# Slashy

Aiolum story: https://aiolum.com/story/slashy/ · added 2026-11-05 · updated 2026-11-05

**In short.** Slashy (AI-native email client for founders and operators, United States): Paid plans live with 16 App Store ratings, November 2026. Evidence grade E: no revenue figure was checked. Team: 2 founders; team of 3 on the Y Combinator profile, read November 2026. Launched 8 July 2025; still running.

AI-native email client for founders and operators · United States · AI-native · team of 2 to 10 · still running · group: Documents, data and slides

- Outcome: Paid plans live with 16 App Store ratings, November 2026 (evidence grade of the headline number: E; no revenue figure)
- Launch: 8 July 2025; months from launch to the outcome: 16
- Team: 2 founders; team of 3 on the Y Combinator profile, read November 2026
- Outside funding: Y Combinator, Summer 2025 batch; amount not published
- Main factor: Niche
- Meters, 1 to 4: evidence strength 1, copyable pattern 1, capital needed 2
- Tags: AI-native, Small team, Funded, Running, B2B, Email

Links:

- Visit slashy.com: https://www.slashy.com/
- App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id6759951027

**The product.** An email client for Gmail, Google Workspace, Outlook.com and Microsoft 365, on the web, Mac and iPhone. It drafts replies in the user's own writing style, sorts the inbox with labels written in plain English, tracks unanswered threads, books meetings, and can be used from iMessage, Slack or another AI tool. The user approves what is sent.

**Why it worked.** The founders say that founders either spend too much time on email or lose deals and hires because a thread slipped. Slashy started as a general AI agent for work tools, then moved its focus to one place where that agent is needed every day: the inbox.

Evidence grades: A = disclosed by a public company, a filing or a payment processor, or verified by one; B = two or more independent reports agree, or a journalist confirmed it; C = a founder claim that no one else verified; D = reported, not verified: one founder claim or a third-party estimate with no second source; E = no revenue figure found, so the headline is a non-money fact and the other facts carry their own grades; calc = computed on this page from graded facts.

## Summary

Slashy is an AI-native email client: a full email program, like Gmail's own app or Superhuman, in which an AI model does part of the work instead of only adding a chat box. It writes draft replies from the user's sent mail and past edits, keeps notes about the user's contacts and preferences, and offers an MCP server, a connector that uses the Model Context Protocol so that other AI assistants such as Claude can read and act on the inbox.

Harsha Gaddipati (chief executive) and Dhruv Roongta (chief technology officer) founded the company in San Francisco in 2025, and it joined Y Combinator in the Summer 2025 batch. Their first product, Dash, launched on 8 July 2025 as an agent for Gmail, Slack, Notion and other tools. A month later it was renamed Slashy, "the AI for work", and by August 2026 it was sold as an email client at US$30 a month, the price that a Tom's Guide reviewer reported on 1 August 2026.

No revenue or paying-user figure was found, so this story has grade E. The headline is what can be checked: published prices on the company's site, and 16 ratings with an average of 4.8 on the App Store page read on 5 November 2026.

## Pricing

Slashy prices on its pricing page, read 5 November 2026 (grade C)

| Plan | Per month, billed yearly (US$) | Per month, billed monthly (US$) | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Professional | 25 | 30 | per user; unlimited inboxes; 7-day trial |
| Enterprise | custom |  | SSO and SCIM, account manager, team onboarding |

Professional starts with 7 days of full access and needs a credit card. The yearly price, US$25 a month, is US$300 a year, the same yearly figure that Tom's Guide reported in August 2026. Paying monthly costs 20% more than paying yearly (US$30 against US$25). Enterprise has no published price.

## How much revenue does Slashy make? The numbers, graded

A three-person Y Combinator company that turned a general work agent into a paid AI email client within about a year, with no revenue figure published

| Fact | Value | Grade | Note | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Status, November 2026 | paid plans on sale; Mac, iPhone and web apps | C | Pricing page and home page, read 5 November 2026. | [6, 7] |
| App Store ratings, November 2026 | 16 ratings, average 4.8 of 5 | B | App Store page read 5 November 2026. Version 1.0.45 dated 27 October. Seller: Dhruv Roongta. Age rating 13+. | [9] |
| Price reported by a reviewer, August 2026 | US$30 a month or US$300 a year | B | Tom's Guide, 1 August 2026, for unlimited inboxes and AI usage. The review says it then worked with Gmail only, with Outlook coming soon. | [5] |
| Price on the company's page, November 2026 | US$25 a user a month billed yearly, US$30 billed monthly | C | Pricing page. Enterprise is priced on request. | [7] |
| Team | 3 people | C | Y Combinator company profile, team size field, read 5 November 2026. Two founders are listed. | [1] |
| Founded | 2025, San Francisco | C | Y Combinator company profile. | [1] |
| Outside funding | Y Combinator, Summer 2025 batch | C | Y Combinator profile. No amount and no later round was found in the downloaded sources. | [1] |
| First launch | 8 July 2025, as Dash | C | Y Combinator launch post: an agent that connects to Gmail, Slack, Notion, Linear and other tools. | [4] |
| AI providers | OpenAI, Anthropic and Google models, plus Groq, Fireworks AI, Novita AI and two routing services | C | Subprocessor list on the security page: GPT, Claude and Gemini inference, open-source model hosts, OpenRouter and Concentrate for routing, and Cartesia and Deepgram for voice. The page says the agreements forbid the providers to train on customer data. | [8] |
| Security audits | SOC 2 Type II and CASA Tier 2 | C | Company's security page. CASA means Cloud Application Security Assessment; the company lists it under Google compliance, with Google's API Services User Data Policy. No audit report was read for this page. | [8, 2] |
| Time from first launch to the headline date | 16 months | calc | Calculated: 8 July 2025 to 5 November 2026. | [4, 9] |

