Meet Neha Suresh, CEO & Co-Founder of April, "getting you to inbox zero, anywhere, anytime, all with your voice" - one of the VentureBridge 2025 Cohort Companies

July 11th, 2025 - Steven Guo

Carnegie Mellon University’s VentureBridge program, an initiative of the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship, supports CMU-alumni founded companies with capital, co-working space, access to mentorship and resources, and investor demo days across San Francisco, Pittsburgh, and New York City.

In this spotlight series, we take a behind the scenes look at an interview with Neha Suresh, Co-Founder & CEO of April at the beginning of the VentureBridge program. The interview below is slightly edited for clarity.

Steven Guo: Let’s dive right in! Neha, who are you? Who is Neha Suresh?

Neha Suresh: Fundamentally, I think of myself as an engineer. That's what I did for seven years after graduating from undergrad, and then when I came to CMU, started my master's and that's kind of the time around when I started thinking I could build something on my own. Starting out, I began tinkering around on the side, and then suddenly it became like the main thing to do, like build something and ship it out there. And this kind of took form over the whole year in school.

And the batch was great as well. A lot of us were talking about building startups. I think every term there would be some teams within the campus, within the class, talking about their YC interview, their other accelerator interviews. So I think the shift happened after I came here, from being just an engineer to “okay, maybe I can build something bigger than just just doing a day job.”

Steven Guo: So before, did you feel like you were just an engineer where you were really good at building things. But then after coming to CMU, being part of this community, kind of seeing other examples of just the founder experience, you started to feel really confident and say, “oh, well, I can do that too.”

Neha Suresh: Yes, that's exactly what it was. Just like engineering was a strong skill to have, you also just need to think of yourself as a founder, to think that you could actually build things out. So it was a big mindset shift.

Steven Guo: Tell me more about that mindset shift that helped you to take the leap and kind of build up your confidence, to be like, “hey, well, you know what? I can just do it. Like, why not?”

Neha Suresh: So it wasn't like a one day thing and it kept becoming stronger over time. So Akash and I were tinkering on the side. CMU has a bunch of hackathons, so there were some that I participated in there. And then being here in the Bay Area is a big advantage as with the ecosystem here, I went to Berkeley and Stanford, participated in those hackathons, where I would get pretty good feedback on how the product shaped out.

There was this one time we shipped out a Chrome extension, and we expected absolutely no one to use it. And then people were actually signing up from different parts of the world. Wow. And then we were like, “okay, if we actually build something useful to people, they would start using it.” And then we had a strong focus on building something for developers. That eventually changed and that was what we originally got into VentureBridge for, which was building a developer tool for testing. And then another hackathon happened, and that's where we completely pivoted into a consumer application.

So the intent to build was very strong and the idea kept evolving over time.

Steven Guo: That's neat. That gets to part of what I'm excited about today getting a chance to talk with you is the pivots you've made, because you came in with NotHotDog, and then it was Possam at our NYC VB Demo Day in June, and now it's April.

So walk us through a little bit of that journey from NotHotDog getting to the VentureBridge and how in basically like a few weeks time it then changed to April. I'd love to hear more about that story.

Neha Suresh: Okay, so NotHotDog was something built off of what we understood people needed. So AI Agents were everywhere. We knew people were building agents, but they weren't necessarily the most reliable agents. So we thought that testing and making them more reliable for production is what it seemed intuitively, a very obvious need, and we had some level of validation on that as well. So we went ahead and shipped that out as an open source project. The challenge was, I think, with NotHotDog, was that we were either a little too early or we weren't able to tap into the right customer segment. It could still become something if we give it a lot of love and energy and time, which we were kind of short on.

And so the hackathon idea was something that Akash and I wanted to build for ourselves. We're like, “okay, you need an assistant that can talk to your email, can talk to your calendar, because I have an email that's always flooded, of course, and if I could just talk to it and get things done parallelly, it would be super helpful.” And Akash always had a long ride to work, more or less taking an hour or so to drive to work, and for him to catch up on email would also be very useful during that commute time. More useful than listening to a podcast, at least in some respects.

Therefore, the YC hackathon seemed like the perfect place to be building this out, and who knew that it would blow up! We kind of built a demo with our cars driving and then recording how he speaks to his emails. And the YC Partners loved it, and they gave us an interview. And what we did before the interview was we wanted to gauge if the interest was just something we imagined or it was something that was really necessary. So we put out a website, which was awesome, and we launched it on Reddit.

I remember launching the website and going to sleep, and I put this thing of “for instant access, pay $10” because I was not expecting anyone to sign up. And then I fell asleep, and suddenly Akash was texting me, like, “people are asking for the app. We have people who've paid on Stripe, and they're asking me for the app.” I'm like, “uh oh, I don't have an app, and so I had to wake up and change, and realized this is not instant access. It's like, kind of early access as in you can be on a waitlist, but you’ll get first access to the app when it’s ready.”

