Latest / Zero Shot Podcast DEMO / Evolving Granola: From Notes to Productivity Powerhouse

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Evolving Granola: From Notes to Productivity Powerhouse · Zero Shot Podcast DEMO

• 0:00
  Interviewee: I'm really, really proud and happy to have Sam Stevenson here, the co -founder of Granola.
• 0:20
  speakers: In this conversation, granola is evolving from a note-taking app to a comprehensive productivity tool that adapts to users' needs. Let's start with that introduction.
• 0:32
  Interviewee: How many of you use Granola today?
• 0:34
  Raise your hand.
• 0:36
  All right.
• 0:37
  So many of you are familiar with it.
• 0:39
  It's an AI -powered note -taking application that's evolving to much more.
• 0:44
  And Granola is actually based out in London.
• 0:46
  Most people don't know that that's where the company is built.
• 0:52
  Interviewer: It's designed to look very familiar.
• 0:54
  So it looks a lot like an Apple Notes or any notes app you're familiar with.
• 0:57
  But in the background, it'll be listening to the conversation you're having.
• 1:00
  And then the pattern we have is basically you take notes on the stuff that you care about during the meeting.
• 1:05
  We don't ask you to outsource everything to AI.
• 1:09
  But we'll take whatever you thought was important from the conversation and flesh that out into hopefully a really useful set of notes afterwards.
• 1:17
  The notes thing, though, was always kind of like we kind of think of it like a way to get our foot in the door into your life to earn the right to be a part of your
• 1:25
  workday.
• 1:26
  And I think really the bigger picture is like we want to be a tool that you have open on your
• 1:33
  screen for like 80 % of your day, you know, and that's helping you get the stuff you need to get done done.
• 1:41
  And kind of meeting notes is a way for the AI to be present during your meeting and therefore be understanding what's happening.
• 1:48
  And I mean, I think right now we're at an interesting point where I think the note -taking thing is working well.
• 1:53
  And it's like time for Chapter 2 where we figure out how to actually kind of be helpful given the context we have of what's happening in
• 2:01
  your meetings.
• 2:02
  And over the time period in which you've been working on Granola, not only has the product evolved meaningfully, the broader
• 2:09
  landscape has evolved pretty meaningfully.
• 2:11
  How we're building, how we're working together, how we're working with agents and AI.
• 2:19
  High -level summary.
• 2:20
  What is it like being a designer co -founder in an environment where you're simultaneously trying to build upon product market fit
• 2:28
  but also adapt to an entirely new toolkit that seems to be updating itself every month?
• 2:34
  It's like equally exhausting, like anxiety -interesting and also really fun.
• 2:38
  I don't know, like I feel lucky to get to be, I guess, a designer at this point in time.
• 2:44
  Like it's, we're just so much more powerful than we were a couple of years ago.
• 2:50
  I was, I guess I've been always like a technical -ish designer.
• 2:54
  Like I could code a bit and I would be able to do some front -end stuff.
• 2:58
  But like now I can build whole features, you know?
• 3:01
  And like, and the quickest way to try most things is to just try it out in a real product and live with it.
• 3:05
  And that's kind of crazy to, I wouldn't have imagined that was possible like a year ago or even.
• 3:11
  So yeah, it's really, it's a really exciting time.
• 3:14
  And with the evolution of the product, there's also been an evolution of the brand.
• 3:18
  Now many of us who've been using Granola for a while, you know, we sort of became familiar with this like toothpaste green version of the letter G.
• 3:26
  And you guys recently did a complete overhaul of it.
• 3:30
  And it had sort of like a lukewarm response.
• 3:35
  In the tech community.
• 3:36
  To basically puke, right?
• 3:39
  Puke green.
• 3:41
  Everybody's got to use their register.
• 3:42
  I'm going to correct my thing to say, yeah.
• 3:43
  But I'm really curious to hear like, you know, one clock back of what kind of instigated that rebrand.
• 3:48
  What was sort of the thinking behind it?
• 3:50
  And then what was that creative process like for you as the fact of designer co -founder, designer chief?
• 3:55
  Yeah, I mean, so the original Granola brand was always done like in a hurry when we needed something
• 4:03
  else.
• 4:04
  You know, we never kind of were like, okay, we're going to sit down and think about our brand.
• 4:06
  It was like we needed to hire our first engineer.
• 4:10
  And so that we look like a legit company, we needed some kind of web page, you know.
• 4:14
  And that meant that we needed to decide what the web page looked like, which meant we needed a color and we needed a typeface and stuff.
• 4:20
  And so the original brand was kind of like a few moments like that where we just added, you know, okay,
• 4:28
  now we're going to have this gradient thing, I guess.
• 4:30
  Because we need the intense green that we had at the beginning was a bit too much.
• 4:35
  But there was never like a thought through process for it.
• 4:40
  And so that always kind of like irked me that we never got to really have a shot at coming up with a good, you know, fully thought out identity.
• 4:49
  But always, you know, as a startup, there's a million things to do.
• 4:51
  And having an okay but not great identity wasn't going to kill us, you know.
• 4:57
  But I think that and also like, you know, as a startup, you're always changing direction.
• 5:02
  And it's hard to know what you're going to be when you grow up.
• 5:05
  And you don't want to like overly kind of like design an identity that says one thing and then pivot massively to another direction.
• 5:12
  So I think we kind of, we kept punting it down the road until we felt like, you know, I think we know enough about what we might want to do over the
• 5:20
  next couple of years to kind of put a stake in the ground and be like, this is who we are.
• 5:27
  And so I think we kind of finally arrived at that moment, like beginning of the fall last year.
• 5:33
  And what happened at that moment?
• 5:34
  Because I mean, in my head, I'm picturing you and Chris sitting down and one of you instigates it, sort of pushes the border down the hill.
• 5:41
  I don't think it was one of us, actually.
• 5:43
  Like, I think Jack, our product marketing person, I think I credit him with like finally making it happen.
• 5:50
  And I think, I mean, I guess I've like, it's bothered me that,
• 5:58
  you know, that the granola looks like fine, but not great for a long time.
