0:00
Ellis has AI butt hole accounts in our show prep notes and I just want Ellis to ask about that. What is that about?
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0:07
>> Obviously, it is different than the little Claude butt hole I have or the Open AI techno butt hole.
0:11
Yeah, I mean, it's certainly adjacent, right?
0:14
>> butt hole adjacent, yeah, I'll give you that, yeah.
0:17
This week on Access, Alex and I chat about his upcoming field trip to Open AI, the rising relevance of film photography and #ethics in the modern age of content creation.
0:26
Then we're joined by Sam Stephenson, co-founder of Granola.
0:30
The viral AI note-taking app is hot on the heels of their big raise, which values Granola at more than $1 billion.
0:38
We get into it all from their controversial rebrand, if AI should actually run our meetings, opening their first office in San Francisco and much more. Welcome to Access.
0:51
>> [music] >> Welcome to Access.
0:52
I'm Alex Heath, here as always with my co-host Ellis Hamburger. Ellis, how's it going? Oh, I'm all right.
0:58
As always, I'm afflicted by something from my children.
1:04
>> [laughter] >> One of whom was up at 4:00 a. m.
1:05
last night for unknown reasons. We'll get into that.
1:10
I'm pretty excited for this week's guest.
1:12
I am a Granola power user.
1:12
Did I convert you to Granola or were you already a user as well?
1:17
So, honestly, hard to keep track of how many things you've pilled me on.
1:20
Claude being Claude being the latest.
1:23
I think you need to start getting like a kickback. I do. I do need a kickback.
1:26
I've definitely pilled a lot of people on Granola.
1:30
We have the co-founder, Sam Stephenson. It's a great chat.
1:34
Uh really interested in the direction they're going, AI note-taking, how I'm outsourcing my brain, all of the above.
1:41
Well, but Alex, what is your ethics situation now that you're no longer in a big media newsroom?
1:45
Are we accepting hats and water bottles now at the very least?
1:49
Oh, like what I you know, accept some Granola Granola?
1:54
Is that what you're saying?
1:56
Exactly, [laughter] yeah.
1:58
You know, if it's perishable, I'll I'll accept it.
2:01
>> [laughter] >> I mean, it is funny.
2:03
I mean, I love the spirit of a lot of these, you know, rules and ethics statements because it is such a slippery slope.
2:09
But when you look at it in the moment and it's like if you were to be biased by a sack of Granola to like corrupt your entire editorial brand with some corrupted take, that would be pretty pretty sad.
2:23
My line is something that could reasonably influence my coverage or comes with like a quid pro quo of like, you know, we give you this, you do this.
2:33
There's obviously situations where a company wants you to come to their event and they're down to pay for travel and there's no strings attached of like how I cover it.
2:43
Uh and in that case, you know, maybe I would do it.
2:45
Um it is kind of company dependent just since you asked, but I do think I'm thinking a lot about it.
2:49
I think even with the pod, I think it's important I I think people don't want to be surprised.
2:54
I think people want to know what is sponsored, what is not.
2:56
Like you worked with Granola, we talk about that in the show, but like, you know, there's obviously that component of like you did some consulting with them, but they're not paying us to do this pod.
3:08
When we have a guest on, I guess I guess it's a good good time to talk about this.
3:12
This wasn't on the to-do list, but yeah, when we have a guest on, you know, they're not being paid they're not paying us to to come on and be a guest, right?
3:21
Even though like maybe you've worked with them or in the case of like Ivan from Notion, right?
3:27
Ivan Notion sponsored the show when we launched and like that was awesome.
3:30
We really appreciated that, but that had no bearing on, you know, him coming on the show or or what have you.
3:37
I was always mystified back when I was at The Verge, uh people are like, "Hey, so do we have to pay you to cover us?" Or something.
3:45
And I'm like, "What what on earth are you talking about?"
3:47
I mean, people expect it.
3:49
I I just think being upfront >> come from?
3:51
Uh I think everyone assumes everything is pay-to-play these days and in the world of influencers and YouTubers and all of that that um that's just the way it is.
4:03
And like we're kind of straddling this interesting line where, you know, you're not a journalist.
4:08
Um I still am, but I'm independent and I do want people to uh know that like the the conversations we're having on the show are editorially us.
4:18
They're controlled by us. They're not like bought.
4:22
Uh if something's an ad and we're reading an ad, obviously it's an ad.
4:24
Uh but, you know, the things are separated and what the the line I have is like they're not being a a kind of secret quid pro quo of like um you know, if you if you do the ad, then you have the CEO on.
4:39
You know, we're just not going to do that.
4:40
We don't make it easy though, do we, with the show called Access?
4:41
No, but that's a little on the nose, I think, on purpose when we were talking about it, right?
4:47
Like it's kind of playing with that idea of, you know, it was looked down on and I mean, it still is, I think, by traditional media like {quote} {unquote} access journalism.
4:58
But, you know, I think what we're trying to do is just have good good funny, interesting, provoking conversations with cool people.
5:04
Well, here's a question I think some people would say that if you do have the access to these people, it is your, you know, I don't know, moral responsibility to like give them or hold them accountable.
5:20
Um where do you feel like the the state of that is with media right now?
5:22
Because I feel like with antagonistic media, obviously we're trying to be a different type of show.
5:29
You know, like get to know the founders here, what they think, bit more entertainment, speak to my background, your background, our our own personal opinions as well, but I think, you know, a lot of executives are like, "Uh I'm just not even going to field an email from someone who's who's kind of antagonistic."
5:43
I think it's bifurcating.
5:46
I think it's media that is not independent is getting increasingly antagonistic.
5:52
And then independent media is probably getting a little too soft.
5:53
I hope we can find some kind of middle ground where, you know, even if it comes up in the form of me saying like I think the product doesn't work or whatever.
6:01
I think I think what you'll hear if you actually listen and pay attention to our conversations is like, yes, we're we're not here to like grill the people coming on, but we're also asking them like good questions.
6:14
We're asking them questions that like their VC would not ask them.
6:17
And we're just doing it in a much more, I think, approachable way, in a way that kind of disarms them, makes them feel comfortable.
6:22
I think that's the art of it is asking good questions, um not being too differential, but also like being a human being and not making it a um unpleasant experience for the guest.
6:35
I guess this art is literally your job, is it not?
6:37
I mean, on like you go home and you scoop their uh leaked memos and then you have them on the show and you talk about their buttons in the app don't look right.
6:48
I mean, ideally ideally, I think there's room for both and I try to do both, but this is like less of the scoopy part of me that you're getting on the show, though I I do love scoops in any context, but yeah, man, I don't know.
7:01
I think we're I think we're figuring it out.
7:02
I think I just think if you're coming on a show like this and you're spending an hour of your time to be on a pod, like to expect that person to be um subjected to, you know, intense grilling is just not reasonable. I I don't know.
7:18
It's just the the medium is the message and I think pods are uh conversational and hanging out and having fun and learning, but also having fun.
7:27
And in a newsletter or written text format, it's just different.
7:29
You can get that across more in a way that you can't through pods. I don't know. Yeah.
7:33
Well, for anybody listening out there, uh we would love your thoughts.
7:37
Feel free to to tweet at us or Are we softies?
7:39
at Alex or >> at Hamburger. Yes, at Hamburger. I am not hard to find. I'm at Alex E. Heath.
7:47
Uh but first, Ellis, have you recovered?
7:50
It sounds like not based on what you said earlier from having a dozen children partying at your house.
7:55
Uh what my wife and I came to your all's lovely birthday party for your daughter over the weekend.
8:00
Um you had the bouncy house, you had the cake, you had the film camera, um you had the the adult beverages for the adults and the kids beverages for the kids. How was it? Yeah, it was great.
8:15
And I think the #tech angle is, you know, just think about how you spend your time at the party.
8:18
Obviously, nobody wants to be the dad who's like permanently behind the Sony handycam recording the entire thing. Um but it's interesting.
8:27
You go through these phases of your life and when you look back at the memories, they are marked by the app or the hardware you were using at the time to document your life.
