Timely
500 GlobalOslo, NO · 6 known investors
Timely offers automatic time tracking software with a Microsoft Teams integration that captures time spent on meetings, calls, shared documents, and team communications. It serves hourly-billing businesses such as digital agencies, consultants, accountants, professional services, and remote teams to measure productivity and project profitability.
Also known as Memory · Memory AS · Memory.ai
Founders & leadership
Investors · 6
Also in the syndicate · 2
Company profile
researched Aug 2026Timely is an automatic time-tracking product built by a Norwegian technology company that also operates under the Memory.ai name. Its tracker, Memory, records activity in the background across desktop and web applications — emails sent, websites visited, documents worked on and meetings attended — and can also incorporate GPS location and mobile call data, presenting the result as a private timeline visible only to the individual user. A neural network then proposes time entries describing that activity, which the user reviews and approves before the entries become visible to the wider organisation; the model learns from user edits so suggestions improve over time.
The current product centres on "AutoSheet", which auto-completes and auto-allocates timesheets to projects and clients for one-click approval, plus reporting on billable hours, utilization and capacity. Recent releases have added manual time entry for low-activity days, a Utilization % column in People and Teams reports, an admin revert for CSV imports, API filtering of hours by task, and automatic malware scanning of uploaded files. Integrations cover project and work-management tools including Jira, Asana, ClickUp, monday.com, Todoist and Bullhorn, alongside Azure AD synchronisation and a browser extension for Mac and Windows.
The company positions the tool as privacy-first rather than employee surveillance: it states there is no keystroke logging or screenshotting, users control capture and visibility settings, and only user-approved entries are shared with managers.
Founding story
Founder Mathias Mikkelsen conceived Timely while working as a designer in an ad agency in Norway, where tracking billable time was required and, in his view, cumbersome and outdated. At 23 he quit his agency job, sold his Oslo apartment and moved to San Francisco, living in a closet in a hacker house for a period while bootstrapping the product, before joining the 500 Startups accelerator and beginning to raise capital. He returned to Oslo after about two years to continue building the company.
Business model
Software-as-a-service sold to businesses on a subscription basis, with free trials and demos as entry points; the company reported paying business customers rather than purely individual consumer sales.
Recurring subscription revenue from businesses paying for the Timely app; the company reported more than 5,000 paying businesses in 160 countries in 2021 and over 3,500 paying companies across 150 countries in 2018.
Traction
Reported 500,000 users since 2014 and more than 5,000 paying businesses in 160 countries as of 2021, up from over 3,500 paying companies in 150 countries in 2018; the website currently cites 5,000+ businesses and 20,000+ users. Headcount grew from about 30 people in 2018 to 40 people from 20 countries.
Latest developments
Product changelogs from July and August 2026 document AutoSheet improvements (saved progress across devices, manual entry on low-activity days, more neutral auto-generated notes), a member-first project picker, reversible CSV imports, a Utilization % column in People and Teams reports, automatic malware scanning of uploaded files, richer Bullhorn detail via the browser extension, and fixes to ClickUp, Jira, Todoist, monday.com and Azure AD integrations. The company has also published an ROI calculator estimating billable time recovered from manual tracking.
▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history, risks & controversies
Market position
Describes itself as the first company to apply AI to automatic time tracking, contrasting its approach with manual timers and legacy trackers; it cites top rankings among roughly 700 time trackers on G2 with scores above 95% in quality of performance, support, ease of use and setup, and a 4.8 out of 5 rating.
Automatic background capture and AI-generated timesheets instead of manual start/stop timers, combined with a privacy-first design in which the activity timeline is private to the user, only approved entries are shared, and there is no keystroke logging or screenshotting.
Technology
Two core components: the Memory tracker, which captures activity across desktop, web and mobile sources in the background and stores it in a private user timeline, and Memory AI, a neural network that interprets that timeline to suggest time entries and learns from user corrections. The current AutoSheet feature builds and allocates timesheets automatically, and the platform exposes a public API and integrations with third-party project tools.
Go-to-market
Self-serve free trial and booked demos from the website, supported by G2 reviews and customer testimonials; the founder has said the early international user base was grown without marketing spend.
Consultancies, digital and creative agencies, SaaS and software teams, and corporates that bill or measure billable hours, plus freelancers and independent consultants; the user base has spanned designers, programmers, architects, lawyers, marketers, non-profits and film producers, with customer accounts ranging from very small companies up to 900 users.
Geography
Headquartered at Hausmannsgate 16, 0182 Oslo, Norway, with a distributed remote workforce; customers span 160 countries.
History
Timely dates its user base to 2014. Mikkelsen secured about $1 million in funding in 2016, followed by a $5 million round reported in 2018 and a $14 million round announced in June 2021 led by Melesio and Sanden with Investinor, Concentric and SNÖ Ventures participating. Timely was originally the name of the whole startup; Mikkelsen later established Memory as a second company and parent brand for AI productivity apps, and in 2021 Memory.ai said it planned to launch two further apps, Dewo and Glue. The company reports $20 million raised in total from SNÖ, Investinor, Concentric, Melesio, Sanden and 500 Startups.
Risks & controversies
The founder has described fundraising as the company's biggest challenge, requiring him to sell his apartment, and cited the technical difficulty of building AI-based time tracking without precedent as well as the operational strain of large-scale recruitment and terminations.
Compiled by commissioned research from 8 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.
Timeline · 3
launches, deals, and filingsChangelog entry adds manual time entry for days without captured activity, clearer monday.com connection guidance, automatic malware scanning of uploads, a Utilization % column in People and Teams reports, and richer Bullhorn detail for browser extension users.
Release adds saved AutoSheet progress across reloads and devices, a member-first project picker in the hour editor, API filtering of logged hours by task, and an admin option to revert a CSV import.
Alongside its $14M raise, Memory.ai said it was preparing to launch Dewo, an app for supporting deep work by filtering distractions, and Glue, a knowledge hub for creative work, both due later in 2021.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
▸Research sources · 8
primary sources listed
- Timelytimelyapp.com · web
8 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Timely do?
- Oslo-based maker of Timely, an AI time-tracking app that captures work activity automatically and builds timesheets.
- Who are Timely's investors?
- Timely's investors include 500 Global, Concentric, Investinor, SNÖ Ventures.
- Where is Timely headquartered?
- Timely is headquartered in Oslo, NO.