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Krish Ramineni is the co-founder and CEO of Fireflies.ai, an AI-powered meeting assistant used by over 200,000 organizations. A University of Pennsylvania alumnus, he previously served as one of Microsoft's youngest product managers. Krish has been recognized on Forbes' 30 Under 30 list. In this conversation, I wanted to explore more than just how Fireflies became one of the most powerful AI tools. I wanted to understand what it means when machines start writing our stories, mimicking our voices, and sitting in on our most human conversations. Can AI ever truly capture the grit, chaos, and beauty of lived experience—or are we on the verge of losing something essential? We talk about the tension between progress and preservation, and whether the future of storytelling is human, machine—or something in between.Krish and I also dive into the emotional and societal weight of this moment: AI companionship, job displacement, and the possibility of a world where our most personal connections and creative output are filtered through algorithms. If AI can do everything—write, talk, create, even empathise—what's left for us? This isn't just a tech story; it's a human story. And as we stand at the edge of a new era, the real question is: will we still recognise ourselves in the future we're building... and will we want to?Get in touch:Instagram - Instagram.com/davidmcintosh.jrShop Origin Story - www.originstoryclub.com
In this episode of A Productive Conversation, I sit down with Krish Ramineni, co-founder and CEO of Fireflies.ai. Krish has had an impressive journey—from being one of Microsoft's youngest product managers to launching Fireflies, an AI-powered meeting assistant. He's also been named to Forbes' 30 Under 30 and has guest lectured at Stanford on deep learning and machine learning.We cover a lot in this conversation—how AI can enhance focus, how Krish avoids getting pulled into shiny object syndrome while building Fireflies, and what the future of AI-powered productivity looks like. If you're curious about AI's role in work and how to stay on track while scaling a business, this episode is packed with valuable insights.Key Discussion PointsHow Fireflies.ai helps people focus on what matters by automating meeting notes.Why AI should seamlessly integrate into workflows instead of requiring users to change habits.The balance between quantitative and qualitative work—and how AI can enhance both.How Krish resisted distractions and stayed committed to building Fireflies.ai instead of pivoting too soon.The role of AI in streamlining meetings and reducing unnecessary communication overhead.The challenge of maintaining focus while scaling a tech startup.Where AI is headed next and how people can leverage it for both efficiency and creativity.This conversation is a must-listen if you're interested in AI's practical applications, how to use it to free up mental space, and what it takes to stay focused in an industry that's always shifting.Links Worth ExploringConnect with Krish: LinkedIn | InstagramCheck out Fireflies.ai: Click hereLearn more about Krish's story: Read it hereRelated Conversation: Episode 525: Mat Ellis Talks About Balancing Productivity and Personal Connection with AIRelated Blog Post: The Speed of RightThanks to all of the sponsors of this episode. You can find all of the sponsors you heard me mention on this episode on our Podcast Sponsors page.Want to support the podcast? Beyond checking out our sponsors, you can subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. You can subscribe on Spotify and also on Apple Podcasts. Not using either of those to get your podcasts? Just click on this link and then paste the podcast feed into your podcast app of choice.Thanks again for listening to A Productive Conversation. See you later.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In this episode of A Productive Conversation, I sit down with Krish Ramineni, co-founder and CEO of Fireflies.ai. Krish has had an impressive journey—from being one of Microsoft's youngest product managers to launching Fireflies, an AI-powered meeting assistant. He's also been named to Forbes' 30 Under 30 and has guest lectured at Stanford on deep learning and machine learning. We cover a lot in this conversation—how AI can enhance focus, how Krish avoids getting pulled into shiny object syndrome while building Fireflies, and what the future of AI-powered productivity looks like. If you're curious about AI's role in work and how to stay on track while scaling a business, this episode is packed with valuable insights. Key Discussion Points How Fireflies.ai helps people focus on what matters by automating meeting notes. Why AI should seamlessly integrate into workflows instead of requiring users to change habits. The balance between quantitative and qualitative work—and how AI can enhance both. How Krish resisted distractions and stayed committed to building Fireflies.ai instead of pivoting too soon. The role of AI in streamlining meetings and reducing unnecessary communication overhead. The challenge of maintaining focus while scaling a tech startup. Where AI is headed next and how people can leverage it for both efficiency and creativity. This conversation is a must-listen if you're interested in AI's practical applications, how to use it to free up mental space, and what it takes to stay focused in an industry that's always shifting. Links Worth Exploring Connect with Krish: LinkedIn | Instagram Check out Fireflies.ai: Click here Learn more about Krish's story: Read it here Related Conversation: Episode 525: Mat Ellis Talks About Balancing Productivity and Personal Connection with AI Related Blog Post: The Speed of Right Thanks to all of the sponsors of this episode. You can find all of the sponsors you heard me mention on this episode on our Podcast Sponsors page. Want to support the podcast? Beyond checking out our sponsors, you can subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. You can subscribe on Spotify and also on Apple Podcasts. Not using either of those to get your podcasts? Just click on this link and then paste the podcast feed into your podcast app of choice. Thanks again for listening to A Productive Conversation. See you later. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Krish Ramineni is the co-founder and CEO of Fireflies.ai, an AI startup in San Francisco that specializes in conversational analytics, including recording, transcribing, and analyzing sales and support calls. Prior to Fireflies, Krish was one of the youngest product managers at Microsoft, where he worked on customer experience and analytics. At Microsoft, Krish interacted with experts in NLP and data science, which sparked his interest in conversation tracking and voice analytics. Krish uses Slack extensively to stay connected with his global team, having mini-conversations to stay informed without micromanaging. He also uses Zapier to automate repetitive tasks, integrating tools into Slack for seamless communication and action. Krish emphasizes the importance of visibility and transparency across departments to prevent silos and ensure teams are working collaboratively toward shared goals. Website: Fireflies.ai LinkedIn: Krish Ramineni Previous Episode: iam229-ceo-focus-on-conversational-analytics-to-facilitate-better-customer-experience Check out our CEO Hack Buzz Newsletter–our premium newsletter with hacks and nuggets to level up your organization. Sign up HERE. I AM CEO Handbook Volume 3 is HERE and it's FREE. Get your copy here: http://cbnation.co/iamceo3. Get the 100+ things that you can learn from 1600 business podcasts we recorded. Hear Gresh's story, learn the 16 business pillars from the podcast, find out about CBNation Architects and why you might be one and so much more. Did we mention it was FREE? Download it today!