How to read this table: grade C is what the company writes on its own site or Y Combinator profile. Grade B is a journalist's review or a store page that the company does not control. A "calc" value was computed on this page. No value is grade A.

## When did Slashy launch, and how did it grow? Timeline

From a general AI agent in July 2025 to a paid email client with an iPhone app in November 2026. Each entry carries its grade.

- **2025** (grade C [1]): Harsha Gaddipati and Dhruv Roongta found the company in San Francisco and join Y Combinator's Summer 2025 batch.
- **8 July 2025** (grade C [4]): Launch of Dash at usedash.ai, an AI agent that does work across Gmail, Slack, Notion, Linear, Google Docs and HubSpot, free to try.
- **8 August 2025** (grade C [3]): Relaunch as Slashy, 'the AI for work', for meeting preparation, ticket creation and CRM updates.
- **1 August 2026** (grade B [5]): Tom's Guide reviews Slashy as an AI email app for Gmail at US$30 a month, after the team emailed the reviewer.
- **3 August 2026** (grade C [2]): Y Combinator launch post for the email client, with a YC discount and claims of SOC 2 and CASA audits.
- **October to November 2026** (grade B [9, 1]): iPhone app version 1.0.45 dated 27 October; 16 ratings by 5 November. Outlook and Microsoft 365 are listed as supported.

## Why did Slashy work?

### Narrow the agent to one daily task

Dash and the first Slashy promised to automate work across many tools. The 2026 product is an email client that keeps those connections (CRM, meeting notes, Notion) but sells one outcome: less time on email. A clear task is easier to explain on a pricing page and in a review.

### Drafts from the user's own history

The launch post says drafts use the user's sent mail, the edits the user made to earlier drafts and a memory that is rewritten once a week. The Tom's Guide reviewer wrote that the drafts matched his tone closely. This is the feature that separates it from a plain chat model that sees only the thread.

### Reach the inbox without opening it

iMessage, Slack, voice and the MCP server let the user ask for a reply or a summary from wherever they are. A founder quoted on the home page says that she now approves more than she composes.

## How it was built

These details come from the company's own pages and launch posts (grade C) and from the Tom's Guide review (grade B).

- AI inference from OpenAI (GPT), Anthropic (Claude) and Google (Gemini), and from Groq, Fireworks AI and Novita AI, with OpenRouter for routing; the in-app chat shows a 'Sonnet' model choice.
- A separate tool for proposing meeting times, because, the founders write, base language models are bad at scheduling.
- Connections to Gmail, Google Workspace, Outlook.com and Microsoft 365, plus meeting-note tools, CRMs and Notion.
- SOC 2 Type II, a CASA Tier 2 assessment listed under Google compliance, and monthly penetration tests, according to the company.
- Hosting on Amazon Web Services and Vercel, a Supabase database, Stripe for payments, and Cartesia, Deepgram and LiveKit for the voice features, from the subprocessor list.
- Clients for the web, Mac and iPhone, and an MCP server for other AI tools.

Sources: [2, 6, 8, 5]

## Who tried this before Slashy, and why did they fail?

Four companies in our database of failed startups tried to make email or email work easier and failed. The values below are from that database and are not independently verified.

The failed startups come from our database of dead startups, retold here in our own words; Its entries are AI-assisted summaries of public sources, so they carry no evidence grade.

### Mailbox (2012 to 2015; funding US$5M; cause: Competition)

- Promise: A mobile email app with swipe to archive and snooze, to reduce email stress.
- Why it died: Bought by Dropbox, which did not fit it into its business; free email apps from the large providers caught up.
- Record: 

### Xobni (2006 to 2013; funding US$42M; cause: Competition)

- Promise: Better search, contacts and insight inside Microsoft Outlook.
- Why it died: Tied to one email program that Microsoft controlled; mobile made the desktop add-on less useful.
- Record: 

### Zirtual (2011 to 2015; funding US$5.5M; cause: Ran Out of Cash)

- Promise: Human virtual assistants for busy founders, handling email and scheduling.
- Why it died: It paid a large staff of assistants without the cash to support them and ran out of money.
- Record: 

### Skiff (2020 to 2024; funding US$14.2M; cause: No Market Need)

- Promise: Encrypted email and documents as an alternative to Google and Microsoft.
- Why it died: Its one difference, privacy, was not enough to move users away from free incumbents.
- Record: 

## What changed

Mailbox and Xobni built a better window onto email services owned by Google and Microsoft, and the owners added the same features for free. Zirtual sold the assistant work itself, with people, and the payroll ended it. Slashy sits on the same platforms and lists a Google security assessment as a condition of its Gmail access.