• 6:02
  But also, I guess, as a founder, I'm in the luxurious position that whatever I say, kind of people will go along with.
• 6:10
  And so like, I can kind of just decide on a whim, every design that we do, and it's okay.
• 6:16
  But I think like, you know, we had Jack, our first marketer, and we had two other product designers by this point.
• 6:22
  And I think, you know, at that point, we're kind of a mini design team.
• 6:25
  And we've all got to collectively agree on what granola is going to look like.
• 6:29
  And that was just getting tough, you know, like everyone, no one had anything to go with.
• 6:33
  So everyone was like, just making up different stuff, like all the time.
• 6:37
  And all of it was good, but there wasn't really any like, unifying idea behind it.
• 6:42
  And so, yeah, I think finally, we're like, enough's enough.
• 6:45
  We're going to kick off a process and come up with something good.
• 6:48
  And what happened in that process?
• 6:49
  Because I feel like as consumers of granola, we see the end result.
• 6:53
  We sort of see this new conceptual universe that you've introduced, this new mark that is contentious all its own.
• 6:59
  And it sort of feels like, okay, this is not the granola I remember.
• 7:05
  But between now and when you kicked off this project, there's probably a lot of stuff on the editing floor.
• 7:10
  So what was the conceptual space that you worked through, navigated through?
• 7:14
  What were the questions you were asking yourselves?
• 7:15
  And how did you first start to arrive at this particular concept?
• 7:24
  speakers: Granola is designed to look familiar, like Apple Notes, while listening to your conversations to create useful notes.
• 7:33
  Interviewee: I was really lucky to meet Sam in London when I was living there a few years ago and have been an early supporter and fan
• 7:40
  for several years.
• 7:43
  And Sam, thank you for coming and joining us.
• 7:46
  Thank you, Soler.
• 7:47
  Thank you for having me and thank you for pulling this together.
• 7:49
  And thank you all for coming on such short notice.
• 7:51
  I'm impressed that anyone showed up given how much of the timing is.
• 7:55
  Thank you.
• 7:56
  I actually thought for a minute that it was some sort of elaborate prank because Sam was running it a little bit behind.
• 8:01
  And I was like, oh, man, they really got me with this one.
• 8:05
  Because we had kind of agreed to do this yesterday.
• 8:07
  So thank you all for coming on.
• 8:10
  Sam, why don't we start with high level.
• 8:13
  What is Granola today and where is this going?
• 8:17
  What is Granola?
• 8:17
  Yeah, so today Granola is essentially a way to get great notes for meetings, for Zoom
• 8:25
  meetings, for in -person meetings.
• 8:30
  speakers: The rebranding of Granola was necessary to establish a cohesive identity and avoid losing its soul.
• 8:38
  where we wanted to go.
• 8:39
  I think, one, we were very aware that, I think granola had a great brand, if you
• 8:47
  think of brand in a holistic sense.
• 8:49
  You know, of just like, what does a person think of when they think of granola?
• 8:51
  I think they think of good things, more or less.
• 8:54
  And we really didn't want to fuck that up.
• 8:56
  Like, it's so precious to have that.
• 9:01
  And I think the primary way we could have messed that up was rebranding to something that felt like we'd lost our soul.
• 9:09
  You know, like we'd gone overly like corporate.
• 9:11
  Now we're now selling to companies.
• 9:12
  And we're a thing that procurement teams decide that you should use.
• 9:15
  And so the real risk, I think, was just that we kind of, that we announced the brand.
• 9:22
  And everyone was like, oh, man, okay, granola's gone.
• 9:26
  I don't feel good about like, you know, having it be a companion to my day anymore.
• 9:32
  And so we kind of aggressively wanted to push for granola, like feeling like a tool built for you, the individual,
• 9:40
  not something that a company would buy.
• 9:43
  Like, if it kind of puts a procurement person on edge a little bit and they're like, are you sure this is like a good thing we should do?
• 9:49
  Then that's actually probably a good thing, I think.
• 9:53
  And so that was a big one.
• 9:56
  And then I think that the second piece is like, granola's known for don'ts today.
• 10:01
  But I think ultimately we have this bigger trajectory towards helping you get a lot of shit done.
• 10:05
  And this wasn't really like dictated from the start.
• 10:10
  But I think through going through a lot of ideas and leaving stuff on the cutting room floor, like the routes that felt
• 10:18
  most us were routes that actually felt kind of a bit frenetic and chaotic and like
• 10:26
  depictions of real work life.
• 10:28
  Like, I think in granola there's this interesting tension where like the product is designed to be
• 10:36
  super simple, right?
• 10:37
  And to make you feel kind of calm.
• 10:51
  Finally, we look at how Granola aims to be genuinely useful in everyday life.
• 10:57
  We really try and build for like real life and build for like making a
• 11:05
  product that actually is useful to you.
• 11:07
  That isn't just like a pretty demo or that isn't trying to pander to like the kind of hype
• 11:15
  cycle of the, you know, Twitter and stuff.
• 11:18
  That really resonates because of all the startups that I work with.
• 11:22
  I think Rinalda is the only one used by my wife.
• 11:24
  It's literally the only one.
• 11:25
  And she is a diehard user, but I think it is because it provides a certain amount of like stability to
• 11:32
  the frenetic, like I have to remember all these details.
• 11:36
  And if I slip through the sieve, then that's that.
• 11:38
  I'll have to suffer the consequences.
• 11:41
  And so it sort of provides a safety net.
• 11:43
  What I find curious though is this idea that like you wanted the brand to encapsulate not the solution, but rather the
• 11:51
  wildness of the environment, the swirl around us.
• 11:54
  Yeah, yeah.
• 11:54
  Say more about that.
• 11:55
  Because I'm kind of, I think for me, there's like the mark that sits in your, in your app icon, right?
• 12:00
  But then there's sort of like this, like this universe that you're trying to surround the mark with.
• 12:04
  Yeah, yeah.
• 12:05
  We've all seen V1.
• 12:07
  What does V2 start to look like?
• 12:09
  How does it start to take different forms that you guys are exploring right now?