In this episode of The Barbershop, Shantanu sits down with Krish Ramineni, founder of Fireflies.ai, an AI-powered app that is transforming the role of an executive assistant. Krish shares his journey of building a groundbreaking tool that automates meeting notes, summaries, and task management, revolutionizing how teams work and communicate. Dive into the world of AI, learn how Fireflies.ai is streamlining workflows for businesses, and get inspired by Krish's entrepreneurial insights. If you're interested in the future of AI and productivity, this is an episode you don't want to miss!
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Welcome to an interview with the CEO of Fireflies.ai, Krish Rameni. In this episode, Krish took us back to the early days of starting their company, Fireflies.ai, and how they stayed motivated despite the challenges. He shared valuable advice from the lessons he learned throughout his career that will be useful for individuals who are starting their careers or planning to transition into the world of startups. Krish Ramineni is the Co-Founder and CEO of Fireflies.ai, an AI meeting assistant that transcribes, summarizes, and analyzes meetings. Named on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, Krish graduated from UPenn. He was one of the youngest Product Managers at Microsoft, leading projects in customer voice and growth. He has guest lectured at Stanford on machine learning and holds patents in workflow automation. Krish is a thought leader in SaaS/AI and an active startup advisor. Here are some free gifts for you: Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/OverallApproach McKinsey & BCG winning resume free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/resumepdf Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo
According to Ramp's (ramp.com) quarterly spend report, Fireflies was the 4th highest AI platform by spend. With over 300,000 customers worldwide and 16M users, Fireflies.ai is operating at some of the largest scale amongst AI companies today. This week on Unsupervised Learning we had Krish Ramineni, Co-founder & CEO of Fireflies on to talk about how he sees AI changing the way we work and conduct meetings, and share his biggest learnings around AI in building Fireflies. (0:00) intro(1:01) how will AI change meetings going forward(4:03) Fireflies' capabilities(8:18) how new models change Fireflies(11:19) shortcomings of current models(16:36) Krish's lack of belief in fine-tuning(26:19) dealing with high inference costs(34:00) taking on incumbents(40:50) what metrics matter most to Fireflies(46:37) how is Fireflies so fast?(54:28) over-hyped/under-hyped(55:11) biggest surprises in building Fireflies(1:01:15) Jacob and Rashad debrief With your co-hosts: @jacobeffron - Partner at Redpoint, Former PM Flatiron Health @patrickachase - Partner at Redpoint, Former ML Engineer LinkedIn @ericabrescia - Former COO Github, Founder Bitnami (acq'd by VMWare) @jordan_segall - Partner at Redpoint
On this episode of the Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different, we have a conversation with Krish Ramineni, co-founder and CEO of Fireflies.ai. We explore the transformative impact of AI on business operations, focusing on Fireflies.ai's journey from a Bay Area startup to a leader in AI-driven transcription and conversation analysis. Krish Ramineni shares his insights on strategic growth decisions, the shift to remote work, and leveraging AI for efficiency. If you want to know more about AI's potential to revolutionize industries like legal and marketing through innovative applications, then you're in the right place. You're listening to Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different. We are the real dialogue podcast for people with a different mind. So get your mind in a different place, and hey ho, let's go. The Journey of Fireflies.ai: From Startup to AI Pioneer One of the pivotal decisions that contributed to Fireflies.ai's success was the shift to remote work and maintaining a lean team. Krish Ramineni emphasizes the importance of leveraging AI technologies to enhance productivity and efficiency, allowing the company to operate with fewer resources while achieving significant growth. Krish also talks about the importance of focusing on specific domain-related issues and building applications that solve end-to-end job functions. Fireflies.ai started by addressing the need for capturing and remembering meeting discussions, which evolved into a comprehensive AI meeting assistant that can join video conferencing platforms, take notes, send summaries, and perform post-meeting tasks. The Broader Implications of AI on Business and the Job Market Both Christopher and Krish emphasize the critical role of adaptability in an era of rapid technological change. Businesses must be willing to embrace new technologies and continuously evolve to stay competitive. Krish also shares the potential impact of AI on professions that historically relied on knowledge asymmetry, such as legal and marketing departments. AI can democratize access to information, making it easier for individuals and small businesses to compete with larger organizations. Which means those who are late on adapting might be phased out sooner than they think. The Ethical Considerations and Risks of AI They then touch on the potential risks and ethical considerations associated with AI. Krish and Christopher highlight the importance of careful regulation and transparency to ensure that AI technologies are used responsibly. To hear more from Krish Ramineni and the transformative power of AI in business, download and listen to this episode. Bio Krish Ramineni is the co-founder and CEO of Fireflies.ai, a cutting-edge company specializing in artificial intelligence-driven meeting transcription and note-taking. With a background in product management and software engineering, Krish has a track record of transforming innovative ideas into successful technology solutions. Prior to founding Fireflies.ai, he worked at Microsoft, where he honed his skills in building and scaling enterprise software products. Under his leadership, Fireflies.ai has grown rapidly, serving thousands of businesses globally and revolutionizing the way professionals handle meeting documentation and collaboration. Krish's vision for Fireflies.ai is to create a seamless workflow where AI-powered tools handle repetitive tasks, allowing individuals to focus on higher-value activities. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Krish combines technical expertise with a deep understanding of market needs. His entrepreneurial spirit and commitment to innovation continue to drive Fireflies.ai forward in the competitive tech landscape. In addition to his professional achievements, Krish is passionate about mentoring aspiring entrepreneurs and contributing to the broader tech community. Links Connect with Krish Ramineni! Fireflies.ai | LinkedIn | X (formerly Twitter)