8:35
And I mean, I I honestly as as kind of charming as it is, I honestly have major regrets about like documenting my firstborn's first steps on Snapchat at like 360p pixelated next to the dancing hot dog.
8:50
You didn't get that on film.
8:50
That was just [laughter] snap.
8:53
I wasn't into the film cameras yet at the time.
8:55
And then meanwhile, now that I'm shooting more film, as a result, that means I'm capturing less video.
8:59
You know what I'm saying?
9:03
And it's a tradeoff, right?
9:03
And it kind of as a tech nerd can be a lot of pressure to have these different phones, cameras, tools around you and just having to decide which one you're going to use to capture the moment.
9:17
And uh but yeah, I'm very happily in my film era right now as many who know me know.
9:24
And I think what's what's most interesting about it is that, you know, it's not just me.
9:28
I think we're seeing a lot of ascendant products, uh whether it is this new No Fusion app that's going viral, whether it's Halide, uh the camera app, one of the founders just went to Apple sometime ago to help work on their camera app or even uh my friend Andy Allen's Not Boring camera.
9:49
And the trend right now is to try and make the photos look a lot less digital and a lot less oversharpened, which is like literally one of the claims on the No Fusion app store.
10:00
And make them look a bit softer.
10:00
And I think it's interesting debate, you know, in tech we're so often all about the megapixels and the speeds and feeds.
10:08
But I think as it turns out, when people look back at their camera roll, they care less about how HDR the moment is and more like does it actually feel emotional?
10:17
Does it actually feel like uh the memory?
10:19
And you know, this is this certainly coincides with all the Gen Z trends around getting back toward analog stuff.
10:25
Some say the trend is over reported, but I feel like everybody I know when they look at the the film photos I post, they say how do I do that? Oh, yeah. Your photos are great.
10:32
I mean, this is the this is the AI uh pushback, right?
10:38
Or I guess the reaction to the rise of AI and slop is like people crave stuff that looks and feels real.
10:46
And I think these kind of photos are that. And I don't know. I think it's cool.
10:50
I think it's cool that you're documenting, you know, your daughter's birthday this way.
10:55
Yeah, and there really is kind of an inevitable in ineffable quality to it. It's just kind of sad.
10:59
I feel like sometimes I look back at iPhone pictures and I much prefer the ones often that were filtered on Instagram or on Hipstamatic or on Huji Cam or on David Dobrik's Dispo camera because they also feel like a reflection of where I was at and the tools I was using and the aesthetic I was interested in at that point in my life, you know?
11:23
Whereas when you look back at the iPhone photos, no matter where you are, what year it is, the sky is always that exact shade of blue that we all know so well.
11:31
I'll just never forget the like computational photography stuff and The Verge was like all over this when Samsung was like creating a simulated moon.
11:38
No matter what picture of the moon you took, they would put the moon on it. Yeah.
11:44
Where I used to work The Verge, that was a whole huge storyline for us. >> beat. Yeah, what is a photo?
11:47
And it still is a thing that they talk about a lot, yeah.
11:51
I mean, I feel like we're kind of all past that now as a society, though.
11:55
I feel like I just assume nothing is real.
11:56
And I think that's why your film photos, you know, resonate for people is when you see it, it's like your mind just instinctively wants to believe that that's real because of how it looks. Yeah.
12:08
And the apps are getting better at simulating it.
12:09
Like Daz in particular, which I found from uh former Verge alum Becca Farsace, has a particularly good like disposable version.
12:18
Especially I think you realize that like I don't think it's just a like a simulation of feeling when you use the flash indoors on a camera.
12:26
Like I do think it generally does look cool a lot of the time, but no one uses the iPhone flash.
12:32
Uh the iPhone itself doesn't even want to use the flash ever.
12:35
And so indoor photos just always have like a very specific look and there's no feeling of like being out at the party and being spontaneous. Mhm.
12:43
Um so yeah, I don't know.
12:46
I guess we'll see if it's if it's a cyclical trend just like everything else, but um it's it's an interesting thing to watch people people wrangling with that, I would say. >> Yeah. Yeah.
12:56
Well, I'm going to download this No Fusion app. This looks cool. Yeah.
13:01
Well, what's up with you?
13:01
I'm back on the road, man.
13:02
You're going back to San Francisco this week?
13:04
Yeah, OpenAI invited me out to spend some time with the Codex leadership team and the Clawfather, Peter Steinberger, who is now 2 weeks into OpenAI.
13:15
Uh so I'm going to be interviewing him and and Tibo, the Codex lead, and some of the research people.
13:21
And we're going to have a dinner at the OpenAI library. Sushi in the library.
13:27
So how much did they spend on Open Claw again? It's not known. Aren't you Sources. net It's not known.
13:31
I mean, they So the Open Claw is an open source project that is now being maintained by an outside foundation, David Moran, OG Facebook platform dude, built Path.
13:45
He is now uh partner uh Offline Ventures.
13:48
He is now running that foundation with on behalf of Peter externally. Um and it's a nonprofit.
13:55
Peter joined OpenAI to essentially I mean, I'm going to find out, you know, tomorrow when I'm up there, but I think essentially to basically build a ChatGPT Open Claw, you know, something that is as simple and normie-friendly uh as chat, but as powerful as as Open Claw.
14:12
The reason I bring it up, I mean, it's just like Facebook spent hundreds of billions of dollars on the metaverse, renamed their company Meta, and then that trend just kind of didn't happen.
14:22
And you know, there's just so much FOMO-driven acquisition or acquire behavior in the valley.
14:26
And it's just been interesting to see whether it is with Facebook's own Manas app that they acquired or Claude adding dispatch recently so that you could do Open Claw e-behaviors even when you're not at your computer.
14:38
It's like it hasn't even been 3 months since they kind of got that guy and the whole idea that that's the future.
14:44
And as it turns out, a lot of this stuff is just kind of doable by by whomever.
14:48
I mean, certainly he's a genius for, you know, being the first to come up with this specific style of orchestration that allows you to kind of run an AI and, you know, command it from anywhere.
14:59
But I mean, that's just kind of interesting, isn't it?
15:01
I just think it's a talent play and I think they probably want his road map for Open Claw to be the road map for for ChatGPT.
15:08
I mean, this was the big story, you know, last week was that OpenAI is going to basically merge Codex, ChatGPT, and its Atlas browser into this super app.
15:19
And Codex is really going to underpin all of it.
15:24
Uh and that's also happening with Claude, by the way.
15:27
You know, Claude co-work, you know, Anthropic was telling me is going to be basically the the front end of the Claude interface, right?
15:34
>> It does feel weird that it's two separate tabs.
15:35
Yeah, and like same thing with Codex.
15:37
Like it doesn't probably make sense for it to be a separate app.
15:40
Like it should probably be the harness that chat sits on top of.
15:42
And so they're going to do that and Peter will probably help them do that.
15:46
And yeah, I think they just want like the power of Open Claw, but for normies, right?
15:49
Which they're well positioned to do.
15:52
Uh but you know, it's interesting.
15:52
I think they're having me up to meet with the team because they really do feel how Anthropic has stolen their mojo a bit uh with the momentum that Claude code has and co-work, especially with, you know, our audience, you know, the tech early adopter crowd, the the Silicon Valley crowd.
16:10
It does feel like, you know, I've gotten you Claude-pilled, obviously.
16:12
I mean, it does feel like Claude is really taken off.
16:15
And Codex is growing like crazy.
16:18
It's growing like a weed.
16:18
But you know, it doesn't seem to be getting that mind share and that buzz that ChatGPT enjoyed for so long.
16:25
And I think OpenAI, you know, wants to flex and go like, "Look, we have all these users and we have, you know, the Clawfather. And we're still here. We're still in the race. We're still cool."
16:36
I think I think no one questions that they're still in the race, you know, they're huge.
16:41
They're they're much bigger than Claude.
16:43
But I think being cool really matters, right?
16:45
So uh we'll see how cool it is to have sushi in the OpenAI library, but that's that's what I'm going to be doing tomorrow.
