Former Pinterest team raises $9.5M to fix the email inbox

BuildForever, a consumer technology company, has launched Extra, a new email application designed to organize inboxes into actionable categories. The launch is supported by $9.5 million in seed funding—which refers to early-stage investment capital. The funding round was led by Abstract, with participation from other investors:

• Abstract (lead investor)
• A*
• Felicis
• Elad Gil

The application is currently free to use and is available on iOS and the web.

The company was co-founded by Naveen Gavini, Steven Ramkumar, and Albert Pereta, who all previously worked at Pinterest. Gavini, who serves as CEO, spent nearly 12 years at the visual discovery platform. He noted that after spending up to 12 hours on email daily, he felt overwhelmed by his personal inbox, despite maintaining “inbox zero”—a productivity method for keeping an inbox empty—at work. To address this, the team sought to bring Pinterest’s design philosophy to email. “If we could bring the same sort of design and thought process of Pinterest — which is delight, joy, and inspiration — to something that feels so anxiety-inducing and boring as email, that was our goal,” Gavini said.

Extra replaces traditional subject lines and folders with a “Today” view that summarizes critical information and highlights next steps, such as links to click or files to review. The interface organizes messages into categories of what needs action, what is happening today, and what is “good to know.” The rest of the inbox is automatically sorted into custom categories like travel, shopping, and newsletters. During its beta testing phase, users utilized the app’s features to unsubscribe from over 2 million emails per year. Additionally, the platform has transformed more than 4 million emails into summaries for the “Today” view.

While the application currently integrates exclusively with Gmail, BuildForever may possibly offer its own email addresses in the future. By focusing on solving basic user interface and organization issues, the founders are positioning Extra against the typical AI-heavy assistant pitches common in Silicon Valley. Gavini noted that the team is intentionally not pitching Extra as an AI app, aiming instead to solve basic user problems rather than pitching an AI that can do everything.

Why it matters

BuildForever is attempting to solve the structural problem of email overload by applying design principles from Pinterest, moving beyond simple AI agents to create a more actionable, personalized inbox experience.