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Stop Chasing Inbox Zero: Hien Nguyen on Relationships as Your Real Business Asset
Jul 13, 2026
What if inbox zero is the wrong goal entirely? In this episode of Build With What You Know, I sit down with Hien Nguyen, founder of Sidekick Log by Screate, who is building a lightweight AI tool that treats your inbox as a map of relationships rather than a list of tasks to clear.
We cover why relationships — not messages — drive business forward, how founders can protect their focus by starting each day from their calendar, why a local-first architecture matters for data privacy, and Hien's journey from running a community-led growth agency in Vietnam to building software products for founders globally.
🔗 Screate → https://screate.co/
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#ProductivityTools #EmailManagement #FounderTools #AIProductivity #OnlineBusiness #BuildWithWhatYouKnow #StartupLife #InboxZero #RelationshipCapital #BuildInPublic
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0:02
Hi. Okay, so before we jump on any
0:06
symbol
0:08
any frameworks, I would love to share
0:10
how we
0:12
are building Psychic Lab and how it's
0:14
used on my day-to-day running my own
0:17
company life. So, here
0:20
Do you see my screen, Yan?
0:23
>> Yes.
0:24
I can see.
0:26
>> So, what I would do is
0:28
this is very fun, by the way.
0:32
This is This is what I open
0:36
my morning every single day. So, I have
0:39
a CEO schedule, I would say. This is my
0:43
how my week looks like on Monday, most
0:48
of them will be how I, you know,
0:50
strategize about how I take my company
0:53
forwards with
0:55
customer success and metrics. So, I
0:59
would block this entire thing,
1:02
you know, just to look at all the
1:03
metrics,
1:04
the customer research, the bio trigger,
1:07
average list, and a bunch of them. I
1:10
look at the magic to see where we are,
1:13
and then I'm planning the rest of my day
1:17
to
1:18
achieve that goal.
1:20
So, that's what my Monday is. Monday is
1:23
CEO day.
1:24
And then Tuesday, I would say it's for
1:28
strictly building. So, I would block the
1:31
entire day, not helping any calls at
1:34
all, just go fixing the product product,
1:37
fixing bugs, and detecting, you know,
1:40
quality and all.
1:42
So, I would rarely do anything on this
1:44
day, you know, outside of building the
1:47
product. And then some of day
1:49
uh the next day would be studio
1:53
recording, hopping on podcast, writing
1:56
down. I'm going on a little content walk
1:59
to actually produce a lot of insight.
2:02
And I'm going to get to this like maybe
2:05
in another episode of how I actually
2:07
think and positioning myself because I
2:10
came from that background, right? But
2:13
that day is for organizing my thoughts
2:15
and making it into an intellectual that
2:18
I can share.
2:20
Um and then Thursday would be mostly for
2:24
calls like this that we are having, user
2:27
calls, CTM, community audit, you know.
2:32
And then Friday would be my last day to
2:34
wrap up all the products and maybe
2:37
hopping on calls if I have any. But
2:40
yeah, usually it would just, you know,
2:42
finishing demo and the ship the
2:45
distribution and all. So, that's how my
2:47
day look like.
2:49
I don't work on Sundays. I don't work
2:52
Usually I would work on Saturday a
2:55
little bit uh in the morning, but that
2:57
would be it.
2:59
So, this is how I run my day my week.
3:02
And for day-to-day basis,
3:05
I have this thing where
3:07
um you remember the Monday, right?
3:10
So,
3:12
how do you I know if my business is
3:15
going exactly where I want it to be?
3:18
So, I use Psychic Law and my Gmail on
3:21
top of it. I don't know if I can share
3:23
my Gmail here.
3:26
Um
3:27
but uh here is a quick look into
3:32
what we are building here at Psychic
3:34
Law.
3:35
So, imagine this left side, you know, is
3:40
your Gmail.
3:41
And it's a
3:43
it's a thread it's a list of all the
3:45
email thread going on, you know,
3:48
unsynchronized.
3:50
And instead of living into another
3:53
platform, I would just say, "Hey, why
3:55
don't you open your sidebar?" And, you
3:58
know,
3:59
think about it.
