What’s up with the browser extension with 1,500+ upvotes that had people saying this last week:

“Trust me on this...Bardeen is the #nocode tool of the year 💥.”

Bardeen is an automation tool to replace your repetitive tasks in just a click. These days, a lot of startups like Bardeen are working on solutions for context switching and SaaS sprawl. One way companies tackle the problem is through internal hubs. Another is search. There’s automation, too.

Robotic process automation goes further. RPA uses AI to program software to do basic, repetitive tasks across applications. While a tool like Zapier lets you connect apps to automate your workflows, Bardeen is working to use RPA. RPA for personal use is still very new. As Matt Turck, Managing Partner at FirstMark Capital and Bardeen investor, put it:

“Over the last few years, enterprises have poured billions of dollars into Robotic Processing Automation (RPA) to automate their backend systems. But, if you look at what we all do at work every day, we’re all badly in need of our own RPA. We spend so much time and mental energy on simple tasks that could be automated.”

With Bardeen, users can deploy an automation workflow, right in their browser with a click. Two hundred “playbooks” give users pre-built automation, or they can create their own (similar to Zapier). Machine learning helps users identify which tasks can be automated and recommends playbooks. Founder Pascal Weinberger also shared with one commenter that Bardeen runs “entirely on the edge (so in your browser). That comes with all sorts of privacy, security, and cost advantages...”

Thursday's launch was Bardeen’s public debut from stealth and came with an announcement of its $3.5M seed fundraise. Weinberger and co-founder Artem Harutyunyan are accomplished engineers. In a limited snapshot: Harutyunyan spent 8 years as lead developer at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), and Weinberger worked at Google Brain on various ML projects and led the AI team at Europe’s first moonshot factory.

Harutyunyan shared on the launch page:

“I started moonlighting on.. a slack bot that would… take away most mind-numbing and repetitive tasks… A while after, I talked to Pascal. I was really surprised when he literally pitched me my own idea! 🤯… Fast forward a few months and a bunch of us quit our jobs and we're working on Bardeen with some old friends.”

Sounds fun!