So I remember waking up disoriented and changing that whole thing, saying, “hey, we were wrong. Our website said it was instant access, but we're still building it out,” and we offered to refund everyone the amount that they paid, but most of them asked us to keep the money and give the product to them as soon as we could. And the waitlist over the next two, three days, it just kept growing. And it wasn't like we had a full marketing plan. This was just some random thing that we did, and then kind of worked. And that's when we realized, “you know, we were probably on to something.” From there, we took up the YC interview offer that we got as a gift for winning the hackathon, and we went and pitched this idea, and told them about the kind of traction we had. We had also built out a solid MVP by then to share.

So the YC partners used our app, spoke to it, and they were very excited. They are very excited to this day. They're like, “this is what we've been waiting for, and if this works really well, then we're on to something.” So that's kind of how the pivot happened. We were building something we had wanted for ourselves. We launched it out, and we found that other people also wanted that for themselves too.

Steven Guo: Yeah, it's cool when you were also the customer, and to really get the pull from demand, from just putting out something that people need. And so can you remind me of the name of the hackathon? Was it the YC hackathon?

Neha Suresh: It's the world's biggest MCP hackathon hosted by YC Combinator.

Steven Guo: And then, because you won that hackathon, you were able to get an interview with the YC partners. And that, in a way, built a bit of the motivation and the validation, and kind of helped you dive further into thinking, “all right, let's just keep working on this.” 

Neha Suresh: Yeah, that was how it happened.

Steven Guo: That's so cool. And so I guess maybe I'd love to hear more about you. You talked a little bit about the inspiration behind you and Akash, like, “oh man, this would be so helpful if we could do this.”

So has your thinking shifted from being, “oh, let's just build something” to now of “this could be a really big opportunity that you're both kind of doubling down on.” How has that thinking changed? What is the inspiration for April and what is your vision from here on out? 

Neha Suresh: So I'll try to address these questions in pieces here. Yeah, the thinking has shifted where I think the biggest motivation for anyone who's building is having someone who wants to use what they’re building. Like, if there's someone who's pinging me, asking me, “when is it getting ready so I can start using it?” There's nothing that inspires me more to get heads down and building it out. And now we do have people interested and we have a big waitlist that keeps growing every day. We get messages and emails from some people where they are asking for Android versions of the app that we're not ready to build yet.

So that kind of really keeps us excited about building this out. We also use it ourselves as well. So it's a lot of fun for us. Like most of our time as engineers, we're looking at the screen trying to build this out. But now we get breaks from that, where I'm not looking at my screen, I'm just speaking, and I'm like, “okay, did this work? Did that work? Did this do what I wanted it to do?” And I imagine myself being very happy when it works perfectly. That's what keeps us going at the root of it, that we think we're onto something that people really, really want.

And going forward, we'll address things as they come. We learn from our users more about what they want. We do not want to make the mistake that we made the previous time, of assuming this is what people need. We'll go with an email calendar, see how they're using it, and give them anything more that they need. 

Steven Guo: What was the inspiration behind using voice as the main mechanism to be the trigger point for how April is powered?

Neha Suresh: So that was more along the lines of there is email productivity, but email is busy work, right? It's not actually getting anything done. And if I wanted to get something done alongside email, looking at my screen was not the primary modality that would work for me. If I could do my emails when I was doing something else, then I'm actually freeing up some busy work for myself. And for me to do two things at the same time, I would have to make sure that I was not looking at the screen. If I wasn't looking at the screen, then voice was the only way I could go forward.

Steven Guo: Okay, so it's kind of like the idea that if you're having to literally look at something while you're working on emails or what have you, then you're not really recapturing that time that you could be doing something else. And I love the tagline that you have which is “get to Inbox Zero, anywhere, anytime, all with your voice, like on your commute.” And so I feel that it really gets back to the core of the reason why you built this was essentially because you were trying to get things done while you're getting to work, right?

Neha Suresh: Yes, exactly. And now we have different people telling us they want to do things at different times or situations. So there was this one person I met with. He's like, “I take my dog for a walk every day. And if in those 30 minutes I could do email, I can get 30 minutes of my day back.” And 30 minutes is a good amount of time every day.

Steven Guo: Yeah. That's a great point, because I know a lot of people exercise or go on a run to clear their mind. But that's also where sometimes the best thinking happens, like, when you're in a shower, you're just kind of ruminating or whatever, and you're like, “oh man, well, I don't want to be looking at something where I’m already kind of trying to disconnect from technology, but you want to capture all of that.” So I love the ways that this could be used in many different settings that you know, not just your commute, but just hands-free, screen free, whenever you want.