4:00
And every morning,
4:03
um, Psychic Rock will have this two-day
4:06
briefing. It show you what email is
4:09
focusing to help your business grow. So,
4:13
for example here, we have
4:15
>> [laughter]
4:16
>> Altman, um, asking for AI product
4:20
roadmap. This is examples, okay? Um,
4:24
he is waiting on your replies, or
4:27
someone from the YC community, they
4:30
asking for an update on your product,
4:33
and then,
4:34
you know, someone is you hiring a
4:37
product lead role, and it's also show
4:39
here. So, all of your, you know, the the
4:43
most conversations about your customer,
4:46
your partners, anything that drive your
4:48
business forward, they are here. The
4:51
very first thing to see,
4:53
um,
4:54
before you begin to dive deep into
4:57
anything. And then here we have
5:00
>> This tool is creating a to-do list based
5:02
on your email inbox.
5:05
>> Not to-do list, this is conversation.
5:08
This is actual conversation in email
5:11
itself.
5:12
Because the underlying assumption is
5:16
relationships
5:18
are the one who are driving your
5:20
business forward, not, you know, another
5:23
task on your list. Because, guess what?
5:26
The task is just the artifact of the
5:29
conversation that you had with the
5:31
people. So, that's how I think about it
5:34
when I build this thing. We We can get
5:38
into it later, but that's how, you know,
5:40
relationship is like the backbone of
5:42
this product. So, instead of looking at,
5:44
you you
5:45
your messages or your email as a unit of
5:49
work. I take a look at the relationship
5:52
of the people you have in your own
5:54
inbox. And that's what Psychic Logic is
5:57
different from every AI, you know, inbox
6:01
assistant out there is that they focus
6:03
on your relationship and helping you
6:06
prioritizing the conversation that
6:09
matter the most.
6:10
So, this is example for founder only.
6:14
But we have
6:16
um a lot of the 9-5 very good operators
6:20
that have been using Psychic Logic and,
6:23
you know, get great return on it. They
6:25
reported to me every single day. Like
6:27
they say, "Oh my god, it just found me
6:29
something that I didn't know."
6:32
So, that that has been great. Yeah. But
6:36
uh our our our target audience would be
6:38
like founders who are running, you know,
6:40
fundraising or a small business owner
6:43
who are overwhelmed with the volumes of
6:47
messages that they have and they need a
6:49
tool
6:50
um a lightweight tool to help they see
6:54
it better in their own inbox without
6:56
living
6:57
in their inbox. So, that's what we do
6:59
it.
7:00
And beside from the briefing, which give
7:03
you like a very quick, you know, look
7:05
into your and if you done replying or
7:08
opening in Gmail to take a look, you can
7:11
get it done and it's instantly clear,
7:14
you know. And then it keeps you on top
7:18
of your inbox as well
7:21
um cuz it's a always-on, you know,
7:24
Chrome extension. It's helping you to
7:27
see what's next without you having to
7:30
reload it every time. So, I think it's a
7:32
great way that uh our product has been
7:35
able to do this without. And then here's
7:38
what I say about like the relationship
7:40
as a backbone of Psychic Logic is that
7:42
we have a look into what that
7:45
conversation
7:47
is about, like what that threat is, and
7:50
from the first interaction to the latest
7:54
email that they send. So, how many
7:56
interaction were there, you know? So,
7:58
you you can be able to have like a a map
8:01
into your own relationship with those
8:04
people.
8:05
And finally, I think this one is nobody
8:08
has done it before, is like a direct
8:11
look
8:12
at how valuable your inbox is.
8:15
Because
8:17
usually, people are
8:20
measuring, you know,
8:23
the productivity of their, you know, of
8:26
their work
8:27
is by how many messages that have they
8:29
tackle off their to-do list. But when we
8:33
think about it, we think about how
8:36
how many relationship you keep preserve
8:39
momentum. For example, today call is our
8:43
first interaction, right? But what if
8:46
this led to many, many more, you know,
8:50
interaction? Perhaps we can jump on
8:52
another calls, or we can you we we can
8:55
do other collabs. So, that's how I think
8:58
about when I build this thing.
9:00
So,
9:01
you can have the outcome per thread.
9:05
You can exactly say, "Okay, so this one
9:08
conversation helped me,
9:11
you know, drive more deals,
9:13
drive more customer, drive more
9:15
partnership." And that's how I think
9:17
about when we quantify the values in our
9:21
own inbox.
9:23
And and yeah, you can have like AI
9:26
feature to make it even better.
9:29
And
9:30
connected inbox.
9:32
But yeah,
9:33
more inboxes, maybe from your work, from
9:35
your personal one.
9:37
Right now, we are supporting two
9:40
accounts. But yes, that's how I think
9:43
about it.