16:51
Do you have like a little, you know how at the Cheesecake Factory that they have that little note card where you could check off all your favorite cheesecakes you've eaten?
16:58
Like have you eaten all 200 cheesecakes?
16:59
Uh I'm picturing you with like a checklist of all the tech cafeterias around the entire peninsula, just checking them off one by one.
17:08
I know you already had What did you have?
17:09
Lamb chops at one of them? >> And Anthropic, yeah.
17:11
Um that would honestly, I would do very well there uh stacked against most people.
17:16
I have been to most headquarters, actually. That's a good idea.
17:21
I should just start like taking more notes of dictating to my granola, you know, what the lunches are at these places.
17:28
>> this is a new revenue stream opportunity for you. >> [laughter] >> Yeah. Uh but yeah, man.
17:33
Uh that's that's my week.
17:37
With that, should we should we kick it to Sam? Let's do it. All right.
17:44
>> [music] >> What's going on, man? Good to see you. Good to see you. How you doing?
17:47
You are between two ferns today.
17:52
For those who are listening in uh audio-only mode. S A N.
17:54
Where are you calling in from? Are you in London?
17:56
I mean, it looks very on-brand, does it not, Alex? We try here.
18:02
The the the office came before the brand.
18:03
So it's so the the brand looks like it does probably partially because of how the office is.
18:08
I mean, that's what that's what a real brand creative director does when they come in and they're like just reflecting stuff that you already do. Yeah. Yeah.
18:16
And they say, "I feel like there's something for you.
18:18
It's kind of rustic and wooden and plants."
18:20
And you're like, "Wow, this creative director really gets me."
18:26
And then you just turn around and you're like, "Oh, he's just looking at the aesthetic choices I've already made." Yeah. [laughter] Yeah.
18:32
Right before you came on, Sam, I was telling Ellis that I run Granola during every pod we do, obviously.
18:36
I I run it pretty much constantly.
18:39
And he's not been doing it.
18:42
And he says it's because it degrades the audio quality of these conversations.
18:46
Have you guys heard that from users that when they run it during calls, it it can do that?
18:50
On Mac OS, I think when you like start using the system audio, it like changes the sound that the the the sound ever so slightly. Um yeah, you'll hear it.
19:01
Like if you uh if you if you have like headphones on and you turn Granola or like anything on, I think even maybe Voice Memos does it.
19:06
Um then uh it like changes the sound a little bit. Yeah. Which is annoying.
19:11
I'd love to be able to fix it, but Well, at least we don't have to like run it through one of those programs that we had to do back in like the Mac OS days.
19:18
What were those apps called?
19:20
You could like reroute your audio and all that BS. It had a fiery logo.
19:25
I can't remember, Yeah, and there were some great great oldies, I feel like.
19:29
OG Mac apps like HandBrake.
19:29
Alex and I were just talking before you joined about his experience covering the iPhone jailbreak beat.
19:37
And I feel like I mean, there's just so many funny hacks over the years.
19:39
Like, "Oh, the only way to get background uh notifications on iOS in the early days was claiming that you were actually a VoIP app like Skype or something like that."
19:49
And they were just little calls.
19:51
And I actually feel like you guys were the very first ones that most people probably experienced that just natively recorded system audio.
19:57
I mean, was that was that a new Mac OS feature when you guys took advantage of it or like why was that?
20:02
I mean, we did it because we didn't want to do the bot during the call thing.
20:06
Um and uh I mean, we wanted it to be an an app on your desktop for for a bunch of other reasons.
20:12
Um So yeah, that that was it.
20:16
Uh and like and like um we don't like we actually avoided doing the system audio for a while cuz it was a it just technically a pain in the ass.
20:22
It was like a month of an engineer's time fixing all of the edge cases and making it work smoothly.
20:28
Um so like for the first 6 months or so Granola was like microphone only.
20:30
So um we you we'd like onboard everyone like manually and like explain to them that sorry, but if you want to use this thing, you got to take your headphones out and let the sound come out of the speakers and then back into the microphone to to transcribe it.
20:46
And uh yeah, it was it was a lot of work.
20:47
Um I think Apple went and like kind of did the system audio API or whatever like afterwards and and you know, like uh now it's much easier to to do, but yeah.
20:59
Demystify this for me, Sam.
20:59
Is Granola actually recording the audio?
21:01
Cuz this is a thing that I've had conversations with many people about cuz you know, there's the whole thing about two-way consent states and all of that and have you guys found a creative workaround where you're not actually recording?
21:16
That's what I think is happening.
21:16
And by the way, do you consent to being recorded on this podcast?
21:19
Yeah, I'm going to get that [laughter] out of the way. Well, you're in London.
21:23
That's that's probably like we'll get arrested if we don't get consent from you. >> Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
21:28
[laughter] It would have been a good solution to just call every meeting podcast and it would be implied that it's being recorded. Yeah. I think basically no.
21:36
We we um we like send the audio to the transcription API and they like convert it to transcripts and then Immediately, right? Immediately, yeah.
21:47
Yeah, and they don't save it and then we don't we also don't save the audio.
21:48
So we just all we save is is transcript.
21:49
So I'm not recording people. I can say that legally.
21:54
Um it depends which lawyer you're asking, which state. So Oh, okay. Yeah. Sure.
21:59
And then nothing is very clean-cut annoyingly and in this problem.
22:05
An idea for prompts in the product, you know, based on what state you're in, you all could nudge people and say make sure you check. Yeah, you know what? We could do that. Yeah, yeah.
22:12
Well, so you guys have some big news.
22:14
We're the have a congratulations.
22:17
Uh 125 million-dollar round uh over $1 billion valuation. You're a new unicorn. Congratulations. How does that feel?
22:28
It's uh I know that was on your bucket list, Sam.
22:31
It's um uh it's it's like validating. It's nice.
22:35
Yeah, it's um I mean, the the thing I feel in the valuation and like that that that kind of stuff increasing is like just the attention we get as a company and that mostly manifests as like um for hiring and things like that.
22:44
Like you like you just more people know about you and like uh especially in London, we get to be like one of the big fish, you know, like if you want to come work at an exciting startup in London, then um uh we're in a much smaller pool of companies now and we get to kind of pick from the best people.
22:59
So uh that I'm excited for. Yeah.
23:02
That's the thing I hear uh from other founders is that the valuation really matters for hiring and it's one of the main motivators for increasing valuation as fast as you can.
23:11
And for dates as well, right?
23:14
>> And for dates, but >> [laughter] >> yeah.
23:19
I'm uh I'm a married man.
23:19
I would I would of course [laughter] have that.
23:23
You guys are opening an office in SF soon, right? Yeah, yeah.
23:26
We actually um uh like five of the the the basically the whole new San Francisco team like flew over and it's their first day today.
23:34
So uh they all arrived this morning jet-lagged and uh having like a rapid onboarding couple weeks here to meet the team and get it up and running.
23:42
So so at least it's secured?
23:43
Yeah, we have um uh we have the office like Asla who's made this place beautiful is over there making that place beautiful at the moment.
23:51
Important question, what other tech companies are you next to in San Francisco?
23:57
We're in we're like a couple blocks from all the other tech companies.
24:00
Like I don't think there are actually any next to us that I know of, but um we're like we're going to be um next to the Moscone Center.
24:06
So like fourth and fourth and I think or something.
24:09
Uh just watch what time of day you're walking down the street. Uh Yeah, yeah.
24:13
You got to you got to you got to turn right out of the office, not left.
24:16
Yeah, you need to go right.
24:16
You're on the good side and then it's okay.
24:19
Uh Well, here's what you do, Sam.
24:19
Uh once you decide which company you want to poach from, you find out where their office is and then you just put up a bunch of billboards right outside their office.
24:29
And then that starts the conversation.
24:31
And uh then, you know, you kind of do like an airplane flying overhead that says new unicorn, join the crew and then, you know, you start the pipeline from there.
24:41
That's best practices at least.
24:42
Did Ellis help you with these billboards that I'm seeing everywhere?