• 12:12
  Yeah, I think, I mean, I think in the, in the like wider universe of it, I think
• 12:17
  as a company building software, a lot of like the practicality is like a lot of your brand shows up in like the,
• 12:26
  you're always going to have screenshots of your product UI or whatever, you know, on the website.
• 12:30
  And so, and, and you don't change that, you just show the product.
• 12:34
  And so like a lot of the brand is like what happens around the edges of it.
• 12:37
  And what's the like world you build around the product UI you have.
• 12:41
  And, and so they're like, it's, it's kind of like I was saying, if Granola is this simple, clean UI that's, that's, you know, designed
• 12:49
  to make you just kind of feel calm and in control, then, then the stuff around it has got to depict real life.
• 12:55
  And, and yeah, that, that was a lot of it.
• 12:58
  And I also, I kind of mentioned this earlier, but I, I feel like we have really good designers
• 13:06
  on the team and I kind of like, I feel like through this process, I was half thinking about like, does this solve the job
• 13:14
  of like what the Granola brand needs to do?
• 13:16
  And also just like, is this going to be really fun to work with?
• 13:18
  And are we going to be able to come up with some really cool stuff with it?
• 13:21
  And so the fact that it's a little, there are a lot of elements there and there's quite a lot to play with.
• 13:27
  And it's maybe not as cohesive and like unified as a lot of brands would be.
• 13:31
  But I also think good designers will really enjoy working with it.
• 13:35
  Yeah.
• 13:36
  It has this quality of like a season one of a show where you're like, I don't know if all these characters are going to stick around, but you know, we've got enough that it's kind of interesting and some of them died.
• 13:43
  And so be it.
• 13:44
  Nobody's going to remember them anyway.
• 13:45
  Yeah.
• 13:47
  Gosh, I have so many questions.
• 13:48
  So we're at South Park Commons and I feel like I have to ask the question about like the minus one journey.
• 13:55
  And I think the day that I met you was the day that I felt like I saw the first version of Granola that we know today.
• 14:04
  Prior to that, I had been spending time with Chris.
• 14:07
  He's hiding in the back, by the way.
• 14:08
  He's hiding in the back.
• 14:09
  He's hiding in the back.
• 14:10
  He's hiding in the back.
• 14:13
  I was, you know, spending time with Chris on this like, voice dictation tool that he was building.
• 14:18
  And I was sending him all kinds of weird voice memos.
• 14:22
  And it was the first time that I saw a different use case of the same technology.
• 14:26
  And you were in the room kind of walking through it.
• 14:28
  And it had almost like a photocopier effect.
• 14:31
  So they kind of, it was sort of the swipe through the viewport.
• 14:34
  It kind of like generated the notes.
• 14:37
  Yeah.
• 14:37
  And I like to call these Jurassic Park moments.
• 14:40
  I don't know if you guys remember the scene in Jurassic Park when they stopped the tour of Jurassic Park to go watch the baby raptors hatch.
• 14:48
  And it's like John Hammond says, he's like, I built this whole damn park just to be here when you're born.
• 14:55
  And I feel like that's like my career in a nutshell.
• 14:57
  It's to be there when you see the first version of something new.
• 15:01
  And you're like, there it is.
• 15:02
  That's the feature.
• 15:03
  It's squishy and it's ugly.
• 15:04
  And we have to feed it for a while.
• 15:06
  But it's going to grow up to eat things.
• 15:08
  It's going to be something big.
• 15:10
  And it's something new.
• 15:12
  The world is different.
• 15:15
  But a lot of work goes into what happens to hatch that edge.
• 15:19
  So tell us a little bit about your startup journey.
• 15:22
  How you decided to become a founder.
• 15:25
  And what led up to that moment when you and I met.
• 15:29
  Yeah.
• 15:30
  I mean, I think I've always wanted to do.
• 15:38
  I've always been inclined to just like work on stuff myself.
• 15:41
  I'm like a kind of independent person to a fault, I guess.
• 15:45
  You're not enjoying it.
• 15:46
  Yeah.
• 15:47
  I'm a good team sports.
• 15:50
  So like, I guess pre -Granola, I was at a time where I'd been freelancing for a while for different startups.
• 16:00
  Freelancing because I didn't kind of getting a job felt like a scary idea.
• 16:05
  And I could never quite commit to it.
• 16:08
  And I'd been doing that for a few years.
• 16:10
  I'd like saved up enough that I could afford to just quit and not do anything for a bit.
• 16:17
  And I think if I'm like alone in a room, I'll naturally want to tinker with things and just try out making stuff.
• 16:24
  And I basically had like six months of doing that.
• 16:26
  Every morning I would wake up and I'd be like, okay, I should probably apply to some jobs today.
• 16:31
  And I would like, you know, start making lists of jobs to apply to and things.
• 16:34
  And then within half an hour I would be distracted and like hacking on a thing instead.
• 16:41
  And I was, I guess, previous to Granola, I was working on another and no taking up as a designer there.
• 16:49
  And I, you know, I quit that, but I still, I really enjoyed working on that kind of product.
• 16:53
  Like super general purpose tools, like productivity tools.
• 16:59
  I think that if you do them really well, then they, they're like a really integral part of someone's life.
• 17:04
  You know, like people pour a lot of themselves into it.
• 17:06
  And it's a very satisfying kind of thing to work on, I think.
• 17:11
  So I basically quit working on a note taking app, but then ended up trying to build my own note taking app with my own time.
• 17:18
  And a few months into that I met Chris.
• 17:20
  And Chris was doing a similar thing, I guess.
• 17:25
  Like he'd also quit, was also trying to do a startup.
• 17:27
  Chris had more intentionality, I think, about how he was spending his time, like actively looking to do a startup.
• 17:34
  And so we found each other.
• 17:37
  Chris, I think, was spending his time playing a lot with GPT -3 at the time.
• 17:45
  And I think it successfully, like, and correctly convinced himself that it was going to change the world.
• 17:51
  Honestly, I was not so convinced.
• 17:52
  I was like, I remember, I remember, yeah, no, I really, I was like, it's cool, but whatever, you know.
• 18:01
  Everyone complains about slop today, but like the slop was really bad.
