Remember when Waze pwned Google Maps? This app solves for LinkedIn and Twitter.

I don’t need more data on the two dozen people I meet each week. I need more time. Or help preparing.

After trying dozens of services and apps — a few that helped me greatly but not daily (Zoom, Bufferapp, Dropbox) and many that wasted my time and all but bricked my phone (you know who you are because I deleted you) — I’ve found a service with an app that saves me time and makes me smarter, daily, in every meeting: The Accompany beta.

Accompany solves for LinkedIn like the driving app Waze solved for Google Maps in Silicon Valley (faster, easier commuting via a more helpful, better UI and audio). If forced to choose, I’d delete my LinkedIn and Twitter apps rather than give up Accompany’s killer app.

Basically, this app turns my calendar from a text-based laundry list of back-to-back meetings into a curated touch-stream of instant data and news on the professional and personal lives (and priorities) of the people I’m meeting with. The app’s AI also adds a critical overlay: My personal relationship with each individual, drawn from emails and contact info that lives in my iPhone.

Most of this information is public, but the app’s UI and AI saves me from burning hours navigating back and forth between searches of three email clients, LinkedIn, social media, a zillion news feeds, the market close, my contacts AND my texts to prepare for my meeting. I’m better slept, smarter and ready to connect when I walk in the door. Since about 75% of my meetings are with people I already know, I can’t risk embarrassing myself if it’s their birthday, for crying out loud.

I don’t even have to look at my iPhone: If I’m driving or taking a Lyft to a meeting, Accompany sends me Briefings via email. I just have Siri read them to me on the way. The app even helps me send a quick “I’ll be a few minutes late” text message (one touch — or I can use the magical blue button with the phone and email icons in the lower right of this screenshot from my phone today). Not that I’m always late. But Waze can only help me so much.

Admittedly, it’s not perfect yet. The app is still in beta, so while it supports Gmail, Outlook, and Exchange, there’s no way to connect my iCloud or other accounts. Also, the beta doesn’t have coverage for everyone in my professional network yet — for now it helps me more in Silicon Valley than in Cincinnati. It’s available in Apple App Store only, so Android users are out of luck on their smartphones, but anyone can use the Web version.

I love this thing: I open Accompany’s calendar and touch the faces of the 1–10 people in my next meeting to give me some context on who I’ll be seeing (hey, I remember that guy from SXSW, he likes bourbon too). On their work lives, I get an up-to-the-minute feed of recent company press releases, market close data and stock history, who’s on their board, what people are saying about the enterprise in social media. The app’s AI goes one further: Do I know their boss? What’s their co-founder doing now? Did they have a Medium post or announcement I can retweet quickly (which I can do directly from the app, yay) — or should I start following them?

The curated interface starts with the professional and gets personal, starting with each person’s bio, employment history, and easy links to their profiles on LinkedIn, CrunchBase, AngelList and Facebook. The app also accesses my shared email history with each person plus anything I’ve saved in my iPhone about their lives. Is it their birthday today? Are their kids the same age as mine? What photos did they post from vacation?

I wanted to test whether anyone else agreed with me, so I sent a beta access code to a group of professional women whose lives are insanely busy and who suffer no fools. (I wondered whether or not I was biased — I’m not an investor, but I am a friend of CEO Amy Chang’s and she and her team regularly tolerate my free advice.) Here’s some example feedback:

“Just signed up for the Accompany app. On Android so using my laptop for now. Do you have any idea how many hours I have spent doing “briefing books”?? Whoever created this clearly understood the role and deliverables for executives. The communications world should wrap their arms around this app.” ~ Francine Gingras, Founder and CEO of FragranceLock

“This is awesome! Would it be OK if I shared with this with my husband, Adam? He saw me looking at it and is totally jealous ;)” ~ Sharon Feder Chief Digital Officer at Watch Entertainment & Rachael Ray

Here’s the irony: When Amy Chang, the CEO, left Google and told me what she was building — a “chief of staff” app that briefs you before every meeting with business details and human factors for every participant — I was dubious about whether it could or would work, despite her mad skillz as a product wizard. Calendars are notoriously impossible, and how do you tame the Web’s tsunami of data and social content to help a user focus on a few big fish?

This app is how. For the record, Amy, you were right. I’m hooked. When will the Android version be ready?