Meet-Ting: The Founders’ Journey Behind Britain’s AI Scheduling Breakthrough
In the heart of London’s vibrant startup ecosystem, a new wave of innovators is using artificial intelligence to make everyday work easier. Among them is Meet-Ting, a startup reshaping how professionals manage one of the most universal headaches in business: scheduling meetings.
From Personal Frustration to Opportunity
The idea for Meet-Ting was born from a challenge most of us have faced repeatedly — endless back-and-forth emails, conflicting schedules, and the mental exhaustion that comes with trying to lock down a meeting time that works for everyone.
Founder Dan Bulteel knows this all too well. After years spent leading social media and digital strategy teams at global brands like TikTok/ByteDance and Adidas, he encountered a problem no tool was solving effectively: seamless, automated calendaring across time zones and teams.
Rather than accept calendars as an inevitable annoyance, Dan asked a key question:
What if AI could understand scheduling intent the way a human assistant does — interpreting emails, resolving conflicts, and proactively arranging meetings?
This insight marked the beginning of Meet-Ting — an intelligent AI assistant designed to analyse emails, detect availability, and automatically create calendar invites.
The Founders & Formation
To turn this vision into reality, Dan teamed up with two other co-founders:
Oliver Yonchev – strategic partner from the innovation studio Cocreatd
James Lawson Baker – software specialist focused on product infrastructure
In the beginning stages of the adventure Meet-Ting also brought on Mariana Prazeres as Chief Technology Officer, contributing strong AI expertise and a love for applied mathematics which gave a boost the platform’s technical evolution.
This product-led thinking combined with strategic partnerships and technology prowess produced an excellent founding team to develop an exciting AI product quickly.
Building the Product: AI That Understands You
The key functionality of Meet-Ting, compared to basic calendaring software or a link-sharing tool, is:
- It can read the natural language in your email and suggest possible times to meet based on those emails.
- It matches different calendars automatically based on what calendars are available at that particular time.
- It allows you to send an official invitation via email without needing to do anything more than write a simple email requesting the meeting.
The goal was not just automation, but intelligent automation that feels natural and human-like in understanding context and priorities.
This focus on making scheduling invisible and delightful is what sets Meet-Ting apart from traditional calendar managers and bot solutions.
Early Validation & Growth
The AI scheduling assistant from Meet-Ting was tested in a limited closed beta in 2025 which gave users the opportunity to give feedback on product and UX development prior to the final launch.
The startup also successfully raised early-stage funding under the UK’s Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) — a government-backed program designed to support UK startups at the seed stage.
Additionally, acceptance into the Google AI Startup Program enabled Meet-Ting to access cloud infrastructure and development tools, advancing its technical capabilities.
Challenges & Lessons Learned
Like all founder journeys, Meet-Ting faced several early challenges:
🔹 AI misunderstandings: Natural language is messy — especially in emails where tone, abbreviations, and context vary wildly. Fine-tuning AI to work reliably took many iterative cycles.
🔹 User trust: User trust: Trust is a requirement for an AI to be entrusted with managing your calendar. Ad early believers: The team led with privacy, transparency and user control to win over early adopters.
🔹 Competition: While several scheduling tools exist, Meet-Ting’s strength lies in proactive understanding rather than notifications or links. Communicating that difference clearly was key.
These lessons reinforced a fundamental startup truth:
Real problems aren’t just complex — they must be solved in ways that people feel comfortable using.
Where Meet-Ting is Headed (2026 and Beyond)
In just over a year since launch, Meet-Ting has:
- Built a product that resonates with knowledge workers tired of calendar chaos
- Secured critical early funding and development support
- Positioned itself as a strong contender in the emerging landscape of AI productivity tools
As companies around the world increasingly rely on remote collaboration, tools like Meet-Ting — which intelligently reduce friction — are not just convenient — they become essential.
Conclusion: A Founders’ Story with Heart & Purpose
The Meet-Ting story tells us something crucial about today’s founders:
- They don’t just create tools — they address daily annoyances
- They marry human compassion with advanced technology
- They stay agile and humble and iterate until they get what their users really want
Dan, Oliver, James, and Mariana transformed meeting fatigue, an issue that plagues anyone who’s sat through back-to-back meetings into a powerful AI-based solution with global scale. And that's the sort of founder story that moves everyday innovators to create not just products — solutions that matter.