9:44
And what I would do is I recommend
9:46
people to
9:48
um start planning it into your day
9:51
by opening your calendar knowing exactly
9:55
that day objective or that whole week
9:58
objective, right? And then
10:01
before you opening any app, opening your
10:04
email with side clock besides. So you
10:07
know exactly what your relationship up
10:10
played out and how is your business is
10:13
going. Are you leaving someone on read?
10:17
Or are you actually having a really good
10:20
conversation with them about this deal
10:23
coming up? So that's how I think about,
10:25
you know, like reserving momentum,
10:27
relationship, and as well as economic
10:31
values
10:32
in in your own inbox. And I think that's
10:34
a new way of
10:36
of thinking, of of communicating.
10:39
Yeah.
10:41
>> Exactly. Actually, I see a lot of um
10:44
uh AI tools that are
10:46
also doing that, not only doing that,
10:49
but also trying to become a kind of
10:51
second brain to manage your inbox,
10:54
um
10:55
create a summaries every morning of
10:57
emails you have to answer, trying to
10:59
show what are the most important, least
11:01
important, but usually these are kind of
11:03
big tools that require a lot of uh
11:06
a lot of time to set them up
11:09
to customize them to your needs. And
11:11
your tool is more simple, right?
11:15
>> Yeah.
11:15
It's very lightweight because um
11:18
I instead of like
11:21
having to jump on user call often
11:24
I actually came from the background of
11:26
working with
11:28
broad founders, entrepreneurs, and
11:31
business owner from like way back. So, I
11:35
have that frontier looks into how they
11:38
actually run their own business.
11:41
And back in I was running my own agency,
11:44
like we specialized in community led
11:46
growth. So, we were serving clients
11:50
of like
11:52
Yamaha Music Vietnam and we were working
11:55
on the budget campaigns here in Vietnam.
11:58
But, we were also having like
12:01
inbound interest of like, "Hey, can you
12:04
be a marketing partner for us?" And that
12:07
was coming from our overseas Vietnamese
12:10
founder that are struggling to
12:13
to to really find their footing in the
12:17
cross-border
12:18
businesses. So, they have great
12:20
expertise, but they didn't know how to
12:23
take it into that advantage. So, I came
12:26
in, I tweaked their positioning, and
12:29
helped them really discover their unique
12:32
advantage before they can help them
12:34
scale their social growth. So, that's
12:36
what we did back in the day. So, that's
12:39
why I think when I approach from
12:42
building a tech company now, everything
12:45
about filtering noise
12:48
and increasing that leverage that
12:51
business owner, entrepreneur, and
12:53
founder that they have. Because think
12:55
about it,
12:57
we don't like features. We don't like
13:00
more noise. Actually, we have more than
13:02
enough. That's why I take a look at my
13:04
calendar and not anything else
13:08
because my calendar is the 24-hour block
13:12
that's limited.
13:14
So, when I take a look at like
13:16
if you're not on my calendar,
13:19
it's not locked.
13:21
So, that's how I think about it and a
13:23
and a lot of my other founders,
13:25
they also look at their calendar that
13:28
way.
13:29
That's their operating system. That's
13:31
their layer
13:32
to run their own business.
13:34
And when I know, okay, so they take a
13:38
look at their calendar, they protect
13:40
their time, they focus.
13:42
So what? Why do we still have
13:45
a ton of messages going on that's
13:48
booming like crazy every single hour?
13:51
And then I
13:52
I think when I started in like 2025,
13:56
when I first had this idea, it was
13:58
because
13:59
holy like
14:01
why a lot of the other companies are
14:04
optimizing for inbox zero?
14:08
When relationship communication is a
14:10
living thing.
14:13
Think about it.
14:14
You You meet new people every day.
14:18
And every single one of them drive more
14:20
conversations.
14:22
Let's say, "Hey, I'm thinking about you
14:25
for these opportunities, right?" But why
14:27
do we treat it like as a to-do list that
14:30
we check it off?
14:32
But this to-do list is never going to
14:34
check off because
14:36
it's a living thing.
14:38
So that was my first breakthrough of
14:41
realization of like, "Holy like
14:44
why do they behave that way?" And that
14:46
made me, you know, to building this
14:49
thing from
14:51
"Hey, how about we just
14:53
build this from what we imagine our
14:56
inbox could be." So that was drive me
14:59
into building this thing.
15:01
Yeah.
15:02
>> Exactly. Me, too. Actually, I tailor
15:05
everything based on my calendar
15:06
availability. So your tool actually does
15:09
it start from the calendar? Does it
15:11
analyze the calendar? Or it only
15:13
analyzes the emails?
15:16
>> Right now, it's only focusing on email.
