From left: James Liu, Max Keenan, and Angela Liu. (Photo credit: Needl)

Keenan started the Seattle-based startup company with fellow University of Chicago alums James Liu and Angela Liu, both being former software engineers at Microsoft.

Needl aims to perform three types of searches:

∆ Finding specific files or documents
∆ Finding information about a specific category or subject
∆ Finding relevant info about a person or company.
Keenan made it known during the launch of closed beta in August, that the primary target market for project Needl are project managers and rolling out to more users this week.

The company, which just graduated from Y Combinator, aims to help people quickly find files, documents, or messages.

“We’ve essentially built a single search bar for your entire life,” said CEO Max Keenan. “It’s Mac’s Spotlight on steroids.”

Needl search bar makes it seamless for users to get relevant results to their searches in real-time. A project manager needs to do is to search for the desired Project Name and from there, you will instantly have the relevant presentations in Slides, and the latest specs in Notion. Rather than spending 10 minutes or more tracking down the most relevant information, you will have everything right at your fingertips with a single search.

Needl is building a personal search product that will pull information from across different web apps, raised $2.5 million.

Needl is building a personal search product that will pull information from across different web apps having raised $2.5 million.

“We learned that finding information is hard, even at small companies, so we’re building a self-serve tool that anyone can get going in less than two minutes and from there, find anything they need, regardless of where it lives,” he said. “Needl does not require full company buy-in, unlike most of our predecessors.”

Needl’s investors include Fuse, Y Combinator, Palm Drive Capital, Liquid 2 Ventures, Stanford professor Collin Wallace, and SimpleLegal founder Nathan Wenzel.

Several companies offer search-related capabilities, including Glean, which raised $100 million earlier this year

Keenan, a former investment banker, said Glean makes “great internal search” but is targeted at enterprises.

Other similar startups include Command E, which raised $4.3 million in 2020, and Seattle-based Plus, which raised $5.5 million last year.