Steven Guo: And so how did you get to the name, April?

Neha Suresh: The name was harder than the idea it sounds, to be honest. So we started with inbox zero, but that kind of was heavily trademarked, and it also stuck to just email inbox. We were also doing calendar, so we wanted a name that was friendly and easy to remember. I think we also got a venture check in April. So April was a standout month for us. We're like, “okay, maybe something associated with this month would be good.” Then we floated a few names. We had floated it in Slack as well and April was the winner there.

Steven Guo: While you were still NotHotDog, you had shared that your team’s superpower was that “you're technically super, super strong, both engineers who have built enterprise-rate products and work really closely with compliance.” Would you like to update that now that you’re with April?

Neha Suresh: Yeah. So we're, I think our biggest strength is still that we're both engineers, but also, to add to that, we both have a lot of emails that we need to clear. So that means we are also users of our product right now.

Steven Guo: Essentially, you're not only just both engineers who are building a product, but you're also the first users. You’re the consumers and the builders.

Neha Suresh: Exactly. Anything that Akash builds, I would test them and we are honest with each other. Like I’ll say, “I don't like this. This is not working.” And likewise, if I make a change immediately, he’ll respond with, “oh, this doesn't work. I want it this way.” So we are able to cultivate a very instantaneous feedback loop on anything that we're building out.

Steven Guo: So how did you and Akash meet? Tell me more about your team. What led you to start working together and build a venture together?

Neha Suresh: So we've known each other for a long time. We knew each other from back in India. Akash had wanted to build for a while and he's had that thought. For me, the shift happened – and Akash was in the US before I came here – after I came here, when I was floating ideas with him for a long time. So it made sense that we could probably potentially try building together. He wasn't the first person I had started working with. We were both trying to look for other co-founders, but then we figured that working with each other would actually be best because we've known each other for the longest. Yeah, so that is why we decided to work together, and we haven't had a reason to rethink that decision since.

Steven Guo: Okay, let's see. Well, I know that a lot of April kind of stems from yours and Akash’s personal experience that made you feel, “this problem sucks. Let's do something about it and let's build this thing.”

It’s been maybe a couple of months since April has had its launch and debut. But as you're thinking about the company itself, how does this reflect your values or your life experience to this point? What are those core things about April that you want to see in it, that you have from within yourself?

Neha Suresh: Productivity is important. I think coming from India there was a big change where we had more free time but after coming here to the U.S., there's just so much to get done, and 24 hours seems a lot less time than it used to. So it's been something that we've been working on to optimize time and to make the time that we're spending very, very meaningful. To do as little busy work as possible. Because in a corporate setting, it probably makes sense to sit and look at your email for some time. But given our schedules, I think getting sleep, work, and finishing three meals in between is already so exhausting that we wanted to make every 30 minutes of our life more meaningful so we were getting the most done.

And I think April comes back to reflect that you don’t want to waste time – at least if you wanted to use your drive time for something else, that is your choice. For example, we usually like to listen to podcasts, listen to the news on our drive. But if you want to get something concrete done before you're at work, people should have the option to use that time for more productive things as well, and that's what April comes to represent for them. If you're doing something else and you want to be doing email or figuring out what your day looks like, you should not have to be looking at your screen.

I also think that in 10 years from now, when we look back at people using screens all the time, we're going to think it was evil to an extent. And we want to get rid of that. I hate looking at the screen. Zoom fatigue is real. If you can do something without looking at your screen, you should be able to do it without looking at your screen.

Steven Guo: I feel like that's such a tonal shift when we think about productivity post-COVID, where we're also plugged into our screens all the time, because people work remotely too, where you don't have to go into the office anymore as much as we used to like before. And because of that, we're always plugged into some form of a screen.

And so the behavioral shift of April with “hey, you can still get work done. You know, instead of the tedious work that you need to be doing in front of a screen, why not do it hands-free?” But also, giving back the freedom of your time to be productive in a way that's not making you do more work, but actually helping to do less. Kind of, you know, attentive work that requires screens or requires to be plugged in technology in the way that we are forced to. 

Neha Suresh: Yeah, so we're giving everybody screen-free time, plus a sort of mini personal assistant on the side that's kind of helping you facilitate things on the go. 

Steven Guo: How do you envision April evolving? What change do you want to see April make in the world?

Neha Suresh: Every workplace action that can be done without the screen should be done without a screen. That is what we're going for. For everything that can be done with that screen… what if we could do it screen-free? Right now we’re starting off with email, calendar, and slack off the top of my mind. But there are multiple other things that we are starting to observe that could possibly be removed from the screen and done in other ways.