24:46
That's the Alex's favorite question to ask, did Ellis do anything as part of the project?
24:50
And at a couple years a couple weeks ago, we had Daniel from uh Starboy on and he's like, "Actually, no, I didn't use any of it."
24:59
Which was great and you can say that, Sam. This is a safe space.
25:01
But I I do remember Ellis I think took full credit for Presence is Power as a shower thought in an episode a few weeks ago. Is that true?
25:10
Did he really come up with that?
25:12
You know, I like uh um I was sitting with Jack uh head of like product marketing guy just before this and he he said the same and it was like uh I was like, "Was that true?"
25:22
And then but and then apparently yeah, Jack went and looked and like Presence is Power was the thing he came up with I was like months ago.
25:27
And I think we like we like got to that and then we um we like went on a big idea maze and then we came back to the presence thing again like like for the billboard.
25:36
So Yeah, and Alex didn't make that sound very nice about taking full credit.
25:40
I never aim to take full credit.
25:42
There's always he's just trying to get me in trouble.
25:46
But the interesting thing is that I didn't know if that was me or not because I'm just like always working on so many stuff so many things and so uh you just like go into whatever AI you're using and you're like, "Was that me?"
25:57
And it's like, "Actually, yeah. This time it was."
25:59
Did you not run Granola in the shower?
26:04
>> [laughter] >> Man, I think we have good April Fools.
26:07
Though you probably don't have time to prepare with just a week before April Fools.
26:11
Or do you already have some April Fools?
26:13
No, we have some ideas lying around, but nothing like nothing locked in.
26:16
So we're we're coming in fine. I mean, no pressure. They're mostly bad.
26:21
They mostly hurt your valuation by 7%.
26:24
Any company that does an April Fools joke. So yeah, no pressure.
26:25
Uh Ellis has AI butt hole icons in our show prep notes and I just want Ellis to ask about that. What is that about? Yeah.
26:37
Well, once again, Alex trying to get me in trouble, which I also deserve cuz I'm always trying to get him in trouble.
26:43
>> [laughter] >> Um yeah, how did that conversation go down?
26:46
I mean, obviously it is it is different than the little cloud butt hole I have up in my up in my extensions bar right here or the OpenAI techno butt hole icon, but um yeah, I mean, it's certainly adjacent, right?
26:59
>> butt hole adjacent, yeah.
26:59
I'll give you that, yeah.
27:02
Surely surely you knew that going in.
27:04
How how did that how did that conversation go down?
27:05
Cuz I mean, that's a huge deal to decide what symbol and I mean, that's what I'm saying.
27:09
It kind of looks like this piece of wood behind you.
27:12
It's clearly connected enough to the brand to feel real and authentic, but were there any others uh in the mix?
27:19
How did you decide on this one?
27:19
We I mean, we went through a lot.
27:21
Like I think the overarching thing with the with the brand was like we want to make something that feels like organic and like um Like a butt. Like a butt.
27:34
>> [laughter] >> Like the we honestly the metaphor is kind of stretched on the on the logo.
27:40
It was like um I'm not going to say anything else.
27:45
>> [laughter] >> I'm I'm walking I'm walking into it.
27:48
We're preparing you for the type of like like gallows humor you will find uh among the uh highly ratioed parties in San Francisco.
27:58
>> [laughter] >> Yeah, yeah.
27:59
Um the the the like the thing with the brand was to make it feel personal human, not like uh you know, not like something a corporation would have come up with and like um so so like the rough hand-drawnness of the thing was like it was a lot of what drew it to us drew us to it.
28:17
Um you don't like intend for these things to come out looking like everybody else's, but like uh there's for then you like look at a row of all you know, us Cloud Open AI and and you're like, "Oh boy, yeah, okay."
28:29
We came up with a similar thing, but um we kind of need to feel like we're one of those we're like in those ranks, I think, a little bit and um I don't know.
28:38
It's a pretty fundamental symbol and therefore like I think like it it feels like very recognizable like uh of all of the items in like all of the options like put in a dock next to next to all the other apps our users are using like this was the one that stood out and felt like the most us.
28:51
So Well, so that's the right criteria. Is does it stand out?
28:55
Yeah, but like when I look at my Mac menu bar, I have no idea the difference between any of these apps because the icons all look so similar.
29:03
I have like I have like six versions of the same Squirtle or whatever you want to call it.
29:08
Um But I see yours because I like the way you put the meeting name and how much time is left next to it. Yeah. Yeah.
29:17
That's been super helpful.
29:19
There's just so much attention to detail in this app.
29:21
I mean, Sam, if you don't know, like I I've talked to Chris, your co-founder, about this, but I'm like you're all like one of your biggest proponents.
29:28
I think I've personally converted more people to Granola than like any product that I've used in the last few years just cuz I like it so much.
29:34
But the the attention to detail you guys have in kind of everything from the way that the live widget pops up on the phone when you're about to go into a meeting, mobile, to the Mac menu bar, to the way that the notifications work uh and you can join something and start the transcript at the same time.
29:50
Like just a lot of care and I imagine that's all super intentional and I'm just I'm curious yeah, like how that works.
29:57
Like is that just something that comes naturally to you or is that something you have to really prioritize?
30:04
>> like invented so many of the things we now think are just kind of common in the AI meeting that space.
30:10
Like even showing the transcript as proof that it's actually working.
30:14
I credit Chris with a lot of this.
30:15
He's got he's like really he's like great at being ruthless about like what what what a user is actually going to like engage with and what what are we like where we're just like getting our hopes up that we've done a cool thing, you know, rather than and that it's yeah.
30:30
That might not actually land.
30:30
Um I think like the main like the main constraint I found helpful working like working on Granola that I've I've never experienced another product before is like meetings are just like such weirdly stressful moment in in your day.
30:47
Like especially the the moments that you click buttons in Granola.
30:49
It's like um right at the beginning or right at the end of a meeting where you're like usually running late, usually leave forgotten like who you're supposed to be talking to or why this thing's happening.
31:00
>> Or you haven't prepped for this podcast like Ellis today. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
31:04
>> [laughter] >> You're in like scrambling mode, right?
31:06
Like trying to figure out what's going on. What should I do?
31:07
So you have like so little of your brain available to like entertain a tool like Granola.
31:13
Um and so we kind of have to just like work with that assumption that that you're going to care about basically nothing unless it's going to get you to where you need to go, which is like into the meeting in the right setup.
31:22
Not you don't really care about your note taker at the beginning of the meeting, you know.
31:27
Um yeah, like some so many of the product decisions are kind of downstream of that that constraint, I think.
31:32
Could you be a little more proactive though?
31:34
Say like, "Hey, you, because you've outsourced your brain to me, you actually need to follow up on this thing that you were going to check the transcript to remember."
31:43
And like nudge me a little bit more.
31:45
I tried that this morning where I said, "What do I need to follow up in?"
31:48
and it stressed me out and I immediately looked away from it.
31:50
But um a little more proactive in the moment nudges of like, "Hey, this was a thing someone said you need to do by tomorrow.
31:59
It's now, you know, almost midnight." Something like that. I don't know. Yeah.
32:02
We [snorts] we have a lot of um a lot of like we have a lot of prototypes for that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah.
32:08
There's a lot of um there's a lot of nuance it turns out, which I think we have we didn't really appreciate until we started trying to build things in this area.
32:13
Like um there's just a really high bar for for like suggesting something that you might want to do where to like where it's like actually a thing that you'll appreciate and not a thing that pisses you off.
32:24
Like a like like meetings are so full of people saying, "Oh yeah, we should do this thing."
32:28
Or like, "Yeah, I'll follow up and we'll we'll talk about it offline." Or whatever.
32:31
All these code words for like I never want to do like think about that thing again. Yeah.
32:36
>> Um that I'll have the team look at that and get back to you. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah.
32:41
>> could decode the things that people say in meetings when they don't actually want to follow up and then filter that out. Yeah. Yeah.
32:49
Be a funny uh that that might be a good April Fool's like >> [laughter] >> Well, it's just a funny thing to associate with, isn't it?