Join us in a captivating episode with Krish Ramineni, the visionary Co-founder & CEO at Fireflies.ai. Dive into the world of voice AI as Krish shares the journey and mission behind Fireflies.ai, a leading platform that records, transcribes, and analyzes meetings to unlock a treasure trove of insights. Discover how Fireflies.ai is revolutionizing how teams interact, collaborate, and remember their conversations. Learn about the inception of this innovative tool, the challenges faced along the way, and how it's reshaping business communications and customer relationships. Krish also shares his insights on the future of work, the impact of AI in our daily communications, and offers valuable advice for entrepreneurs and businesses looking to leverage technology for growth. Tune in for an inspiring conversation that explores the intersection of entrepreneurship, voice AI, and the future of meeting productivity. This show is supported by www.matchrelevant.com. A company that helps venture-backed Startups find the best people available in the market, who have the skills, experience, and desire to grow. With over a decade of experience in recruitment across multiple domains, they give people career options to choose from in their career journey.
Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 458, featuring an interview with the CEO of Fireflies.ai, Krish Rameni. In this episode, Krish took us back to the early days of starting their company, Fireflies.ai, and how they stayed motivated despite the challenges. He shared valuable advice from the lessons he learned throughout his career that will be useful for individuals who are starting their careers or planning to transition into the world of startups. Krish Ramineni is the Co-Founder and CEO of Fireflies.ai, an AI meeting assistant that transcribes, summarizes, and analyzes meetings. Named on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, Krish graduated from UPenn. He was one of the youngest Product Managers at Microsoft, leading projects in customer voice and growth. He has guest lectured at Stanford on machine learning and holds patents in workflow automation. Krish is a thought leader in SaaS/AI and an active startup advisor. Here are some free gifts for you: Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/OverallApproach McKinsey & BCG winning resume free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/resumepdf Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo
Krish Ramineni is the cofounder and CEO of Fireflies, an AI meeting assistant that takes notes, transcribes, and analyzes all your meetings. It's used across 300,000 organizations around the world with 70% of the Fortune 500 companies using it. He was previously the cofounder of Rumblii and was at Microsoft working on customer voice analytics. Krish's favorite book: Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (Author: Jack Weatherford) (00:04) Introduction(00:11) State of Play in Voice AI Today(01:26) User Perception Shift in Voice AI(01:59) Evolution of Speech to Text Technology(04:05) Extracting Intelligence from Audio Files(07:22) Impact of New Technology on Semantic Parsing(12:46) Modern Capabilities and Gaps in Intent Recognition(17:23) Advances in Speech Generation and Processing(20:58) Role of Reinforcement Learning in Voice AI(24:05) Handling Low Resource Languages with Transfer Learning(28:32) Lessons from Building and Shipping Voice AI Products(35:10) Rapid Fire Round--------Where to find Prateek Joshi: Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com Website: https://prateekj.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-91047b19 Twitter: https://twitter.com/prateekvjoshi
Host Victoria Guido interviews Krish Ramineni, founder and CEO of Fireflies, who provides insights into the evolution of Fireflies. This AI meeting assistant transcribes and summarizes meetings in multiple languages. He explains the rapid advancements in AI models that have allowed Fireflies to expand its language support and improve its transcription and note-taking capabilities. The conversation shifts to the broader AI industry, where Krish comments on democratizing AI technology, making it more accessible and practical for various applications beyond just number crunching. He emphasizes the importance of AI in enhancing productivity and enabling small teams to achieve large-scale impacts. Victoria and Krish explore the future of work with AI, discussing the balance between job creation and replacement. Krish argues that rejecting AI is akin to dismissing essential technological advancements like email, highlighting businesses' need to adapt and embrace AI tools. They also touch on Fireflies' journey to enterprise-level adoption, addressing challenges like data security and compliance. Krish shares his optimism about AI's potential to augment human productivity and creativity, positioning AI as a transformative force that can empower individuals and organizations to achieve unprecedented efficiency and innovation. Fireflies (https://fireflies.ai/) Follow Fireflies on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/fireflies-inc/), Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/firefliesapp), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/firefliesai/), YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZHSvxWARx0TRK77t1AbY0A), or X (https://twitter.com/firefliesai). Follow Krish Ramineni on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/krishramineni/). Follow thoughtbot on X (https://twitter.com/thoughtbot) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/). Transcript: AD: We're excited to announce a new workshop series for helping you get that startup idea you have out of your head and into the world. It's called Vision to Value. Over a series of 90-minute working sessions, you'll work with a thoughtbot product strategist and a handful of other founders to start testing your idea in the market and make a