A team of former Pinterest designers and engineers has unveiled Extra, a groundbreaking email client from their new venture BuildForever.
Naveen Gavini, ex-SVP and Chief Product Officer at Pinterest, leads the charge alongside co-founders Steven Ramkumar and Albert Pereta, each with over a decade at the visual discovery giant.
Extra's Innovative Features Transform Email Chaos
Extra eliminates traditional subject lines, folders, and tags, instead organizing emails into a personalized "Today" tab with real-time actionable insights pulled from your inbox.
Custom tabs automatically emerge based on your life—think family updates, travel plans, finances, or newsletters—making email feel intuitive and life-centered.
Specialized tabs like "News" curate newsletters with vibrant images and headlines, "Events" extracts appointments and suggests local happenings, and "Shop" turns promotional emails into visual storefronts.
The concept arose from Gavini's personal struggle with a chaotic personal inbox after maintaining inbox zero at work, where important messages constantly got buried.
In beta testing, users unsubscribed from over two million emails annually and converted four million into summarized "Today" actions, proving Extra's immediate impact on inbox overload.
Funding and Vision for Consumer App Overhaul
BuildForever secured $9.5 million in seed funding from top investors including Abstract, Felicis, Elad Gil, and angels like Pinterest co-founders Ben Silbermann and Gmail creator Paul Buchheit.
Unlike AI-hyped tools or bolted-on features, Extra focuses on core usability, drawing Pinterest's delight-driven design to make email joyful rather than anxiety-inducing.
Currently free on iOS and web for waitlist users with Gmail integration, Extra promises expansions to other providers and apps like messaging and calendars.
As email volumes explode, Extra signals a shift toward AI-enhanced organization that could redefine how billions manage their digital lives.
Early testers and reviewers praise its polish, ease, and the sheer pleasure of taming inboxes long overdue for reinvention.
Maria Lourdes