32:55
Like we're about I know you say we're for people in back-to-back meetings and those are typically the people who you could argue hate themselves the most.
33:07
>> [laughter] >> I like like how do you design for for that type of use case?
33:12
And I mean, what do you feel like even just as AI automates a lot of stuff, what are meetings going to be for?
33:19
Uh in a year or two, would you say?
33:19
As long as people are going to have to work together, that's going to be like really messy.
33:24
Like there's not really I don't think they're going to be great like AI is not going to solve that.
33:28
It'll solve it'll like make so much of the rest of our work really efficient, I think, but that thing of like humans like agreeing on what you're going to do next is is a I think just always going to be naturally going to be hard.
33:40
And so like in my mind like meetings just be like be more and more about that, you know?
33:45
Like well I could see a world where like an engineering team needs to decide what to do about the thing and then I don't know, agent like coding agent things are listening into the meeting using Granola or something else and then and then like as soon as the meeting ends they're going off and drafting up all of the work that's that's said was going to be done.
34:04
But people are still going to have to meet and decide on what to do next with that and like which one should which which of these uh things should should go forwards and which one shouldn't and I I don't see that going away anytime soon.
34:15
I saw the CEO of Replit share after you guys launched the MCP stuff and they built a connector.
34:21
Um you know, the idea that an engineer could just have his agent go build something as the meeting was going as it was listening in on the Granola.
34:30
So that's maybe already kind of technically possible. It's wild. Yeah. Yeah.
34:37
I mean, that's how Alex actually uses this podcast is to make feature requests.
34:40
And so maybe next time you're on, Sam, you'll be able to say by the end of the cast, "Oh, we just fixed it. It's already shipping." Oh, I have a few more. Just wait.
34:50
But yeah, no, I mean, that's that is pretty wild to think about introducing agents to the workflow and like you're mid-meeting and they're doing stuff based on what is happening. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
35:00
The hard thing there is like you need to um we'll talk about like, "Oh yeah, like Granola should I like I want Replit to be able to do work on the on the meeting, you know, while I'm having the meeting."
35:11
And so like that's the we can give that snippet to the AI, but the but the the hard bit is like knowing all of the background information about you and about the words you use for things and the people you know and the projects you're working on so that we can like decode like we can like expand that little sentence into like a long enough prompt that that uh that uh agent could go off and actually have a shot at building it.
35:32
Talk about this other stuff you guys are launching.
35:36
You've got spaces, connectors, the API, analytics.
35:39
Seems like you guys are really picking up the pace on on shipping stuff.
35:43
Is this just kind of rebuilding uh Microsoft's uh suite from first principles or like what what what are you doing here?
35:53
>> That's certainly the fad right now.
35:55
>> [laughter] >> I would definitely not not trying to do that.
35:58
Like uh I think um it's two things.
36:02
Like one uh we have a lot of teams adopting Granola and like that's that's kind of coming as initially just from individuals discovering it on the internet or from you Alex and and then uh uh you know, it like spreads organically within the company.
36:18
People talk about it with each other.
36:20
Um but like a lot of people have thought about it as an as basically a single player individual use product.
36:25
Um But we've we've kind of known internally and within, you know, like our internal version for a long time has been much more multiplayer and like like notes are all put into shared spaces so that you can kind of like chat with the all of your company's context and know what's happening across the whole company.
36:44
Um and it just feels really really powerful.
36:47
powerful. And so uh a lot of the announcements coming out this week are about like kind of the groundwork to let teams pull all of their meeting context in shared spaces and and uh the idea being that we'll be able to build a bunch of cool stuff on top of that to help you
37:03
understand like what your customers are saying or like what projects are going well and which ones aren't going well and what's the you know, like for a for a higher person at a company, what's the summary of what's going on in this area or versus this area? That kind of That kind of thing.
37:17
Can you give us an example of how you all have used the shared notes internally to do something versus how it would have been done before?
37:25
We have like a daily um daily briefing going around internally at the company, which Granola generates for us like every every day.
37:33
Um It's like going through everything that's happened like in the shared Granola and uh picks out the 10 most important things and and lists those off to you every day.
37:44
Um I find that's I like I feel like our company's got big enough recently where I don't have tabs on like everything that's happening in every corner of the company anymore.
37:52
So um it's it's like really helpful for me to you know, I see the corners of the company that I wouldn't see what's happening otherwise.
38:01
Um there's another one I think is like the sales calls folder like we have all of the sales calls pulled in one place and that's fascinating to chat with for like understanding like "Hey, I'm thinking about building this this thing.
38:15
Like what what have customers said about this before?"
38:19
And like what would you think that would work for them or not and why?
38:23
Um it's like really useful as a thought partner there.
38:24
How's that sales pitch going these days?
38:26
I mean, I know it it's not easy necessarily to make the pitch for paid product that often already exists for free, whether it's inside of Notion or Office uh or Zoom or otherwise.
38:38
I think we're fortunate that like nine times out of 10 those sales conversations happen because there's like a passionate group of people already using the thing inside the company.
38:49
Um and so the job of a sales person at Granola is to kind of like be on their side and help them win over the procurement people at the company.
39:00
Um But the argument is like a lot of the argument honestly is like the people like to use this.
39:03
Like they'll they'll use this.
39:05
They probably won't use the other like the the the built-in thing on Google or Zoom or whatever because like you know, technically yeah, you have it, but also um if the experience isn't good and if the if they're like if it's hard for me to like use the output of those notes in the different ways I want to use it, then just realistically people aren't going to aren't going to do it.
39:25
Why do you think this feels like to people that it needs to be a separate app?
39:29
Seems like there's something resonating there just as this like home base you've made for all your conversations.
39:35
And I feel like that's also allowed it to resonate outside of tech as well.
39:41
As opposed to just an add-on. You're agnostic.
39:43
It's cuz you work across all of them, whereas like Zoom only the Zoom thing only works in Zoom, Meet only works in Meet, Microsoft thing only works in Microsoft.
39:51
I mean, there's a couple that are agnostic, too, like Notion and and Open AI's, but that's to me is your all's edge is that you work everywhere. Yeah. Yeah.
39:59
I think there's a lot of it. Yeah. Yeah.
40:01
And the phone thing on mobile, which I've started to use where you can use it on a phone call, is is pretty nice and well integrated.
40:08
I mean, I don't think anyone else really has that. >> Yeah. Yeah.
40:10
I'm like a The guys did such a good job.
40:12
There's like a horrific sequence of steps you've got to go through to set that up because it it uses like a VOIP thing.
40:19
Um So so just like the the flow that they made to to like hold your hand through that, I'm really proud of.
40:23
Like Although there's really no way to have it run while you're mobile on like a Meet or a Team call, right?
40:30
That's still is the thing where I'm like, "Damn, I really And can you can is there a way to design around that, the limitations of the mobile operating system or" >> Uh Apple is like keeps everything too too locked down.
40:43
Like you can't Yeah, you can't get to the system audio as far as we can tell.
40:46
Like we tried a bunch of things, really hacky things, but uh nothing has worked so far.
40:51
>> You've got to build a phone, Sam.
40:51
That's how you're going to get to a 10 billion valuation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
40:53
We [laughter] have um Pierre, our first Android engineer, started last week.
40:58
So we haven't explored this yet, but I'm like you know, there's there's a chance that Android is more open and we can make it work on that. But Yeah.
41:06
>> Oh, Granola to Android?
41:06
Is that some news you're dropping with us?
41:08
I mean, we're we're we're like starting to work on it.
41:11
It's uh it's going to be a while like before it's up to scratch, but yeah. What about Windows?
41:14
I saw you guys have a waitlist for Windows. Windows is out.
41:18
Windows been out for >> is out. Okay. >> Yeah.
41:20
I think last last summer it came out.
41:22
It's been It's been like a the version we shipped in the summer was like buggy and not great in a bunch of ways and there's been a lot of stability work.
41:29
I am fascinated by the MCP stuff and the connector stuff.
41:32
So my setup has changed radically with this where now in Claude I've got Granola connected.