• 18:04
  Yeah.
• 18:05
  GPT -3 days.
• 18:06
  Yeah.
• 18:09
  And so, yeah, we had a while of just like independently.
• 18:14
  Chris was building prototypes with GPT -3.
• 18:16
  I was continuing to hack on this note taking app.
• 18:19
  I think eventually we kind of, we decided we liked working together and we wanted to, and also like I think spending time together, our ideas kind of started looking
• 18:26
  more and more alike.
• 18:27
  Like, and there came a point, I think a few months into that where we were like, okay, cool, this is fun.
• 18:35
  Like, let's, let's try and do something.
• 18:36
  I mean, and we both, I think, Chris is like a, like a, the best
• 18:44
  like product thinker I think I've ever worked with.
• 18:47
  And I think we both were super keen.
• 18:51
  Like, we were like, if we're going to work on something, then we really, really need to find like a concrete use case to
• 18:58
  work on and build towards.
• 19:00
  Like, I think I definitely learned from working on note taking apps that like the risk of building general purpose tools is you can,
• 19:08
  you can build something that's like nice, but also nobody really cares about.
• 19:11
  And, and I think the antidote to that is like really, really focusing on a particular moment in someone's life that is painful and trying to solve it.
• 19:19
  And so we're both kind of paranoid about that.
• 19:22
  And, and so because of that, like, we kind of deliberately down tools on the things we were working on and we're like, okay,
• 19:30
  we're going to just go hunting for a problem for a little while.
• 19:34
  And open -endedly just started talking to friends and people we knew about their work life.
• 19:40
  And this went on for like a month or so.
• 19:42
  And I think during that, you know, it was, we just started off by just talking to people.
• 19:47
  And then, you know, you talk to five people and you can't help but have ideas about what would help them.
• 19:52
  And so we started building prototypes of things that would help them.
• 19:57
  And then by the end of that month, we, I think we had, I think not the version that you were describing, but like a really, really janky version of it.
• 20:06
  Where you could like transcribe something someone was saying and then type a word and have Granolva like autocomplete a sentence
• 20:14
  off the back of it.
• 20:16
  It was just like one interaction.
• 20:17
  Like it literally, it was like a text input button and then a, and then a little field to the right.
• 20:23
  And you would like type a keyword, hit the button and the note would generate on the right.
• 20:27
  It was not at all like a usable product.
• 20:30
  But the one interaction just felt interesting enough.
• 20:33
  Like there could be something there that I think we were kind of intrigued enough to keep pulling on that thread.
• 20:40
  And I think the thing we showed you was basically like, what if we took that interaction, put it in a familiar feeling UI, like a notepad.
• 20:47
  And let you do, do that many times over during the course of the meeting.
• 20:52
  Yeah.
• 20:52
  And that's kind of how we got to the first prototype.
• 20:54
  And I appreciated that it happened after the meeting.
• 20:56
  I felt like that was the key insight that it wasn't sort of interrupting.
• 20:59
  Oh no, at the beginning it didn't.
• 21:01
  At the beginning it didn't.
• 21:02
  It was, it was all real time.
• 21:03
  Like we, we were trying to, it was kind of like a GitHub co -pilot for, for notes.
• 21:10
  Like it would, you just type keywords, hit tap, it would autocomplete the thing.
• 21:15
  And they're like doing it after a meeting took us a while.
• 21:17
  It was like a, I think we got stuck on the, you should be able to take notes with AI in real time for a good like six months.
• 21:25
  I think before we figured out that actually knows it's too much.
• 21:29
  And just doing it all in one pass after the meeting is the way.
• 21:32
  What do you feel like is a lesson there for like teams that are in that particular part of the idea base?
• 21:37
  Where like, ah gosh, there's something here, but we haven't quite cracked the form factor.
• 21:42
  Like when you look back on that period of exploration, obviously knowing the solution is worth knowing.
• 21:49
  But like, but what advice would you give for teams that are squarely in that space?
• 21:54
  Yeah.
• 21:55
  I mean, I don't, I don't think, I don't think we did it optimally.
• 21:58
  Like we, we were banging our head against the wall trying to make like real time AI note taking a thing for like six months.
• 22:07
  Kind of, and I think just kind of enamored with how like science fiction it felt, like the idea of it.
• 22:12
  Yeah.
• 22:13
  So if I could wind by the clock, I would go for like way more wide, you know, we were kind of like doing like little step -by -step iterations on the thing.
• 22:20
  And I would have tried to deliberately go way more broad to see how different things felt.
• 22:26
  Yeah.
• 22:26
  And I guess there's also this undertold story of, you know, you're navigating a
• 22:34
  specific kind of relationship.
• 22:35
  This is your first time co -founding a startup, correct?
• 22:37
  Yeah.
• 22:38
  Yeah.
• 22:38
  So that changes your self -concept.
• 22:41
  That's also a question of like, okay, do I team up with this person?
• 22:45
  Like how permanent decision is this?
• 22:47
  What advice do you have to designer founders as they're kind of navigating that specific arrangement?
• 22:53
  And we're like, okay, am I going to start a company with this person?
• 22:56
  Like what questions should they be asking?
• 22:58
  And how, I guess afterwards, you can talk a little bit about how that relationship has evolved as you went from this
• 23:06
  idea that's kind of started working to the business that exists today.
• 23:11
  Yeah.
• 23:12
  This would have been much easier to ask if Chris was in here, by the way.
• 23:21
  He's closing the door for the record.
• 23:22
  In my defense, I thought Chris was going to be on an airplane flying back to London right now.
• 23:30
  Give us some real dirt.
• 23:33
  We had like a, it's like, I think the beginning of our relationship was embarrassingly like a real dating
• 23:41
  relationship, you know?
• 23:42
  Like, as in, as in we kind of took it slow and we were like, uh, uh, hanging out socially and then co -working next to each other and then trying out
• 23:50
  working on ideas together.
• 23:51
  And then, and then, uh, honestly, I think you saying you were interested in putting a check in was the moment where we were like, oh boy, is this, is this, are we getting married?
• 23:59
  And we, and we, we went for a long, serious walk.