15:20
But as I said, it's it becoming a
15:24
essential tool for you to start your own
15:28
morning routine. And coming from my
15:31
observation from founders and even my
15:35
way of running my company, so that I
15:38
knew like calendar and email would be
15:41
like the two most essential things for
15:45
any modern business. So, right now we
15:47
focus on Gmail, right? Because it's the
15:50
most valuable and most I would say the
15:53
most densest um
15:56
places to store all of your company
15:59
information.
16:00
But, later on, yes, we will have to
16:02
support calendar. But, uh in order to
16:06
expand to that new capabilities, we have
16:08
to actually stabilize and make sure that
16:12
user are getting enough values from
16:14
this. So, this is my current uh
16:16
experiment with Psychic Logic is that we
16:20
help them find values in their own
16:22
inbox. And then later on, yes, we will
16:24
add more integration and all.
16:28
>> For example, your tool helps uh
16:31
resurfacing conversations that we might
16:33
have forgotten.
16:35
And it's all based on the value
16:38
given to
16:40
uh
16:41
specific conversations.
16:45
>> Sorry.
16:47
Is that a question?
16:49
>> Yes, your tool gives value to each
16:50
conversation
16:53
based on various criteria.
16:56
>> I would say we make the relationship
16:59
state finally visible. So, for example,
17:04
before Psychic Logic,
17:07
people don't know what
17:10
their conversation holds, you know.
17:13
>> Mhm.
17:13
>> So, how do they know they have same
17:15
Altman in their inbox?
17:18
How do they know like they have YC and
17:20
all this that this is incredible to
17:22
look at?
17:24
And some people they even connected
17:26
while ago and but they forgot. You know,
17:29
okay, we had a conversation we left them
17:31
on read, but we thought that they left
17:35
it on read.
17:36
So, it was
17:38
a mental juggling of like who is doing
17:41
what.
17:42
And I talked to many founders and
17:45
operator and they have that thing where
17:47
they don't know like did I reply to that
17:50
person?
17:52
So, it's actually before psychic lock
17:54
there was none of that. People keep
17:57
everything inside their head and they
17:59
check as soon as the new emails, the new
18:02
conversation coming in.
18:04
But with psychic lock now, what we do is
18:07
we keep track it for you. You don't have
18:09
to do that anymore. We reduce the load
18:12
of how your attention should be. Um so,
18:15
for example, like I said like we have uh
18:19
the messages, the most important
18:21
messages coming up first so you can
18:23
prioritize and then the rest you can
18:26
take a look or you can just go and skip
18:29
it.
18:30
So, as the way that I see it is in the
18:33
AI era,
18:35
you cannot optimize for more
18:39
output if your input is limited and that
18:43
input is our attention,
18:46
our mo- momentum,
18:48
our judgment. So, psychic lock is
18:51
actually here to protect you from that.
18:55
Yeah.
18:59
>> Oh.
19:00
Okay. And
19:03
what are your plans for the future?
19:04
Which functionalities will you add to
19:06
your tool?
19:09
>> So, our road map, I would say
19:13
right now we are focusing on um
19:16
you know, stabilizing the
19:18
the new capabilities in the inside
19:20
inbox. And later on we will be adding
19:23
more email clients into this. So, I
19:25
would say Outlook, I would say
19:27
Superhuman and other popular email
19:29
clients out there. So, people don't have
19:31
to switch
19:33
to Gmail or a new a email clients. So,
19:37
that our first plans. The second would
19:39
be is how we consistently improve the
19:43
semantic classification inside the
19:46
engine itself. Because right now, I I
19:49
don't I wouldn't say
19:51
the whole architecture how we build
19:53
this, but um we are not just using AI.
19:57
There's a architecture underneath that
20:00
are sorting through all the signal
20:03
coming from your um emails. And we would
20:06
love to even tweak it, fine-tune it a
20:08
little bit more until we
20:11
uh as we, you know, expand to new
20:14
platform. That would be the next
20:16
bottleneck of like standard standardized
20:19
the data pipeline coming from each
20:21
platforms. And um people have been
20:25
asking me to uh adding more platform.
20:30
So, like WhatsApp, think about WhatsApp,
20:32
think about calendar, think about
20:35
um you know, all of them messages out
20:38
there, Telegram even. Yeah. But
20:41
uh that would be ambitious, you know.
20:44
So, we take it one step at a time
20:46
focusing on what was
20:49
work best for us right now.
20:51
And the reason why we started with email
20:54
instead of the chat conversation is that
20:59
email is the most dense is
21:02
information
21:04
holder
21:06
>> Mhm.