plan for building an MVP. Join for all seven of the weekly sessions, or pick and choose the ones that address your biggest challenge right now. Learn more and sign up at tbot.io/visionvalue. VICTORIA: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido, and with me today is Krish Ramineni, Founder and CEO of Fireflies. Krish, great to be here with you. KRISH: It's great to be here. Thanks for having me. VICTORIA: Wonderful. Before we dive into what Fireflies is all about and start talking about AI, just in your personal world, what are you learning right now? KRISH: Well, I'm traveling this summer, and I've always wanted to speak multiple languages, both for functional reasons and to be able to actually enjoy my travel experiences. So, I'm trying to learn Spanish. I took three years in high school, but I forgot everything, and I'm trying to pick that up. I'm also trying to learn Hindi. We have teammates that are in both Latin America as well as India. And so, both of these would be really valuable [chuckles] to learn. I probably need to get a tutor, something that I'm working on right now. VICTORIA: Yeah. How are you learning? Are you using an app? You said you might get a tutor. KRISH: Yeah. I started looking at Duolingo. I started doing flashcards. There are online instructors. So, I'm just trying to learn the quickest way possible so that I can get just the basic, common phrases down that I could understand so that I can ask questions and understand what people are saying when they're giving me directions on the streets. So, that's the plan. I don't expect to be a fluent speaker. You know, I always wondered, too, like, since we work in this AI space, if we could build a tool that, in real-time, could translate what I'm saying into the local language and the local language into English using my voice. That would be pretty cool. So, I think our whole mission is around like, eliminating communication barriers. But as I've been trying to learn new languages, this is something I realized is...it's a big world out there, and a lot of people in the U.S. only know one language, whereas people in other countries know multiple languages. And yeah, something that I didn't really appreciate growing up or being in high school. But now I'm realizing, like, the immense benefits of being able to speak multiple languages. So, I'm trying [laughs]. VICTORIA: Right. And I think the benefits even to your brain health and your way of thinking is really exciting. I also learned Spanish from a really young age and grew up with it. And recently, you know, I moved to San Diego, so I have a lot more exposure to people who are just speaking Spanish all the time and getting to overhear little bits of conversation, or at a restaurant, even though right now I usually end up ordering incorrectly [laughs] and getting a little bit of surprise. But it's, like, really sweet to be able to connect with people in the community at that level. And last year, I went to Japan for a conference for Ruby, and I learned just a little bit of Japanese. And it just made me so happy, for some reason, to be able to say even a couple of words and a couple of phrases and to have other people, like, say that I was doing a good job [laughs]. You know, like, it's just really nice, especially if you're traveling a lot, and you want to actually connect to people to be able to share that language. Yeah, it's interesting about AI translating there. I will say the translators that we had in Japan they may be caught about 60%. Like, you know, and then with context, it was quite difficult. So, yeah, I'd be curious how AI could address that and even get more personal and being able to use a voice and added more information into that, so you get that full translation. KRISH: Yeah. Local languages and, like, the common phrases. So, for example, the Spanish that's spoken in Spain is going to have different phrases than the ones spoken in Mexico or in other places, right? So, that's also really interesting to think about how local dialects, accents all play into it. Growing up, I used to love watching Bollywood Indian movies, and I would need subtitles. And I slowly started to get to a place where I can still understand what's going on without subtitles. It's really interesting that some of those jokes and some of the things that are said don't really translate exactly into English, right? Like, someone that's a native English speaker wouldn't quite get it. There's a lot more to language than just the words that are used. It's like the culture, the phrases, the people. And so, that's the beauty. That's the beauty of this world. There's so much diversity. VICTORIA: So, I'm curious. As a founder of an AI app that takes recordings of people's meetings and turns it into summarized language, are the models based primarily on English, obviously, right away? And how are you thinking about incorporating other languages into your model? KRISH: When we started, it was primarily English. Fireflies would take notes in English. It would transcribe English meetings. And then, this past year, we started support for 60 different languages, including Spanish, French, German, Hindi, and so many more. And on top of the transcription, we now can also do AI note-taking in some of these other languages. So, if you have a meeting in Portuguese, the summaries and notes will be in Portuguese. We have a big global presence today with Fireflies. It's used in over a hundred countries and lots of different languages. And I would say the foreign language segment of our market is growing incredibly quickly. And we also hear requests from people where they have people that speak different languages because they have global teams in meetings. And it would be super helpful to be able to translate and transcribe and so that when they look back, they can get help and understand or clarify certain things. Yeah. I think language when we started, and most of these LLMs (large language models) were primarily built around English, right? Especially transcription and speech. But there are companies coming out that are now building these models that give better representation to other languages. And we will have AI that will be able to understand and speak many different languages. And just the rate at which this technology is changing, I'm super impressed. I read somewhere that they were building a model back in the day before the whole ChatGPT, where they were using reinforcement