41:37
It has all my Google stuff.
41:40
And you know, I use it to prep for this pod.
41:43
I use it to write stories and accessing my Granola transcripts has been the real context unlock, right?
41:49
Where I can just say use that interview from yesterday I did in Granola to to start building this.
41:54
Um where do you see this going?
41:54
I mean, it seems like your all's philosophy on this is like let be su- super data portable out, uh which is kind of against like what you would think the obvious incentives are of building a product like this.
42:08
You would want people to like not leave the product, but you guys seem to think that that's a good thing. So walk me through that.
42:12
Like why is that a good thing?
42:14
And then where do you see this going?
42:15
And how do you convince investors it's a good thing to be open?
42:20
>> [laughter] >> Cuz clearly something's working with your pitch.
42:22
Well, people feel strongly about this cuz there was that controversy that you guys were locking down data, right?
42:26
And not letting it leave and your co-founder Chris had to put a thing out kind of demystifying this and you've got the API launched this week.
42:34
But yeah, talk talk about all that.
42:36
It was a debate for a long time in the company.
42:37
Like I think we've been a little slow to come out with the MCP and the API and this was because of this debate.
42:41
Like uh um traditional SAS wisdom is that you should like keep your data locked in the product so that people find it hard to to switch off and move out.
42:50
Um I think like the the thing we have to balance, I think, is like um I just don't think that that philosophy is going to fly like in in the future.
43:02
Like now or in the future, like every AI tool is becoming so interconnected and so much of the power of like these tools get so much more useful when you can use them with each other, you know?
43:10
Um and I think if we if we don't if we don't play ball in that system, then I I don't think we're like relevant anymore.
43:16
I think I think it's like essential.
43:18
And um I also think like we're in a you know, we're like a small team um and we can only be we can only really realistically be good at a couple of things.
43:27
Like we have to kind of really pick the things we want to be world class at and then kind of um and for us, I think that's that's like meetings and the stuff around meetings, right?
43:35
And if we do well at that, we'll earn the right to to be useful at more things, but um assuming that we're going to have our focus on meetings and the stuff around that, then I think there's a huge long tail of stuff that people want to do with transcripts that is outside of that realm.
43:49
And so like this is the way to enable all of those all of those workflows.
43:54
That makes a lot of sense.
43:55
I mean, locking down your data is just one lever to try and win in SAS world, right?
44:02
And I think basically what you're saying is that this element of it is going to be commoditized enough that it's like it's actually hurting us more than helping us to lock it down and we want to win in other departments like the product design, the agnostic sense of design of it.
44:17
And I think I think that totally adds up.
44:19
I mean, if the product is no good, yeah, you're very happy that there's an export feature.
44:27
I mean, I remember when I started using like Roam Research a handful of years ago, I was like, "Oh, this is the coolest thing ever.
44:33
Backlinking, my whole life is about to change."
44:35
And then it wouldn't sync and the product was never updated and there were just so many reasons that it was cludgy and not really any fun.
44:44
And yeah, it was pretty nice to have the export feature in that, but I think you're right to kind of assume that people demand that or even expect that these days, especially since we're at a point where browser and computer use for AI are at a point where if you work hard enough, you could just get the AI to import or export all your for you from various apps or will be soon.
45:07
And so it's almost like what's the point?
45:09
>> I had Claude prepare me uh for today by looking at my calendar, my Granola, and my email, right?
45:14
And I'm now I'm doing these daily prepare things with it.
45:16
Um is that okay that they have like they use you as kind of the pipe for that data, but then the interface I'm using is Claude and then like what's to keep them from eventually getting to building like the back-end plumbing that you which is I I'm not trying to minimize it.
45:34
I know it's like difficult, but like get you know, Open AI has it in in chat.
45:39
I don't know how many people use it.
45:39
I don't know if it's like affected you guys at all, but like I what's to keep these like big scaled consumer chatbots from just like, you know, building this and then they've already got the interface layer with the MCP stuff.
45:49
I mean, I mean, there's a world where they they do and they hit it out of the park and we're toast, but like you know, I I care.
45:57
My I I I my belief is like um all of that stuff about like meetings being messy and like you're you're super busy and we've got to we've got to like design the product that's going to work for that messy reality of of you in meetings.
46:10
Um I like it's hard and it takes time to get right and like I just believe that we have the team to do a better job at that um than a company if it's like got its attention fragmented in lots of different directions.
46:22
Um I I also think like I guess you had the you had the time and the head space to think to go to Claude to to like get it to prep you for this for this session, but like um that's not the case for most meetings, you know?
46:37
Like most meetings you you want a similar thing.
46:39
You want to be smart about who you're meeting and why it's happening and stuff.
46:41
But also you're like ricocheting from one thing to the next and you're not going to have the time to do that.
46:46
So um Granola like inserting the right to the the information you need to know at the right moment right before the meeting is a lot of the value, I think.
46:54
Also, speaking of like Granola feeling like it knows you and as you've said in your in your public communications including for this raise that the context really is going to be king and is really going to matter, help you execute a lot of this knowledge work.
47:09
But how are you able to actually leverage it given the current state of context windows and whatnot?
47:17
It's like do you have a prompt that you're really proud of that allows you to pull just what you need in a useful way?
47:25
Because I mean, Alex's context is freaking massive at this point.
47:29
You know, it's thousands of hours of meetings.
47:31
Like it it obviously it sounds like, "Oh, yeah, it knows you because it has all that context."
47:36
But it's like in reality, it does need to somehow turn that into a way to understand and give recommendations.
47:42
I mean, do you do that in any special way? Nothing super special.
47:46
I don't think there's there's not anything there that we've figured out that other people haven't figured out.
47:51
I think I want to say I I want the product to be way better at this.
47:53
It's like okay at this so far, but like not not amazing.
47:57
And uh like definitely at the 3,000 meeting level, like if you try to if you ask it a question across all 3,000 of those meetings, it's not going to do a great job. Um it it's like fine.
48:06
The average question someone asks is like, "Hey, what like summarize what we talked about in the last you know, in the in the meetings with this one person."
48:13
Or like uh um "Find me all the meetings where we talked about uh uh breakfast and like and then write something about that."
48:22
And and like with that level of focus, it's it's great.
48:26
But like Granola crunch, the like Spotify wrapped thing we did it over Christmas um did that.
48:30
And and it was like a lot of engineering work to like make it make it do that.
48:34
And um the the processing like for for to get everybody's like Granola crunch spready was like a this job that took like four days of a machine constantly running to get them all. That was half the raise. Was the GPU tokens.
48:51
>> [laughter] >> It's a good It was expensive. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
48:56
>> Well, do you need better speaker identification?
48:59
Now we're getting back into product recommendation territory.
49:03
Especially on mobile where the calendar or when the calendar invitees are not very present or visible or like there's people in the meeting that are not represented in the calendar invites.
49:13
Like that's the thing I find that also hurts with like the context retrieval and all of that.
49:18
It's like Granola doesn't actually know who's saying what.
49:22
Yeah, it's the biggest hit to our like the quality of the notes and and everything is like identifying the speakers, I think. Yeah.
49:26
Do you have a solve for that?
49:28
Can AI fix that or We do like some processing afterwards to like have a shot at it and it like works in some cases better than others.
49:36
We have some prototypes of uh uh like there's like a few different ways of attacking a problem, and honestly, I don't think there's like a golden bullet cuz like uh what works on a Zoom call where you're all independently on your own laptops won't like might not work on a in an in-person meeting on your mobile.
49:53
So, like uh there's I I think we just got to take a couple different approaches, and Can they go around the room and say their who they are, and then it matches it to the voice or something?
50:02
>> uh it Yeah, we we This one we tried in a uh like voice printing you you like uh you know, take a voice printer for everyone in the room, and then match it to the I'm saying this selfishly cuz I may need to do this tomorrow in an in-person meeting where I'm going to be running it on mobile and with six people. So, how do I do this?
50:20
>> [laughter] >> I don't think one uh it's not in the product.
