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Granola ’s notepad app has become a popular tool among venture capitalists who apply it to record meeting and augment notes using AI applied science . That made it easier for the inauguration to elevate funds from a crowd of investors for its $ 20 million Series A — something the team managed to do in about a week .
“ I think all the investors that we pay back terminal figure flat solid from in the end had been using this for a while , ” says Granola co - founderSam Stephenson .
He says the squad had obtain a lot of inward interestingness , so they hosted roughly a XII investor conversation in just one day . “ It was a very opportunist thing . We would have call for to do it at some point , but we were able-bodied to get good terminus and get it over with very quick . ”
The fellowship ’s Series A was led by Spark Capital ( Nabeel Hyatt ) with participation from investors Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross , Lightspeed , Betaworks , Firstminute Capital , and others .
Unlike some AI - powered confluence summary tools , Granola ’s appeal is its collaborative feeler . Instead of transcribing the meeting and then attempting to play up the fundamental dot on its own , you could guide the AI by write down what you think are the most important takeaway from your meeting , and the AI help by fill in the rest .
To employ Granola , you establish the app on your Mac and link it with your calendar . It will then transliterate your meeting ’s audio directly when you encounter over Zoom , Google Meet , Slack , Teams , and WebEx . During the group meeting , you’re able to indite your own notes or bullet points , or depart it all up to the AI . After the meeting wraps , Granola analyzes who was in the meeting , and what it was about , and then use AI to flesh out your notes using the meeting ’s copy . It can also clean up your typos if you jot down thing down in a hurry .
Sincelaunching in May , Granola has grow its user base by 5x and now sees around 5,000 people using the app on a hebdomadal basis . Seventy percentage of people who use Granola for a meeting within their first week of trying it return to use it again , according to the society . Weekly meetings have also grow by 6x .
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And VCs are no longer its primary customers .
“ [ Over ] 50 % of all the users were in a leadership position , and investor were a humble glob than that , ” Stephenson say . ( The stat is now 57 % , in fact . ) “ The tables have flipped , and we now definitely have more non - investor than investor . ”
He says many are chance Granola through word - of - sassing — like laminitis hearing about it from their investor , for example — or from other match in their industry . Later , they pass the word along to members of their squad or within the society , which has been helping Granola grow .
Since its first appearance , Granola ’s team has been adding Modern features , like integrations with Slack . They ’re now working on CRM integrations and support for images . Soon , Granola will introduce a feature that will display the past meetings you ’ve had with someone when you suffer with them again , provide a form of “ context history ” that can help jog your memory regarding what you last talked about .
The troupe also continue to swop out the off - the - shelf AI as good models become uncommitted , which is ongoing oeuvre . More recently , Stephenson says the AI has gotten dependable at sounding more natural and more like you had taken your own short letter . ( Granola is not breeding models on your meeting data for now , but it may introduce that in an opt - in basis further down the road . )
With the extra funds , Granola aims to make the app more of a merchandise for team , develop an enterprise pricing plan , and build up feature of speech that could proactively find interesting nuggets and composition from a set of meetings over meter . A mobile app will likely arrive next twelvemonth , as well .
In addition , the investment funds allows Granola to expand its engineering team , now five , by hiring four more masses .
Ahead of its Series A , Granola grow $ 4.25 million in seed funding from Michael Mignano at Lightspeed , along with Betaworks , Firstminute Capital , Mike Krieger , Soleio Cuervo , and others .