• 24:01
  And Chris was like, Sam, you know, this is, this is a, this is a big deal.
• 24:05
  Are you sure you want to do this?
• 24:07
  Yeah.
• 24:08
  I mean, how did you answer that question for yourself?
• 24:09
  Like the, the, the, the whole like commitment part.
• 24:12
  Yeah.
• 24:12
  I mean, I didn't know like initially I was like, oh fuck yeah.
• 24:14
  I should go think about this.
• 24:15
  Um, but, uh, uh, uh, I, I think, I think for me it was just like, this was just a
• 24:23
  combination of like, um, I know I've always kind of wanted to get to work on a thing that I got to build from the ground up.
• 24:30
  And, um, this is like a, a, a great combination of like a person I really like working with, um,
• 24:39
  who I think makes me better at what I do.
• 24:40
  And, uh, and it's just, it's a kind of tool that it's like the kind of tool that I was hacking on, choosing to hack on every day, like
• 24:48
  in my own time.
• 24:49
  And now I'm going to get to do it like, like as my job, as my full -time thing.
• 24:53
  Um, so, uh, I mean, I think the, the scary stuff for me was like, um, I've
• 25:01
  always just been like an, an IC designer.
• 25:03
  I think always the first, like the only designer on the team, but I never worked and I never worked as a team bigger than like 10 people before.
• 25:10
  I think.
• 25:10
  Um, so like the, the, uh, honestly, I was like very excited about the first year,
• 25:18
  you know, or whatever of like, um, let's just figure out version one of the product.
• 25:22
  But then like the, what happens if it's actually successful?
• 25:25
  It was like, oh boy, it's kind of, I, I, I basically solved that by not thinking about it.
• 25:30
  You know, it was like, whatever, like if we get there, then great.
• 25:33
  We'll, um, we'll make it up as we go along from there.
• 25:36
  Yeah.
• 25:36
  And what have been some of the biggest surprises along the way?
• 25:38
  I mean, startups are notoriously hard, even when things are going super well.
• 25:42
  And so when you look back on like what you thought the role was going to entail, what it's actually required of you, how has granola
• 25:50
  changed?
• 25:51
  Sam?
• 25:52
  Yeah.
• 25:53
  Many, many, many ways.
• 25:55
  Um, uh, I think, I think, um,
• 26:05
  I think a thing we had to learn for the first year, especially like when we were, this was like, we'd started working, we'd raised some money, but we hadn't launched
• 26:13
  the product.
• 26:13
  We were just iterating, trying to figure out what version one of the product was, um, was, uh, uh, it was incredibly
• 26:21
  like, I feel like my, um, what's the word?
• 26:29
  But day by day, I could, I could feel like, man, we're really on to something.
• 26:33
  We're going to, we're going to make it.
• 26:34
  And then the next day it would be like, oh Jesus, literally like, uh, like somebody's just announced some really cool thing.
• 26:39
  Doesn't that kind of make us irrelevant?
• 26:40
  Or like, uh, um, uh, the, the, the, the, nobody's using the product today.
• 26:46
  What's going on?
• 26:47
  Um, um, I would, I was, it was a real like up and down rollercoaster.
• 26:51
  It's the weekend.
• 26:52
  People aren't working.
• 26:53
  Yeah.
• 26:53
  Yeah.
• 26:54
  Yeah.
• 26:54
  And, and, and like most of this had not much basis in reality, you know, it's just like, how, how do you wake up and how do you feel on a given day?
• 27:01
  Um, but like, I guess I never worked on a big team, you know, I'd always worked on tiny teams as the only designer, but even then
• 27:09
  a team that has momentum has momentum and certain momentum carries you forward day by day.
• 27:14
  Um, and, uh, it was kind of, I mean, I mean, I was working with Chris and I'm with the early
• 27:22
  engineers, sorry.
• 27:23
  We had some momentum between us, but like, uh, you know, when you're that tiny, you, you have to provide your own steam like every day to keep going.
• 27:31
  It's hard.
• 27:32
  Yeah.
• 27:32
  And I can't help but like raise the fact that again, you guys are building this in London, right?
• 27:38
  Yeah.
• 27:38
  Yeah.
• 27:39
  What is it about the ecosystem?
• 27:41
  How, how is, how is Granola uniquely?
• 27:44
  British or London startup?
• 27:46
  Like, what is it about the place in which you work that maybe feeds itself into the product?
• 27:51
  Because I often encountered folks that are assuming that, oh, I thought they were in New York or I assumed it was out in the Bay Area.
• 27:57
  I had no idea that it's built in a wholly different country.
• 28:00
  Yeah.
• 28:00
  And that's the thing that I find most romantic about this particular company is that it is London native.
• 28:06
  What, what do you think feeds into company building product development that comes from the London environment?
• 28:15
  Yeah.
• 28:15
  I think, I think, um, uh, I think I honestly, I think there are a bunch of disadvantages to being in London as well.
• 28:23
  Like, like everyone was trying to persuade us to come to San Francisco in the first year for very good reasons.
• 28:29
  But, uh, I am, I'm very proud that we are in London and I, and I feel like now, uh, I wouldn't be anywhere else.
• 28:36
  Like we're like, it's a great place to be.
• 28:38
  Um, I think the benefits though of it have been like, uh, um, even when we were tiny, um,
• 28:45
  we, and we like put up our hands, you know, and we're like, Hey, we, we, you know, we want people to come work with us and build something together.
• 28:52
  Um, we got to, it's just a, it's a much smaller pond and it's definitely a much smaller pond in the kind of thing that we're
• 29:00
  building.
• 29:01
  There, there really aren't many teams in London, uh, trying to, you know, like help people be better at work with AI.
• 29:09
  Um, there's a lot of FinTech stuff.
• 29:11
  There's a lot of, uh, there's a lot of kind of B2B stuff, but, um, I think we, we got to be like one of the few voices,
• 29:19
  uh, and, and therefore like a bit of a, I don't know, like a magnet, hopefully for the, for the right kind of people.
• 29:25
  Um, um, you know, we deliberately tried to make like our, our, like first hiring manifesto.
