Personal scheduling startup TimeBridge debuted Tuesday and has secured a first round of funding of $6 million from Mayfield Fund and Norwest Venture Partners.

The startup will launch at O’Reilly Media’s Web 2.0 conference along with 12 other companies. TimeBridge is trying to resurrect the idea of calendar scheduling that was first introduced in the late 1990s by companies like TimeDance and Zaplet that went under once the dot-com bubble burst.

TimeBridge provides scheduling software that acts like a personal assistant, trying to make the process of scheduling meetings and appointments easy. It is expected to work with email and calendaring software such as Microsoft Outlook and not compete with such providers.

CEO Yori Nelken said executives today spend too much time trying to schedule meetings. In an independent survey, the company found that people sometimes spent more time on scheduling meetings than in the meetings themselves.

“While our world is so dynamic, we use pretty old-fashioned tools to manage it,” said Mr. Nelken. He previously founded Banter Technologies, a call center software developer.

TimeBridge’s web-based software currently integrates with Microsoft’s Outlook email client. It runs within the software and allows users to set up meetings in one step, Mr. Nelken said. For example, while scheduling a meeting, users will see their calendars pop up. While users select free times, the time slots automatically appear in the email they are formatting.

The software will then determine the best time available for all the invitees and automatically confirm the meeting. All the invitees don’t have to be TimeBridge users. Non-users will be invited through a browser-based interface.

No Help from Techies

Users do not need help from IT staff to use the software. TimeBridge is targeting business professionals who are busy and don’t have a personal assistant to do their scheduling.

Pricing has not been set yet, but Mr. Nelken expects it to start from $30 per user per year up to $100 per user per year for premium features. A basic version of the software will be available for free. The company hopes to popularize the service through viral marketing.

Integration with other email systems such as Lotus Notes and other open source options such as Zimbra will follow, but Mr. Nelken didn’t specify when.

Eventually, the company hopes to earn revenue from partnerships with companies that can advertise their products and services within the software, such as weather service providers or video and audio conferencing providers.

The company’s software is currently being beta tested by a limited group of users. TimeBridge will release a beta version to the public in the first half of 2007.

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