50:22
It won't it won't uh it won't do it right now.
50:24
It like it helped, but still the quality of it was was bad enough that it would like um there's like three of us in this call right now, right?
50:32
And it would assume it would the notes would come out, and there would be like 12 different speakers assigned in the meeting.
50:38
You know, like it's it's okay, but not not good enough yet.
50:42
>> Well, so the fact that this is all you build is also, you know, ostensibly an advantage versus the others who may have the AI part tacked on.
50:48
Where do you see the most leverage from the product point of view to innovate and come up with new things is since you're the only one is since this is your main focus.
50:57
The stuff I'm most excited about is like most meetings like kind of create a bunch of work off the back right?
51:04
Like uh and and um they're often pretty simple benign things like just like writing an email to somebody saying thank you or like telling person A that you that you agreed with person B you're going to do this thing um or like scheduling the next meeting um You're giving me anxiety just like saying all this. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
51:25
Yeah. And they suck cuz they're like like individually not that hard, but like you're busy during the day, and so you don't keep on top of them, and then they stack up into this huge pile of things that you got to do, and um uh I'm
51:38
it sounds kind of boring, but I'm excited for Granola to really help with all of those, and um I I think like what's interesting is like there's there's each of those has so much nuance in it to like get it to a point where you'd actually use the feature. Like um
51:49
Like um an email has got to be written in your voice, and it's got to be like um it's got to solve that problem of like only talking about the things you actually agreed to do, not the things you just kind of like you know, suggested or or or kicked under the rug.
52:04
Um yeah, each each of those things has to like has to like nail the all the social nuances to be actually useful.
52:12
So, a Granola email app, is that what we're getting?
52:17
Uh you might be able to send Granola like emails from Granola.
52:18
We're definitely not building a whole email client, but yeah, something like that. I have ideas.
52:24
I'm having a breakthrough eureka moment on the pod.
52:26
I mean obviously, you're starting with the notes, but why not have a moderator who could tell like Steve to shut up when he's been talking for 18 minutes straight?
52:39
You know what I'm saying?
52:39
Like so much of the meeting uh rigor comes from having a project manager or a leader who really knows how to structure meetings properly.
52:48
And at the moment, you're probably not really attacking that at all.
52:53
Like making sure people actually come with what they need to have read, what they need to have prepared.
52:59
Like that seems like as big of an opportunity as any that applies to billions of people, not just people who are in digital meetings.
53:07
Like how do we actually make meetings useful and better and so that people aren't uh hating themselves at the end of at the end of each one, whether it's a referee.
53:16
Maybe you could choose the persona. Uh do that.
53:22
>> Well, you guys have recipes, right?
53:22
I mean, that's getting at that idea. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
53:25
And they're like um they're like personal coaching recipes are by far and away what like some of the the most used.
53:31
Like people like love that.
53:34
I was reading that one told your your co-founder Chris to stop acting like a product manager and start acting like a CEO, and he had to go take a walk. Yeah. [laughter] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
53:44
I think I've had a recipe like that, too.
53:45
You've had that experience? Yeah. Yeah.
53:47
It's not like um I've never when we were user testing that, like, you know, uh we we'd like get in a video call with a user, um let them you try it, watch them react to it.
53:57
I've like never worked on a thing where that's got such a strong emotional reactions.
54:01
Like you'd physically see people like flinch or like uh >> [laughter] >> I mean, it's therapy. Yeah. >> For everyone. Yeah. Yeah.
54:10
>> We should get one to judge our podcasting abilities, Ellis.
54:11
And say, "Alex, based on the microexpressions Ellis is exhibiting, you're really breaking through uh with some of these critiques and insults."
54:22
>> [laughter] >> What about like recipes is unique?
54:23
Like what is the thing about them that you think is worth investing in and continuing to to build that out?
54:31
I mean, I could see one for like say uh help me come up with YouTube titles and summaries and stuff for the pod, right?
54:40
Like it's just which is something we've started doing for the show.
54:41
Uh but I'm just using like standard Granola.
54:44
I should probably use a recipe.
54:47
Um yeah, like what motivates someone to make a recipe, and why is this like a platform worth investing in?
54:52
A lot of the value is when you have a team of people using Granola, and um there's like one person usually that is like really motivated to make the team more efficient.
55:02
That that like the kind of person who likes geeking out on new tools and and like uh uh figuring out all the ultimate ways to use it.
55:08
It's like uh it's a way for them to go and create a bunch of like things like you know, geek out on making stuff in Granola, and then for the rest of the team to benefit.
55:17
Like I think a lot of the recipes that get the most traction are like you're like uh recruiting firm, and you have this esoteric way of evaluating candidates.
55:27
Or like the kind of criteria that you look for in the candidates, and and uh they let you go and like you know, create a recipe that like perfectly pulls out all of those those talking points from the candidates, and present it back to everyone in the way that they like it.
55:38
Um yeah, I think it's the the stuff that's super super tailored to your company's weird ways of working that that hits the best.
55:46
As you are developing the product, I imagine you're getting a lot of feedback from a lot of people.
55:50
Um but you guys have some some pretty interesting uh folks on the cap table.
55:55
You know, you've got Toby from Shopify, Guillermo from Vercel, Curry from from Linear.
56:01
I wonder uh what have they been telling you?
56:03
What have they been requesting as as you go through kind of this inflection point as a company?
56:08
Guillermo was a good um uh keeps us honest on the quality of the of the app.
56:14
Like we get a lot of uh uh UI nets and things like that from him, which is which is really helpful.
56:18
A bunch of like a bunch of them have been helpful in just talking to them about how they think about their whole team using it.
56:27
You know, they're like they're like CEOs at the top of like very like big successful influential companies.
56:33
And so like um uh I was kind of taken aback by how um deliberately folks are going to thinking about having like a uh meeting intelligence type uh system in their company.
56:44
Like like it's kind of become a requirement that you have that you have a way of capturing the conversations in the company because they kind of all realize that that's going to be such valuable context for all of the AI like internal AI agents doing the work in the future.
56:59
Um yeah, just like understanding the language they talk about there, like what they prioritize there has been really helpful.
57:07
And like hard it's hard to like get that insight without having folks like that >> Well, there was a story today about Zuck building a AI CEO agent.
57:15
I mean, I think they're all thinking about like how can they use these tools uh to to help run their companies, right?
57:23
And Granola is a big big part of that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
57:25
Was it you that told me, Sam, that like the truth of the company is in the last meeting, not in the documents? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
57:33
I'm still thinking about that. Can you talk about that?
57:37
Yeah, I like uh it like continually takes me aback like how much you can understand about what's going on in the company from just the transcripts of the conversation.
57:45
Like um basically any other kind of like documentation or or like um uh whether it's like Notion docs or Slack chats or whatever, like they all they all trail behind the like um the most up-to-date truth of what's happening in the company.
58:02
You know, like I I think mostly the truth of what of of what's planned or what's what's going to happen or who's doing what is decided in meetings.
58:10
It's like people talking about it, and then and then that gets codified in a Slack message or like someone takes a few hours to write up a Notion doc on the thing.
58:18
And so like all of those things are like lossy and trailing indicators of what the truth is at the company.
58:24
Um yeah, so so you can you like just by having the context of whatever we're talking about, like the exhaust fumes of that is like uh the truth of like what's happening at the company.
58:34
The downside of it is that like uh somebody sits down to write a Notion doc, for example, it's it's a moment where everybody agrees that like this is the thing.
58:42
Like we were kind of agreeing on this thing that we were writing down.
58:46
Um whereas conversations, people say they don't mean like all the time.
58:49
And so like picking apart what's what's like actually happening versus what somebody's spitballing at lunch is like not not trivial, but yeah.
58:55
And have you said how many users you have at the moment?
59:01
I know in the new release you talked about some companies like some big ones.
59:05
>> Like DoorDash that are using you guys.
59:06
Where where does that all stand?
59:06
Yeah, we we don't talk about like absolute user numbers publicly, but um DoorDash, Brex, Vercel, Vanta, like a lot of the a lot of the big like most AI-forward companies that are like adopting us like have adopted us or have like we're talking with them at the moment.