learning and transfer learning, where they were able to teach it one language. And it was able to quickly pick up another language, even though it wasn't taught to them. So, AI works in very magical ways [laughs]. VICTORIA: That's really cool. I wish that I worked that way with Portuguese because I was like, oh, I know Spanish okay sometimes. And then, I was like, but Portuguese when I read it, the words make sense, but then hearing it, the pronunciation being totally different, it's like [laughs] a long way to go. But that's really interesting. And you've already started to talk a little bit about the changes in the industry and what you're seeing as the new capabilities for AI. Can you tell me more about that? What other changes do you see in the industry in the last, like, year or even, like, a couple of months? KRISH: At least in the last two years, people's perception of how hard it is to deploy AI has changed. Before, you needed to have a PhD. You needed to write a lot of code, and the AI was not practical. Now, AI is just a few lines of code. You don't even have to be technical to deploy AI. And you can ask it to do a lot more than crunching numbers, and that's what's so powerful. And we are getting these generalized models where, in the past, if you had, like, an AI model, it could do one thing like classification or sentiment analysis. Right now, I have AI that can give me French poetry. It can generate images. It can summarize things. It can help me have a conversation with it and learn how to improve my speaking skills. AI is trained on the web, right? And whatever is on the web, it's a reflection of that. So, that also comes with the good and the bad. The good being that it knows what most humans feel and think and can relate to. And the bad, though, is there's a lot of nonsense on the web, so a lot of the bias, a lot of the information that it's getting. AI today can, with confidence say the wrong answer and believe that that is the right answer. So, that is one of the risks. Some people call this hallucination, where the AI goes haywire and wonky. But I'm hoping that with time, that does get solved; we have better guardrails and parameters. Some people will say that hallucination is a feature and not a bug because it's letting the AI be more expressive. But everyone's understanding of truth should not be, I think, different. Like, I think there is one set of truth sometimes, and you don't want the AI to misinterpret that. So, yeah, I think it's an exciting time. And more people like our company are embracing and adopting AI into their core products. And it's causing incredible productivity gains. But it's nowhere perfect. People talk about this AGI, (artificial general intelligence). I think we're a little bit away from that, but we're moving fast. Like, this stuff is happening at an exponential rate. In technology, there was this Moore's law, right? With the number of transistors and how amazing and exponentially better the chips got. We saw that with storage, right? The cost of cloud storage when it first came out was so expensive. Now it's super cheap. If you remember, back in the day, you got, like, a USB card where it could probably store, like, 10 megabytes. Now it can do, like, 10 gigabytes to, like, one terabyte. And the cost is, like, super affordable. If you think about TVs that came out in the past, right? Like, getting a 60-inch TV was super expensive. Like, a 40-inch TV was super expensive. Now everything is, like, LCD. You get, like, 60, 70 inches. And the price is the same as what a 40-inch TV was back then. So, AI is all of that and some more. It's moving at a rapid pace. Like, technology, as an industry, like, it's moving so quickly, and AI is moving more quickly than what most people can keep up with. So, that has pros and cons. We can dive into that more. But, yeah, things are changing on a weekly basis, not on a yearly basis right now. VICTORIA: Right. And there's a few directions we can go in from there, I think, that are really interesting, right? There's, like, the future of work with AI because I can relate to a feeling of fear and anxiety about what is this new technology? Am I going to lose my job? And when I talk about it with people I'm mentoring, I try to position it more as this is going to change the way we work. You're still going to need people to do stuff. But if you're rejecting AI because you think it's just a fad or it's just silly, like, I think it is fundamentally changing the way people are going to do their jobs if you pursue that. And I think if you're capable with using AI as a tool, you're going to be more powerful than you've ever been in your job in most cases. KRISH: Rejecting AI is like someone rejecting email for faxing and sending paper mail by hand. You just cannot compete, right? Imagine if you were a business that said, "I don't believe in AI. I'm going to do everything old school." You'd be like, today, okay, cool. You should do that. And imagine if you're a business today that says, "I don't use email. I will physically mail everything to you handwritten." So, that's what it's going to be like in a few months to a year. Like, this stuff is happening quick. And I always like to say that AI will it create more jobs? Yes. Will AI replace jobs? Yes. But the probability of someone using AI who will replace you is far greater. So, AI isn't going to replace you as much as someone using AI is going to replace you. It's a skill set that we have to all learn, just like how we had to learn to use a computer, to use the internet, to use the smartphone. This is the same thing here. Like, we're going to all have to learn to use it and learn to interact and gel with AI in the workplace. VICTORIA: Absolutely. And how does that relate to what you learned in your journey with Fireflies and talking to people about AI? How have those conversations gone forward? KRISH: Fireflies at the core is this AI meeting assistant that joins your meetings. It takes notes. It helps you remember what was discussed before a meeting, during a meeting, and after a meeting. It helps me recall any information that I talked about. If we met six months ago and I'm meeting you again, it has the notes for me. It lets me search back through it. It lets me ask it questions about what you talked about. What were the next steps? What were the action items? So, it's giving me structure to my life because a lot of my life is having meetings with lots