• 29:30
  Kind of romantic and kind of like dreamy and, and to try and find those people wherever they were in London.
• 29:37
  Um, and, uh, I think what's nice now is where we're like a team of 50 in London.
• 29:43
  And, um, uh, from getting those first few that were drawn to the vision and to working on this kind of product, that's kind of
• 29:51
  snowballed really beautifully.
• 29:53
  I think to, to, to now we're 50 people who think like that and care about that.
• 29:57
  And, um, uh, I, I think.
• 30:00
  Just in a, in a more competitive space where like San Francisco, where there are more teams who think like that and build like
• 30:08
  that.
• 30:10
  Um, I think we would struggle to, to, to like have such a unique kind of culture.
• 30:14
  I want to touch on culture because, you know, I feel like that's one of the key responsibilities for the founding team.
• 30:21
  Um, how has your toolkit applied itself to developing and, and, and cultivating the culture of granola?
• 30:29
  Like what, what have you found to be useful?
• 30:31
  What advice do you have to founders that are now on that part of the journey of like, okay, now that the company that I build is the team that
• 30:39
  I build.
• 30:39
  Um, how can a designer founder apply that toolkit to that exercise?
• 30:45
  Hmm.
• 30:46
  Um, it's a good question.
• 30:48
  Uh, or how do you think about like managing culture at granola?
• 30:53
  Yeah, I, I think, um, what are the things we've done well?
• 30:58
  I, I, we had this great piece of advice by, by, um, an investors, uh, um, internal recruiter.
• 31:04
  Like we were, we were trying to hire our first engineers and we spent an afternoon with them, them helping us like figure out how to do that.
• 31:13
  And, um, I remember Chris and me were getting really anxious about, um, like we need a, we were a team of two or three or
• 31:21
  something at that point.
• 31:21
  And, and we were like, we need, we need a higher, like, uh, wide ranging, different kind of person.
• 31:28
  And, and like, we should be like, um, we shouldn't be too close -minded and we should, we should like, um, if someone
• 31:36
  comes to us and they're not exactly like us, we should consider it because, you know, we want to have different points of view and things like that.
• 31:42
  And, and, um, and, and this, this, this advisor was basically like, nah, nah,
• 31:49
  you're like two people.
• 31:52
  Uh, and, and, and ultimately like you're the founders of the company at this stage, like you're deciding your own destiny and whether you like it or not, the company is going to
• 32:00
  be a reflection of you.
• 32:01
  Like, like, like there's just going to happen whether you like it or not.
• 32:04
  And you fight it, like only bad things are going to happen.
• 32:07
  And, and really just, you got to lean into it.
• 32:09
  Um, and I, I found that personally incredibly helpful.
• 32:12
  It just helped me relax about like, basically like a lot of, a lot of our early hiring decisions, you know, we're like, we do the basic stuff to, to determine whether the
• 32:20
  person feels competent.
• 32:21
  But then you're like, am I going to enjoy spending my days with this person?
• 32:25
  And does this person give me energy?
• 32:27
  And, um, yeah, I think I initially felt really bad about listening to that voice inside of me, but like, but now it's, it's most of how I
• 32:34
  decided who I want to hire.
• 32:36
  And, and, uh, it's surfaced well so far.
• 32:37
  Are there other qualities that you look for in addition to just, I got a good vibe with this person?
• 32:42
  Yeah, I think, um, uh, for Granola specifically, we, we kind of look in everyone for like
• 32:50
  a high degree of, empathy and like care for like, um, if it's an engineer, we, we
• 32:57
  want to, we want to believe that they really care about the person that they're solving the problem for.
• 33:02
  Um, but we've, we've turned down a lot of really, really competent engineers who get overly excited about the technical problem in front of them and forget that it's a human
• 33:09
  being that they're trying to solve the technical problem for.
• 33:12
  Um, but I think that kind of applies to, to all disciplines, you know, I think, I think the,
• 33:18
  I think some of the most successful people we've hired have been like enthusiastic Granola users and have already felt that like how it's helped them in their
• 33:26
  life before.
• 33:27
  And, um, yeah, yeah.
• 33:30
  I, I feel like when, when you build a company as a designer co -founder, one of the things that I've heard repeatedly is that it's, it's become a direct expression of your own
• 33:37
  design philosophy.
• 33:39
  Um, what are you starting to see echo back?
• 33:42
  What qualities are you seeing in Granola, the company, Granola, the product that reminds you of you where you're like, oh yeah, that is me.
• 33:48
  That's, it's, it's coming back.
• 33:51
  Um, it's a good question.
• 33:54
  Uh, I think we like, I'll include Chris in this.
• 34:02
  I think we, we like, we like to have fun and we like not to take ourselves too seriously.
• 34:05
  And I think that comes across in like the, um, I mean, I think the fact that the name Granola stuck was like part of, it was like a good, uh,
• 34:13
  expression of that.
• 34:14
  And I think that's like permeated through the team.
• 34:16
  And I think shows up in like, um, like, uh, like crunched the, the Spotify wrap thing we did, uh, um, in the holidays.
• 34:24
  Um, did anyone else feel like they peered into their soul?
• 34:28
  Um, for those of you unfamiliar, the crunch was a, a year end feature that basically synthesized, you know, months and months of meeting notes
• 34:35
  and provided like high level overviews on like your relationships, your personality traits.
• 34:40
  I don't know a whole bunch of things that I thought were like deeply validating because it was a summary of like, yeah, this is how I spent the past year
• 34:47
  collaboratively, the kinds of conversations I have, the advice that I give.
• 34:52
  And I've got the receipts to show it.
• 34:53
  Yeah.
• 34:54
  It turns out Granola knows more about me than I realized.
• 34:56
  Yeah.
• 34:57
  Yeah.
• 34:57
  Yeah.
• 34:58
  It was a, it was a beautiful thing.
• 35:00
  Cause it was, um, I think Chris and I both thought it was a bad idea and, uh, and, and kind of dismissed, dismissed it
• 35:08
  for a long time.
• 35:08
  And like, you know, and, and just really went into it.
• 35:10
  And, uh, you know, it's like, it's like, it's going to be a ton of effort.