Steven Guo: What were you seeing that no one else was doing that enabled April to kind of come to the fore and to really kind of build something novel for people?

Neha Suresh: The thing that really helped us was that we were building testing for voice agents. So we kind of knew inherently how what a good voice agent is and how to build one. Just because of the nature of our previous work where we were testing agents to make them more reliable. Through that depth of experience we knew that we can build a strong, reliable voice agent. And the voice agent piece was ready separately. However, the email problem was one that was persistent for a while, and we had thought that “what if… voice agent meets the email problem and see if we can solve it then.”

That's kind of how we were looking at that coming forward. We just identified a gap that a voice agent could really solve, and that was due in part because we already had that agent ready. Essentially, NotHotDog was not a waste!

Steven Guo: Yeah. I love how it's building upon the experience and the depth of knowledge that you two had developed with NotHotDog, with voice agents, and then stumbling upon, “oh, wait this makes sense here. And if anything, it's even a better opportunity though we were looking at before, potentially!”

Neha Suresh: Yeah, it was very serendipitous.

Steven Guo: I'm a big fan of serendipity creating your luck by putting yourself in the right place so that you can take advantage of opportunities that happen. You never know how it's gonna look like, right?

Neha Suresh: You never know how it could, and I can vouch for that. We actually went to the YC hackathon for the free food. I told Namrata this, and she was like, “see what happens when you go.” And it takes a little bit of effort to get yourself out on a Saturday or a Sunday doing work, but then you never know when it will pay off. 

Steven Guo: Talking a little bit more about your experience as a founder. What is that like? You had mentioned your mindset shift and then Akash said, “hey, let's work on something together.” Now you're a founder, backed by YC, Skydeck, CMU VentureBridge.

What has changed for you? Or how has that founder journey been for you so far?

Neha Suresh: So the one thing is that it has not been straightforward. You kind of never know what you need next. The thing that we're getting better at over time is anticipating the next roadblock a little bit better than we did before. I think that's been the biggest line, which is that you cannot predict how anything can go. So one day we're building NotHotDog and the next day we're building something else, and the third day we're like, oh, we were changing the whole company's idea.

But through this process your gut instinct becomes stronger. I do not know how to vocalize that. I do not know what is changing concretely, but I think you're just making so many decisions that you become better at making decisions faster, and with time, you learn what decisions work and what don’t. It’s a gut instinct that becomes stronger with time and moving to San Francisco helped, because everybody was building and that energy really, really matters.

When you see everybody's hustling, everybody's trying to figure things out, and nobody has it all figured out – that's another thing that you kind of learn. When you're on the inside. It's like, from the outside, it looks like, “oh, they've got it all figured out,” but nobody does. Everybody's kind of still figuring things out. And when you have those people around you who are like learning, you're also learning with them. It's a good community.

Steven Guo: What's been a great piece of advice or quote or perspective that someone has given you more clarity or helped you to think about you being a founder in a better way, or has helped to unlock something for you?

Neha Suresh: I was speaking with this one person who said that “you can dream of anything, and you can get there. You're in the place where all of that magic happens.” And I think more often than not, it is that we will restrict ourselves – like we confine ourselves to smaller dreams – once you think that anything can be done, you will find a way to do it. And when I have doubts, I got back to this quote. 

Steven Guo: How can the community help support you? What is your call to action for the community?

Neha Suresh: We would love for a lot of CMU folks to use April and give us a lot of feedback. Because I know as a student, I used to get more emails from Canvas than anything else and so many emails on top of that. So if students could use us, if CMU alumni could use us and give feedback, that is what we need. Use and give us feedback. Tell us what else you need to make this better.

Steven Guo: What is the process for someone like a CMU student or CMU alum that says, “oh, I want to try April.” What does that next step look like for them?

Neha Suresh: They just sign up and then send me a note saying they're from CMU. And it’ll be at a discounted price, okay? April is a mobile app so you download it on your iPhone, and then you're all set.

Steven Guo: For folks that try April, what's the best way to give you feedback? Do you want people to reach out to you directly?

Neha Suresh: Feel free to reach out to me! I would love to hear customer feedback at any point.

Steven Guo: Okay great. And you can use April to source all those feedback requests.

Neha Suresh: Yeah *chuckles* I’ll be able to keep listening to them all the time.

Steven Guo: Last question. What's your final message?

Neha Suresh: This is the best time to be building something. If anyone has an idea or the slightest inkling of building something and putting it out there, take this as a message to do it. Just do it, and then you'll figure out things from there.

Thank you to Neha Suresh for the conversation. We welcome you to follow and become a user of April as they move forward. Come and see them pitch in-person at our upcoming CMU VentureBridge 2025 Demo Days in Pittsburgh (September 24th) and San Francisco (October 8th)!