Questions & answers
The short version of what Elephants is, how it works, and how to get started. Still curious? Ask us directly.
- What is Elephants?
- Elephants is a shared memory and operations assistant for small teams. You dump in whatever you want organized, whether that's PDFs, spreadsheets, emails, texts, or a photo of a sticky note, and it turns the mess into organized people, projects, tasks, and notes your whole team can use. From there you manage all of it by message, including over text.
- Who is Elephants for?
- Small teams that want to be organized but don't have someone whose full-time job is building and maintaining systems. That means founders, operators, program managers, and nonprofit teams. If your team's knowledge is scattered across Drive, inboxes, and people's heads, Elephants pulls it into one shared place.
- How is Elephants different from Notion, Airtable, or a CRM?
- With most tools you build the structure yourself, meaning the databases, templates, and fields, then keep them up to date by hand. With Elephants you don't build anything. You send in your existing mess, the assistant organizes it, and then you add to it and ask it questions in plain language. It combines relationships, projects, and notes into one shared team memory instead of being a blank canvas you have to design and maintain.
- How does the "dump it in" part actually work?
- You send the assistant your files or text, like a project-plan PDF, a long email, a spreadsheet, or just a voice note of your thoughts. It reads them and builds the matching projects, sections, tasks, and notes, saving the people involved along the way. In one real customer story, a single PDF turned into a project with nine sections and roughly fifty tasks in a few minutes.
- Does my whole team share one memory?
- Yes. Elephants is built around a shared team space, so what one person adds is available to everyone on the team. A new teammate can get up to speed by messaging the assistant instead of digging through documents and asking around.
- Can I manage Elephants by text message?
- Yes. Alongside the web and mobile apps, you can use Elephants entirely over SMS through its texting assistant. Add people and tasks, ask questions, and get things organized without ever opening an app.
- What can I import into Elephants?
- PDFs, spreadsheets and CSVs, emails, text messages, and photos of handwritten notes. The assistant reads whatever you send and structures it for you, so you don't have to format anything first. Have a Google Doc? Export it as a PDF and send that over.
- Is my data private?
- Yes. The information you put into Elephants is used only to fulfill your requests. It is not used to train AI models, and it is not shared with other users. Elephants runs on trusted infrastructure like Supabase and Vercel, and uses Twilio for text messaging. Full details are in our privacy policy.
- How much does Elephants cost?
- Elephants is onboarding small teams during a private beta, so reach out and we'll walk you through current pricing and get your team set up. If you're an individual who wants to use it for yourself, reach out too and we can offer you a free account.
- Who's behind Elephants?
- Elephants was founded by Josh Guter. He built it because his own work spans a lot of worlds, from running an entrepreneurship clinic at NC State to consulting, photography, and startup support, and juggling all of those relationships and projects in one place was genuinely hard. Elephants became the single spot he used to keep it all straight, and it's now used by teams including Raleigh Founded, NC State's Entrepreneurship Clinic, and the NC IDEA Tweener Fund.
Still have a question?
Book a demo and I’ll walk you or your team through it and answer anything that’s on your mind.
Request a demo