of people and having many conversations, and then recalling those conversations and staying on top of that. It gives me structure in terms of what I do day in and day out. I always believe that work originates from conversations. Meetings are some of the most valuable conversations that we tend to have. It's also very expensive for an organization to have meetings. Because when you get four people in a room who are all making six figures and spending an hour having meetings, that information, whatever is discussed, can have a huge cost to the business. But it can also have a huge potential to move the business in the right direction. So, organizing all of that knowledge that originates from meetings was the initial vision of Firefly. Before all of this AI and ChatGPT hype, that was what we'd set out to do. The LLMs and AI help us do that job better: summarize the meetings better, generate better action items, create meeting outlines, allow you to search back. Instead of searching by keywords, you can now ask specific questions and talk to AI. So, this is what AI enables people to do, especially with Fireflies, is you can now interact with Fireflies like you would with a teammate, and that has changed the way people feel and use our product. And people don't come out and say, "Hey, you're replacing secretaries. You're replacing the intern that I've hired to take notes for me. Like, you are replacing the job that the new hire has to do because it's a rite of passage." 95% of people will not make that argument because it's actually silly because your assistant, your interns, your new hires have better things to do. And these are the mundane, monotonous stuff that you should delegate to AI. Obviously, you can have humans review all of that, have their own, you know, take on it, generate reports. But it's actually leveling them up to be more productive and be more valuable to your organization. So, I think there's a lot of pieces of AI that will do the same. You know, other technologies like, for example, AI that generates images or graphic designs that's not going to replace the graphic designer. It's going to allow the graphic designer to be able to create many iterations, be more creative. Like, if they don't have the technical skills to use certain pieces of software, it can help them ease that barrier to entry and give them more assets to work with. So, I think of AI in the workplace as how can we augment human productivity by giving each and every person a superpower? VICTORIA: And you started this eight years ago now. So, you were really, like, ahead of the curve in terms of all these AI companies coming out. I'm wondering, what challenges did you have early on, and how did you overcome them? KRISH: When we started, this was not obvious, like, that we should be doing this. It sounded obvious to us. We felt like every person in the workplace deserved an AI assistant that takes notes, not just the C-suite who, has a secretary or a business admin. And it felt like it's so obvious. It should exist. We should build it. And we need to create the experience like an assistant that follows you around. But when we started, there were so many uncertainties. Can this technology work? Can this technology scale? Is the transcription going to be accurate? Can you actually even summarize things? And does that stuff make sense? It's a new behavior. Are people willing to entertain AI assistants and meeting assistants? So, every step of the way, there's a technology risk, a go-to-market risk. You are doing a sales risk. Like there are so many like pieces to the puzzle that you have to figure out. And you have to peel each layer of the onion and get to the core. So, I think it's been quite a journey. We've been lucky in a few ways, right? Because I do believe that luck is sometimes about being at the right place at the right time. But those that always keep showing up are going to be able to get lucky from time to time, right? If you take a thousand shots, at least one of them will make it. That was my philosophy. We tried. We built seven or eight different products that all somehow worked or utterly flopped. And eventually, we got closer and closer and closer to the truth of what customers needed. And that led us to build the version of Fireflies that exists today. So, it's definitely not easy, but there were three core phases to Fireflies or three core movements that allowed Fireflies to exist. One is speech recognition and transcription fundamentally got better. It got more accurate and more affordable. Before, it was ridiculously expensive. It would take a dollar per minute of transcription, and you needed humans to do it. But these AI engines, speech engines, got better. The second thing is when we launched Fireflies, the pandemic happened a few weeks later. Everyone went remote. Video conferencing became more mainstream, and people were actually having Zoom fatigue and way too many meetings. And they needed a way to organize all those meetings they're having, jumping from one meeting to the next. And Fireflies got pulled forward, and a lot of people wanted to have it in meetings and help them around. And that helped us grow exponentially, virally. To this day, Fireflies has taken notes for over 16 million people across 300,000 organizations. And since the launch in January 2020 to where we are, the first two to three years were trial and error, right? From 2016 to 2020. We built our product in 2018, 2019, launched in 2020. The pandemic accelerated the adoption. And then, you have this new LLM wave that comes out at the end of 2021, which allowed us to make the product fundamentally more valuable. And everything got better from the notes, to the summaries, to the search. Everything got better. And we crossed the chasm from where people thought, "Huh, this is a cool idea, but I don't think it's going to work," to "Holy crap, this is one of the best use cases for generative AI and LLMs." And yeah, like, it was luck in terms of being there when this movement was happening. I think a lot of AI companies can say that. But it also took a little bit of fortitude to be able to be doing this several years before the stuff came out, right? Once a gold rush occurs, everyone's going to want to go in and then build something. But if you were already there, and you were searching and searching, and you were very close to something, and then you discover the gold rush, you're going to have a head