21:06
>> across your company.
21:09
And every single relationship, every
21:12
single like formalized
21:15
contracts, partnership, everything, they
21:17
go into email.
21:19
So, that's why we choose email to start
21:21
with.
21:23
And we would keep it that way.
21:25
And the way um our our user have been
21:28
phrasing us is that um
21:32
our architecture is entirely local
21:35
first.
21:36
And what it means by that is it
21:38
protecting your data
21:42
um by having your data stored on your
21:45
browser, on your device only. So,
21:48
nothing sent to us.
21:50
And no cloud, you know, partners or
21:54
agent will be able to touch your data.
21:57
So, this is our our you really unique
21:59
advantage compared to everyone else. I
22:01
would say everyone else, every AI and
22:04
bot assistant out there who are running
22:06
on servers and, you know,
22:09
they they have a ton of infrastructure
22:10
everything on.
22:12
Yeah, so that's how I I would say that
22:14
we are go doing it the very uh
22:17
user-first way.
22:20
Yeah.
22:21
>> Actually, that's was my next question.
22:22
How do you handle user data,
22:26
especially user data privacy, and where
22:29
is are these emails
22:32
treated? Because um
22:34
so, you have a system
22:36
that analyzes emails, but
22:39
on the your user data
22:41
>> Locally.
22:42
Yeah, locally.
22:44
And uh I would say right now the local
22:47
first architecture protects the user
22:51
you know, data from being sent to any of
22:54
our service provider.
22:56
Um and also to us.
22:59
Cuz I a lot of people come came to us
23:01
and they'd be like, "Okay, how do you
23:03
how do you handle my data? I don't trust
23:05
you with my data. And do you have this
23:08
certification SOC 2 or whatever?" And I
23:12
say, "Yeah, eventually we're going to
23:15
have, but actually right now we don't
23:17
need those certification to prove that
23:20
our privacy is, you know, is good.
23:23
Um the local first architecture itself
23:25
is protecting you from us and
23:29
everything.
23:30
And one thing I want to note is
23:34
we still use AI. And which part of the
23:37
data goes into AI is that
23:40
we engineer it in the way that only your
23:44
headlines and your snippets of the
23:47
emails
23:49
and only the necessary parts to analyze
23:52
the intent of the email goes to AI.
23:55
But the rest of that, we don't read your
23:57
whole email, we don't read your
24:00
private attachment, we don't read
24:03
anything at all.
24:05
So
24:06
um
24:07
we're still finding a way uh to to make
24:11
it more explicit for people to be fully
24:14
aware before they're signing, you know,
24:16
to our platform.
24:18
But um yeah, that's how I think about
24:20
it. I think the transparency and just
24:22
being user first and
24:26
and be honest about where we are doing
24:28
now and what is coming coming is going
24:31
to be the most, you know,
24:34
helpful to us.
24:36
>> And maybe before we conclude, could you
24:38
share your top five tips for a proper
24:42
inbox management?
24:45
>> Um I would say first of all is
24:50
scratch the inbox zero goal because
24:53
there's no inbox zero goal.
24:55
Okay? When I think about my own inbox, I
24:58
think about
25:00
did I get in back get back to the people
25:04
that matter the most.
25:06
So, as long as most of my relationship
25:09
are intact, I would ignore everything
25:11
else. I don't care if I left anyone on
25:13
red accidentally because if the
25:16
conversation ended it ended, you know?
25:19
It's no no need to to to send another
25:22
message just to, you know, to close that
25:25
conversation.
25:26
But, I would just going from the
25:28
objective, you know, protecting your
25:31
relationship, protecting your focus.
25:33
And then the second I would say is
25:37
removing a lot of tools.
25:39
I would say because being aware of the
25:42
platform data usage nowadays is um
25:47
it is one thing to be considered because
25:51
as you using a lot of these tools
25:54
you have to really take a look at how
25:57
that they use your data before you jump
26:00
on and use their their own platform.
26:03
That I would just say yeah, two things.
26:06
Um and I'm going to share I'm going to
26:09
continue to sharing all my you know, how
26:12
I run my companies as a AI native uh
26:16
company.
26:17
Um with my calendar, my emails, and how
26:20
I operate um through an insane high
26:24
values com- communication later on.
26:27
If you're interested in any of that, we
26:29
can deep tackle deep diver into it.
26:33
Uh but yeah.
26:36
I hope that was helpful.
26:38
>> Yes, it was. Thanks a lot, Hien.
26:42
>> Yes.
26:43
Okay.
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