• 35:15
  It's going to be over in a day and then it's going to dissolve into nothing.
• 35:17
  And like, come on, we can't, we can't, we spend our time on more lasting things.
• 35:21
  Um, but the team fought for it rightly.
• 35:24
  And, and it's basically like, I think Chris and I had basically no involvement in making it happen.
• 35:28
  It was all, uh, folks on the team, but I feel like, yeah, like encapsulates so much of the soul of, of the company.
• 35:34
  And, and like, and the reasons crunched is different to things that you've seen before in software is like, I think also true of how granola is different as a team
• 35:42
  to, to other teams out there.
• 35:44
  Yeah.
• 35:44
  Now I think Sam deserves a little bit more credit for doing what I find to be a really brave thing, which is to put yourself into your product onboarding.
• 35:52
  Um, and so for many of you installed granola, part of the, the, the unpackaging of granola is having your first meeting.
• 36:00
  And it's a meeting with, with, with, with granola Sam and he kind of explains in practice, like how the application works.
• 36:08
  And, um, I think much of the early traction you enjoyed was just how streamlined that onboarding was, but you didn't have
• 36:16
  to push yourself in it.
• 36:17
  And so like, who's nobody else would try.
• 36:21
  We'll say a little bit more about that because, you know, uh, I appreciate that you stepped up and you did it and you sort of became a part of the product and the process.
• 36:29
  Yeah, it was, uh, I mean, we tried a lot of other things too.
• 36:33
  Like we were, it was really, um, uh, we were really conscious that like just the biggest way the product was, could fail.
• 36:40
  I think at the beginning was like, uh, just had this hard problem where the aha moment of the product is, is when the notes generate at the end of a
• 36:48
  meeting.
• 36:48
  But in order to get that aha moment, like, uh, if you had to sign up to the products on, uh,
• 36:56
  Tuesday lunchtime at 12 47, but then your next meeting is at three o 'clock, you know, we've lost you.
• 37:03
  Like there's no, there's no way you're going to, you're going to, you're going to, you're going to be like, Oh, let's just think of another download, click the button, install, go through the onboarding.
• 37:09
  Um, get to a homepage, be like, all right, nothing to do.
• 37:12
  And then close it and forget about it.
• 37:13
  Um, and so like, it kind of felt like if we didn't get you to that aha moment immediately that we're just, we've lost you.
• 37:20
  Um, and, uh, yeah, we tried a bunch of things.
• 37:25
  Like the, the, the video was kind of a last resort cause it's pretty heavy lift to make it, to make it work.
• 37:30
  Um, not totally last resort.
• 37:32
  The other idea was that we have, we employ people to be on a permanent zoom call.
• 37:36
  And so you could just, you are, you could always just like, as soon as you land, you click and there's somebody there to say hi and show you around.
• 37:44
  Um, but, uh, yeah, this is the compromise.
• 37:47
  Um, so yeah, yeah, we put it up and there was, it was basically like, we, we, we need to just give you the, bare
• 37:55
  minimum to feel comfortable and then get you to that aha moment as quickly as possible.
• 38:01
  I said like this idea of like a professional chat roulette as a part of your Grinnell on brain.
• 38:05
  It's my heart to bring that back.
• 38:07
  Um, early on, you mentioned that you think of these productivity tools as something that's deeply personal, like a vessel that we put our lives
• 38:14
  into.
• 38:15
  And that really resonated.
• 38:16
  Um, how are you navigating the tension of, of, of a single player resource, something that is mine versus
• 38:24
  the, natural collaborative aspects of Granola.
• 38:28
  Yeah.
• 38:29
  Yeah.
• 38:29
  That have a team wide context, a professional context, a context that spills way outside of personal life.
• 38:34
  Yeah.
• 38:35
  Um, I feel like so many startups fail at answering this question because they get stuck in single player mode.
• 38:42
  Yeah.
• 38:42
  And my Facebook brain is immediately like, you know, raise the alarms.
• 38:47
  I feel like the conversation will be very helpful in making us like a wake up to the fact that that.
• 38:51
  But it's also, but it's also real, the genuine tension there because the people that use Granola today do treat it as a, as a private resource.
• 38:58
  So how are you, how are you currently navigating that from the design standpoint?
• 39:00
  Yeah.
• 39:01
  I think, um, uh, it's, it's tough and I don't think we've nailed it yet.
• 39:04
  Honestly, like, uh, um, I think a lot of the initial success, like, like when you download Granola and you don't know what, what
• 39:12
  this thing is, um, is that it feels private, intimate, safe.
• 39:18
  Like, like it feels like a notes app that you're used to and a notes app you're used to is yours.
• 39:22
  You know, you can write whatever you want in there and no one's going to see it.
• 39:25
  Um, and so I think, I think that's just so important to us that I think we have to keep it.
• 39:30
  And, um, and I also think like from, you know, we've, we've, I feel like we've, um,
• 39:38
  we've done like, like, uh, we've, we've been like therapists for, for, for people's, people's meeting behavior.
• 39:45
  You know, at this point we've like talked to hundreds of thousands of people about how they do meetings and how they take notes.
• 39:51
  And, and, um, uh, I think a universal truth there is like, uh, part of taking notes is, is like having a space for your brain
• 39:59
  to feel free and safe to just write down the shit that it wants to.
• 40:02
  And a lot of what we put on the paper, like when we're taking notes is like, um, kind of stupid or like, uh,
• 40:11
  it's, it's definitely not something that you want someone else to see.
• 40:13
  And, and, um, and I think if granola doesn't support and encourage that behavior, then I think we're dead in the water.
• 40:20
  Like, I think we've got to, we've got to meet you where people are and that's like, they want to have a place to write that's theirs.
• 40:24
  Um, yeah.
• 40:26
  So I, for those reasons, I feel like granola is basically, I think we're, we're on a path where we have to be kind of default private to you in a lot of scenarios.
• 40:35
  Um, and yeah, then the challenge is like, there's also this incredible value in teams using granola together and how do you bridge that gap?
• 40:41
  Um, I think we're still figuring this out, honestly.