start, and that's what happened with us. VICTORIA: Yeah, you said 7 to 8 product iterations, and I was like, uh, you really had to go through an emotional roller coaster, I'm sure early days. But you were lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time and have a good picture of what the problem space was. It's really incredible to hear that. MID-ROLL AD: Now that you have funding, it's time to design, build, and ship the most impactful MVP that wows customers now and can scale in the future. thoughtbot Liftoff brings you the most reliable cross-functional team of product experts to mitigate risk and set you up for long-term success. As your trusted, experienced technical partner, we'll help launch your new product and guide you into a future-forward business that takes advantage of today's new technologies and agile best practices. Make the right decisions for tomorrow today. Get in touch at thoughtbot.com/liftoff. VICTORIA: Why don't I move forward a little bit into where you are now, where you have GDPR and SOC 2 compliance, and you're, you know, really doing well. Like, what were the challenges in getting that product to enterprise level? KRISH: We let the customers pull us in the direction that needed for us to go. A lot of times, we try to see, okay, what is every friction point along the way? What would it take for larger organizations to adopt it? There is incredible product value. People have been saying it. But I need these sorts of features and capabilities in order to deploy it inside my organization. And we are handling meetings, which is sensitive. And so, we have to be able to give them more access controls, give them more admin features. You know, we have a policy at Fireflies where we say, "We do not train on your data by default." So, most AI companies they're using their customer data to train models. We do not do that. So, we made that explicitly clear. CIOs love hearing that because when they look at us and other potential competitors, those competitors are bragging outside, saying, "Hey, we built this amazing model training on all of this data." And we say, "We don't do that." So, unless you want us to build something custom for you, we will not train on your data by default. The other thing we said is, "Look, you own your data. If you want to delete it anytime, you can. You can request to have the data deleted. If you were a participant on a meeting and you don't feel comfortable with the data, you can request the host to delete it, or you can come to us, and we'll delete that data for you." Like, you have rights to that. And we put everything in a very customer-centric worldview, and that usually aligns with the big enterprises. That aligns well with a lot of the folks that want to use your service. Because when you're using a new technology, the first question people are going to have is, "Does it work?" The second question they're going to have is, "Is it safe?" And with AI, a lot of people think about the safety of using the tech. And when you're building for a B2B enterprise, we had to make sure we put in the hard work to tailor our product to the needs of those customers. VICTORIA: That's really interesting. And maybe you could say more about why would a company want to train a model on their own data and create an LLM like that? KRISH: Are you talking about customers wanting us to train something for them? VICTORIA: Yes. I've heard this idea from a few different people, actually, where they want to be able to build an LLM and build a model based on a company's own knowledge and their own information. So, maybe you could say more about that. KRISH: I think it's really around fine-tuning and personalizing the AI. Now you can train on models. You can do fine-tuning. You can do other parameters. But it's really giving everyone their own personal experience with AI. We can do this today even without training just by understanding your preferences, and we want to continue to build towards that. So, yeah, we believe that every person inside an organization should have their own personal AI note-taker, and no two meeting notes will be the same because each set of notes is unique to you, your meetings, what your team wants. And so, that, to us, is like a vision we try to build towards. AI can bring about insane level of personalization, and that's one of the reasons why people would want to train their own models based on their like, knowledge graph, and information. VICTORIA: How do you think about the cost of building and running these AI tools from an infrastructure cost perspective? How does that translate to your cost for your customers, that kind of thing? KRISH: AI is expensive. The unit economics...I think a lot of people are taking for granted that it is insanely expensive to run these models to use a cloud provider of these AI models. Some people are spinning up their own models. It is insanely expensive. But the good news is the cost is going down at an accelerated pace, and it's just up to whether the pace of the cost decrease will outweigh the amount of spending some of these startups are doing. And that's why some of these companies are raising tons of money as well because they don't really have a monetization strategy. They have no revenue. They're making lofty goals that "This AI is going to do this. It's going to do this. It's going to replace this function in your org." But who's going to pay for it? How are you going to make people pay for it? Is it going to be subscription-based? Is it going to be utility-based? How much upfront cost is going to be there to train these models? And what if you do all that work, and then you deploy an LLM; you're an infrastructure provider, and no one cares? What if you're an application layer, and you're giving all of this stuff away for free and then eventually realize you can't get people to pay for it? So, there are so many open questions for these companies where the technology is changing quickly. The cost is changing quickly, and consumer preferences are also changing quickly. We'll have to see. Only time will tell because there's a hundred companies out there, all raising a hundred million dollars. We know that all of them are not going to make it, a few are. So, it'll be interesting to see what happens once the dust settles. But I think people should take that very seriously because you can't always expect to be bailed out by investors if you don't know how to utilize AI and how to