The difference is the assistant work. Drafting, scheduling and follow-ups were done by people at Zirtual; at Slashy they are done by language models paid per use, so three people can sell an assistant to many customers. Whether that is enough against Gmail's and Outlook's own AI features is not shown by any figure yet.

## Can one person copy Slashy now?

**Verdict: Hard to copy alone.**

An email client must match Gmail and Superhuman on speed and shortcuts before the AI features matter, and the company passed security audits that it lists under Google compliance. The company did this with a funded team of three, not one person.

1. Start with a broad agent, watch which task users repeat, and rebuild the product around that task.
2. Use the user's own history (sent mail, past edits) as the context for drafts, not only the current thread.
3. Plan for the email platform's security review early, as Slashy did with its CASA assessment.
4. Let users reach the product from the chat apps they already use.

**What is still open.** The same draft-from-history and follow-up approach for one profession's inbox, such as recruiters, agents or lawyers; the company's own executive-search page shows it testing this.

## What could go wrong for Slashy?

- **What is not verified.** No revenue figure, paying-user count or customer count was found. We looked for a payment-processor profile, a founder interview with numbers, and a funding announcement with figures; none was among the downloaded sources. The 3-person team is the company's own entry on its Y Combinator profile. A reader could look for a TrustMRR profile, a funding round report or a founder post with a dated figure.
- **Competition.** The site already has two email assistants with grade D revenue figures, Inbox Zero and Meet Oscar; Slashy's own comparison pages name Shortwave, Fyxer, Lindy, Spark, Cora and SaneBox, and its launch post measures it against Superhuman.
- **Dependence on model and email providers.** The security page lists OpenAI, Anthropic and Google as model providers, and Groq, Fireworks AI, Novita AI, OpenRouter and Concentrate for other inference; using several providers lowers the risk from any one of them, but model prices and terms still set much of the cost. The product also depends on Google's and Microsoft's access to mailboxes; the company says it completed a CASA Tier 2 assessment and follows Google's API Services User Data Policy.
- **Points to note.** The launch post says drafts use 'the linkedin/web of recipients', and the home page shows an automation to 'Research attendees' before meetings; the company does not describe what data this collects. Two of the five home-page quotes give only a first name ('Daniel', 'Michelle'). The Tom's Guide review followed an email from the Slashy team to the reviewer, as the review itself says. The security claims are the company's own; no audit report was read.

## Sources

1. Y Combinator company page: Slashy, Cursor for Email — https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/slashy (grade C). Read the page data in full, read 5 November 2026. Source for the founders, founding year, team size, location, batch and description.
2. Y Combinator launch post, 3 August 2026: Slashy, start saving 2 hours a day on email — https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/SIh-slashy-start-saving-2-hours-a-day-on-email (grade C). Read in full. Founders' post. Source for the features, the drafting method, the security claims and the link to the Tom's Guide review.
3. Y Combinator launch post, 8 August 2025: Slashy, The AI for Work — https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/O9b-slashy-the-ai-for-work (grade C). Read in full. Source for the first Slashy product and the slashy.ai address.
4. Y Combinator launch post, 8 July 2025: Dash, AI That Actually Gets Work Done — https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/Nv3-dash-ai-that-actually-gets-work-done (grade C). Read in full. Posted under the Slashy company profile. Source for the first launch.
5. Tom's Guide, Lloyd Coombes, 1 August 2026: Slashy is the AI email app replacing Notion Mail, here's why — https://www.tomsguide.com/ai/slashy-is-the-ai-email-app-replacing-notion-mail-heres-why (grade B). Read in full. Independent review. Source for the price in August 2026, Gmail-only support then, the drafting quality and how the reviewer heard of the app.
6. Slashy home page — https://www.slashy.com/ (grade C). Read in full, 5 November 2026. Source for the features, the customer quotes and the model choice shown in the demo.
7. Slashy pricing page — https://www.slashy.com/pricing (grade C). Read in full, 5 November 2026. Source for the pricing table and the trial terms.
8. Slashy security page — https://www.slashy.com/security (grade C). Read the sections on AI training, compliance and subprocessors, 5 November 2026.
9. App Store: Slashy — https://apps.apple.com/us/app/slashy-e4ed52/id6759951027 (grade B). Read in full, 5 November 2026. Source for the ratings, version history date, seller and age rating.
10. Slashy about page — https://www.slashy.com/about (grade C). Read in full. The company's account of why it was started.
11. Database of failed startups, local export — /method/#dead (grade C). Local export. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors.

Contact: aiolum@livyden.com. Run Slashy? Send corrections or a verified figure to aiolum@livyden.com (subject: Correction: Slashy).