More data and information are generated today than ever before in history, and that amount pales in comparison to what will be generated in the coming decades. At the same time, life (personal and professional) is moving faster than ever before in history. We have near-instant access to just about anyone and anything – connected by virtually instantaneous communications technologies.

The sheer quantity of information we are exposed to daily across a myriad of different channels is challenging for even the most intellectually gifted to manage and sort in a fully optimized manner. At best it is a small productivity rate-limiting factor we all manage through, and at worst it can overwhelm people and lead to burnout.

What if there was a way to offload that cognitive burden? A tool that would capture everything you see and interact with and make it easily discoverable to you – on demand? Economic productivity gains aside, wouldn’t such a tool unlock your latent mental capacity to focus on what really matters and not on mundane – albeit important – tactical details? Imagine the upside opportunities such a tool could unlock, as well as the downside errors of human recollection it could avoid. Rewind.AI is building such a tool.

Rewind captures everything a user types, hears, or says and stores it all privately in a compressed format on their hard drive. For example, if you search for a particular term, Rewind returns every time it has appeared to you, regardless of where or how you encountered it. It can do so without integrating directly with third-party apps by utilizing automated speech recognition and optical character recognition. It provides context-specific perfect recall. By combining the latest advances in GPT-4 models with proprietary, cutting-edge data compression capabilities, Rewind has created what I believe will become the next ‘killer app’ in the information-overload age we live in.

I had the chance to test out RewindAI pre-public release as a beta user. I was so impressed by the capabilities and the easy-to-navigate Ux that when Co-Founder & CEO, Dan Siroker, emailed with an unusual offer for beta users such as myself to invest in their recent fundraising alongside the lead investor, NEA, I jumped at the opportunity.

This method of mobilizing early adopters and champions to finance a project is not entirely new (e.g., Kickstarter, StartEngine, any web3 token launch). It is, however, the first time it’s been deployed with this level of intentionality in engaging early users alongside a Tier-1 institutional investor. This matters because it legitimizes a form of fundraising that has – to date – been viewed by many as a negative signal about the company’s future prospects.

Dan’s unconventional fundraising methods did not stop there. In fact, he open-sourced the entire fundraising process, leveraging social media to solicit interest from any fund (of which NEA eventually won the bid) and publishing his pitch deck and video voiceover for anyone to see.

Both Rewind’s perfect recall capabilities and Dan’s chosen method of merging go-to-market tactics with community fundraising efforts are likely to become an industry standard in the not-too-distant future.

It should go without saying that the presence of a respected VC like NEA, a strong, experienced founding team, a unique product that one likes and has used personally, and an innovative fundraising approach are not – in themselves –sufficient reasons to invest in a highly-risk early-stage startup. With that said, the opportunity to participate in a unique and likely industry-defining experiment while also receiving potential financial upside exposure on a product I use is more than enough reason for some people to place a relatively modest amount of personal capital at risk. I suspect many more users/consumers will feel the same in the future and jump at opportunities to be part of the financing story of their favorite new teams and products.

Interested in seeing what I’m so excited about? Sign up here to access Rewind.

Disclaimer: nothing said here is to be taken as investment advice. Investing in early-stage startups is highly risky and should be carefully considered by each person’s unique situation and risk appetite.