• 40:46
  Like, like I think, um, at the moment that we have, um, uh, this concept of team spaces where you can, uh, uh,
• 40:54
  like put like folders, you know, you put the meeting notes that you're okay being shared into shared spaces.
• 41:00
  Um, we have some suggestion mechanics to try and make that easy.
• 41:03
  Uh, and I think we have a whole team at the moment working on like, uh, how do we make this as frictionless as possible, but still like
• 41:11
  keep your individual agency to, to like feel like you're in control of, of, you know, making sure that the things you say are in half the privacy level that's appropriate
• 41:19
  to them.
• 41:20
  Um, it's, it's like, they'll, uh, I could see this evolving a lot over the next couple of months.
• 41:27
  We're, we're playing with like, um, real time collaboration in the notepad at the moment.
• 41:31
  And, uh, that surprisingly feels to me at least okay.
• 41:35
  A lot of the time to, to maybe be a default on thing for like internally in a team.
• 41:39
  Like if, if you're just meeting with folks that you meet with a lot and you feel kind of safer with them, and it feels more okay to share the notepad.
• 41:47
  Um, hard to agree here.
• 41:48
  Yes.
• 41:48
  Yeah.
• 41:49
  Yeah.
• 41:49
  But, but like less okay.
• 41:51
  You wouldn't want to, if you're doing a sales call, you don't want to share the notepad with the person you're trying to sell to.
• 41:54
  Right.
• 41:54
  That's a, that would be a really bad idea.
• 41:56
  So, uh, so there's, there's like tons of social nuance to navigate here to make it feel okay.
• 42:00
  Yeah.
• 42:01
  I, um, gosh, I have so many questions.
• 42:03
  I, I really want to talk a little bit about the road ahead.
• 42:07
  Um, because as you're aware, as we're aware, everyone's seeing granola's lead
• 42:15
  and they're like, Oh wow, that's really smart.
• 42:17
  I should put this in my zoom application.
• 42:19
  Notion's like, I should put this inside my notion platform and you're going to be facing competitive pressure from incumbents and startups
• 42:27
  across the street from here.
• 42:28
  Um, how are you navigating the competition that's emerged?
• 42:33
  What do you think is going to have to be true for granola to prevail?
• 42:37
  Um, and then where do you hope to see the product evolve?
• 42:41
  What can this room kind of expect from granola, um, under this new brand in the year 2026?
• 42:47
  Yeah, I think on the, on the, like, um, on the first part of that, I think, uh, there are so
• 42:55
  many companies are trying really cool things out there, you know?
• 42:58
  And so we're obviously constantly looking and then being inspired by good ideas that other people have that we can incorporate into granola.
• 43:04
  Um, but I think, uh, we also have to play to our strength.
• 43:09
  And I think that, uh, the big strength that we have is that, um, people that use granola use it habitually for all their meetings.
• 43:17
  It's like, uh, it starts to feel like a prosthetic over time.
• 43:21
  And, um, I think we really have to protect and encourage that habit because that's kind of the groundwork for everything we want to do in the future.
• 43:28
  Um, and that means keeping the product really simple, really streamlined in the decor, like flow that everyone's used to.
• 43:34
  Um, yeah, so, and I think, like, um, it's a hard thing to copy.
• 43:41
  It's a, I don't know.
• 43:42
  It's like a, and it's also a hard thing to put.
• 43:44
  I can't really put my finger on, like, what about granola makes people feel that way?
• 43:48
  You know, it's like probably the sum of a bunch of things.
• 43:50
  Um, so yeah, we've got to, we've got to protect that.
• 43:54
  And then I think in the, in the future, I think that the game for us is like the world is evolving so quickly.
• 44:02
  And it's where, like, um, uh, AI is letting us do so much more, you know?
• 44:08
  Like, like, Claude Cowork is, is like so, so bloody impressive.
• 44:11
  Like, and, uh, I think, like, I, I think the, the, uh, kind of philosophy has always been, like, um,
• 44:21
  we, you know, as much as possible, we want to, like, ride these waves.
• 44:25
  Like, when people come up with good stuff like this and we, and it makes sense to incorporate the product, we, we should.
• 44:29
  Um, and so I think there are, there are parts of what these general purpose AI products
• 44:36
  offer that we will be able to do better because we have the context of what's happening in your meetings.
• 44:41
  We're like, I think that's already on your screen because you just use this in, in your last meeting.
• 44:46
  Um, and, uh, I think the brand also helps with that.
• 44:50
  Like, I think a brand that you, that you trust and that feels personal, it's like, uh, an important thing in making you feel okay to, to, to kind
• 44:58
  of, to work with very closely.
• 45:01
  Um, so yeah, we have, I think, I think we have to try and just incorporate the, the best of the technology world out there in a way that makes sense for us.
• 45:08
  Um, and also I, I think, um, it's very tempting to kind of, uh, and I feel this, especially in San Francisco
• 45:16
  talking to people because it's such a hype driven place, you know, like, uh, um, we're always like chasing the next, the next idea and the next idea.
• 45:24
  Um, and the thing that helps me stay sane, I think is, is remembering that like, uh, most real people that like, this
• 45:31
  isn't the real world here, you know, and like most real people out there, like, like, I don't know what the fuck to do with Claude yet or like any of these things.
• 45:40
  And, um, and so we can just nail like being really useful at one very specific thing, um, on top of meeting notes.
• 45:47
  That's already a huge deal for most people.
• 45:49
  Like, and, and, um, and yes, we should make really powerful open -ended tooling for, for like people in San Francisco, but also for the rest
• 45:57
  of the world, like just small steps done really, really well, I think can lead to a product that, that is, is used by, by tons and tons
• 46:05
  of people.
• 46:05
  I love it.
• 46:06
  Yeah.
• 46:07
  That's a wonderful note to end on.
• 46:08
  Um, Sam Stevenson, thank you so much for spending your time with us.
• 46:11
  I know you didn't fly all the way out to have this conversation, but I'm grateful you're here.
• 46:15
  Thank you.
• 46:15
  Thank you for your question.
• 46:16
  Thank y 'all.
• 46:21
  Thank you.