time when burnout, stress and busyness seem to dominate consumer sentiments. There’s never been a better team or better time to deliver on tech’s promise of the AI-powered personal assistant.