59:22
I think we just had so much organic viral growth from person to person, like especially in the Silicon Valley ecosystem.
59:31
you know, that like that's kind of bearing fruit.
59:34
Like we've we've hit critical mass on enough of our companies now where like it's it's turning into sales conversations.
59:41
Um so the sales team have their work cut out like keeping up with that.
59:43
But I got the notification about a month ago that I had a 30 days to pay or lose access to >> [laughter] >> everything past 30 days.
59:51
Uh >> a while coming, yeah.
59:54
I was waiting, you know, we were in the like, you know, free Uber >> You weren't paying?
59:59
No, I wasn't paying this whole time and I was like, man, did I get a hookup? Did Chris hook me up?
1:00:03
Cuz he he helped me with an account transfer before you guys let your let people switch emails.
1:00:07
And I was like, damn, maybe I'm on some great white list or something.
1:00:10
And then I got that and I was like, nope.
1:00:11
And then I was also thinking, well, like maybe we were in the subsidized Uber phase of this.
1:00:15
I think you're right putting it, yeah. Yeah.
1:00:21
Yeah, and uh I imagine now the revenue ramp's looking a little different now that that that that time has come.
1:00:29
>> [laughter] >> Was that always the plan?
1:00:31
Just like we got to like, you know, I I think I think saying, you know, you only get 30 days worth of meetings is is makes sense.
1:00:36
I know it's probably expensive to store that stuff at scale, but uh yeah, it's quite a move.
1:00:42
And we had to start making money at some point, you know, and like uh uh This is AI.
1:00:45
What are you talking about?
1:00:47
You don't have to start making money.
1:00:49
>> [laughter] >> I don't know.
1:00:50
We we like we kicked the can down the road on like uh actually charging for the product for like a really long time.
1:00:56
We like uh I think I think we when we launched, we had you could technically pay for Granola um and we had pricing on the website, but like really just like the priority was just make the product good.
1:01:08
And we were a tiny tiny team and like building a paywall would have meant stopping everything else.
1:01:13
So uh it took us a while to actually get round to doing it.
1:01:16
And like a there was a point where the user numbers started getting big enough that like the amount of thing was costing us like you you could plot a chart and the the numbers got really scary big really quickly.
1:01:24
So uh uh yeah, that was the motivator.
1:01:29
Also, I know the conventional wisdom was always like users first.
1:01:30
And I think part of that is that you prioritize the users first for a number of reasons, but one of them is that they start building their data set within your product and then it's sticky and/or hard to leave.
1:01:45
But now you kind of look at Twitter just kind of coming back to the defensibility point of view.
1:01:49
And there's another Steve out there who vibe coded his own Granola in like one day or whatever. And that is new.
1:01:57
And then, you know, there's also the narratives about the SAS apocalypse of like capable engineers at DoorDash just coded it for themselves.
1:02:05
How are you guys thinking about that?
1:02:07
Does that keep you up at night? No.
1:02:09
Maybe I maybe I should, but like uh I I think it's like today at least it's like still the case I think that it's easy to make something that looks like it does the job, but like to make something actually good enough that you rely on it, you know, like you really
1:02:24
really got to trust Granola to be doing its thing and like to not to not let you down cuz like you want to like hit the button and then and then put it out of your minds, you know, and uh and yeah, if we fail like 1% of the time, that's just not okay. Like users will
1:02:36
Like users will will churn and stop using us.
1:02:38
And um doing that well enough for like a large number of users is still like a a meaty problem that I think is safe for a little bit.
1:02:46
I guess when it comes to both the reliability and also the data security, it's like, yeah, you do want a company you could trust as opposed to Steve's app that just happens to be free. Right?
1:02:57
And so uh maybe categorically you're in a better place than than most who who maybe uh called wrappers or or otherwise.
1:03:06
Is that still a term that's being used or is everybody past that? Yeah, man.
1:03:07
I haven't heard it in a while, hey.
1:03:11
OpenAI is just an Nvidia wrapper.
1:03:11
So you can just wrapper this all the way up.
1:03:16
Jeez, that was like the number one uh raising the first round, that was like the number one thing we had to get over was was like us just being a wrapper, you know. Times have changed. Yeah.
1:03:25
Sam, I noticed you guys are hiring for a community manager in San Francisco.
1:03:30
And one of the job description points is to make Granola's SF office synonymous with the forefront of tech in the city.
1:03:40
Uh what are your ideas for doing that?
1:03:42
How are you going to do that?
1:03:42
We throw a lot of events here in London.
1:03:43
Um uh meetups, firesides, hackathons, uh design evenings, like all kinds of things.
1:03:53
And it's been so good for us like like one is just really it's like fun.
1:03:58
Everyone on the team loves being able to just go downstairs on a Wednesday evening and hang out with new people and and go see a talk by someone interesting.
1:04:03
Um but like for just like as a small startup having I think we're just known at this point in the city.
1:04:12
Like most engineers have heard of us probably by our events more than our product.
1:04:15
Like and um uh so for hiring and for attracting interesting people, it's been like really really good.
1:04:21
So yeah, we have to figure out what the San Francisco version of that is.
1:04:24
Like and there's a little more competition for tech events there.
1:04:26
So we might have to be more creative.
1:04:28
>> There's a lot of competition.
1:04:28
You may have to bring in some like sushi boats or something.
1:04:31
I mean >> [laughter] >> you're I mean it helps that you're you're not next to something, you know, if you were next to a competitor like literally next door, you know, but you've also got that that Moscone area to contend with and people getting there. Yeah.
1:04:44
I think the new office is really nice as well.
1:04:45
Like a place people like just have to go see.
1:04:50
Yeah, what's going to be the bougiest thing in this office?
1:04:51
Are we doing, you know, haircuts?
1:04:53
Are we doing laun- laundry? Yo, yo, yo.
1:04:55
Obviously we need fancy artisanal granola which can be banging if you've had the good ones. Wait.
1:05:05
We uh we have granola companies send us their granola.
1:05:07
I you know, like uh they're like, oh, these people must need good granola.
1:05:11
We're like we'll send them a trial packet.
1:05:12
So we we usually have like uh at any given time there's like a handful of different granolas that the people have sent in to try to try out.
1:05:19
So Is there a most popular granola?
1:05:21
And uh and and a terrible granola that's actually all sugar?
1:05:27
Is there a Slack channel around that?
1:05:27
I I assume I hope there is.
1:05:30
Uh we have a chief snack officer and a chief drinks officer and I think a condiments one as well.
1:05:36
Um uh and a they are getting it's a busy job, though.
1:05:40
They're getting they're getting things from all directions on with feedback on these things, yeah. Yeah.
1:05:44
Although I think we we've um we have a we have an open claw bot running in the office at the moment.
1:05:48
And and a lot of their job is is collecting all the feedback from on the snacks and the granola and stuff.
1:05:54
How are you feeling with the limited time we have left?
1:05:56
How are you feeling about London's tech scene overall? Is it Is it Is it up? Is it down? Is it uh It feels up. It feels up.
1:06:02
Like when we started what like three three years ago now, it was super research heavy.
1:06:06
Like um I guess DeepMind felt like the place that everybody talked about as like the the happening place in AI.
1:06:13
And uh um there's more diversity now, I think.
1:06:17
Like there's just more companies doing more interesting things.
1:06:18
And there's a a wave of AI startups that I guess started around the time we did and are now you know, bigger and have their own centers of gravity.
1:06:27
So it's um it's looking better.
1:06:30
It's still it's still I think tiny compared to San Francisco.
1:06:33
Um but but we have good people here. Yeah. Nice.
1:06:38
Well, we'll let you get back to your snacks.
1:06:39
Thank you for joining us.
1:06:39
And uh yeah, congrats again on the big raise.
1:06:43
We'll uh we'll keep in touch. Yeah. >> of fun. Thank you guys.
1:06:46
>> Thanks for coming on, Sam.
1:06:49
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1:06:50
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