build for cost. And I think a lot of investors tell startups to not worry about that. They say, "Don't worry about the cost. You know, as long as someone's there to pump you money, you just keep building, like, the best product out there." That works for some companies. I just don't believe it should be the only strategy that someone should take. VICTORIA: What if you build it and no one cares? It'd be so heartbreaking [laughs], but it happens, yeah. KRISH: That's 95% of startups that die is because no one cares. VICTORIA: Right. Yeah. And I'm curious, like, what other use cases do you see as being the most relevant for AI? Like, what problems does it really solve very well? I mean, note-taking, obviously, one of them. KRISH: I'm really excited about all of these AI tools that can write code for you. And maybe they can't replace a software engineer, but could you make a developer 10x more productive? And could today AI start off as a copilot for writing code for you to eventually building you full-fledged apps, right? And imagine what that would do in terms of reducing the barrier for so many people to be able to create their own personal apps and tools. Easier said than done. But I think what's really working really well, whether it's with GitHub or some of these other AI tools, is, can it actually write code for you? And I think that's a wonderful use case. It'll still need a lot more fleshing out, but I am bullish on that use case for sure. VICTORIA: Yeah. I'm hopeful that companies will figure out how to use AI to level up engineers because right now, we have the problem of the flattening of the middle where you have really senior people who are very in high demand. And then, you have a lot of people with very little experience who really want a career in technology. So, I see that as an opportunity, but also a risk that some people will create things with AI code and sell it. And it'll just be a hot mess [laughs]. But, you know, that's kind of the risk it is even if you're paying real developers at the same time, so... KRISH: Yeah. I think AI will take a C player and make them a B player, maybe a B player into a B plus player. And then, it can take an A player and make them, like, A plus. So, I think it just levels the playing field a little bit, eventually to a point where everyone in the org is going to get a little bit more productive. And I also think that small teams are going to be able to do incredible things. You, as a small team will be able to compete at a larger scale with some of the bigger companies. You know, Sam Altman said maybe there's a chance that a 10-person company is going to build a billion-dollar market cap organization that goes public. So, all of those are possibilities, too. I love the idea of solopreneurs and people that run their own, like, small businesses, you know, three to four people, super lean. Obviously, I'm in a venture-backed world, so I can't necessarily run that, but I am very excited by that potential. And I like those types of people that are entrepreneurial and don't need a lot of CapEx in order to get started. AI will allow a lot more solopreneurs to thrive. If social media created a market for people to have, like, a full-time job as influencers, I think AI can create a market for people to have full-time jobs as creators of products, goods, and services that can be managed with just, like, a few people. VICTORIA: That is really interesting. I'm curious if you want to...let's say you're meeting a founder or an entrepreneur, and they're AI-curious, but they don't really know where to get started or how to step their toe into the water. What advice would you give them? KRISH: I think the best place to start is by building and building something for yourself that you yourself would use. Try all these different AI products that are out there. Look at what's trending in the news in terms of which...every week, some new model is being deployed, some new changes are being rolled out. Google is rolling something out. Facebook is rolling out something. OpenAI is rolling out something. So, try to keep pace. It's going to be tough. And then, go play around and tinker with these tools. Like, you should be a tinkerer first. You should like to build things. You don't have to be an engineer to get started, but you need to be able to go and get your hands dirty, roll up your sleeves, and play around with these tools. The belief and conviction comes with you yourself gaining experience through understanding these tools. You know, you can't tell someone, you know, how to make a music video or make a movie without ever having used a camera before, right? So, it's the same way. You've got to learn how to use the tools first. VICTORIA: And are there any yellow or red flags you would tell people to watch out for if they're thinking about AI or thinking about using a new AI product? KRISH: I think for those founders that want to build large venture-scale businesses, and they're trying to bite off way more than they can chew, you should consider focusing. These are the sort of folks that maybe are not making a sequence of bets. They're trying to throw a hundred darts and see what sticks. And I usually think that's a strategy that will fail. You need to understand why you're building, what you're building, who you're building for. Don't just build it because the technology is cool. You know, not to pick on any products out there, but there's a lot of hardware devices coming out recently that have AI backed into them, right? And you wonder, why the heck is this a hardware device? Couldn't this be just an app on my phone? Like, why do I need to go spend $200, or $600, or $1000 buying this device that has a lot of limitations? The reason you built it because you thought the technology was cool. But by the time it got to production, it has a lot of faults. And you're trying to get people to change their behavior and take money and pay for this? That's tough. And I think VCs are falling for that as well, like, in funding tons of this money into these sorts of companies. Some can argue that it will get better with time and iterations. But I personally stay away from hardware. I don't want to touch anything related to hardware right now because we don't even know what the new form factor is going to be. But the hardware people should ask themselves, "Should this be a standalone device, or could it just be something on my iPhone as an app?" That is something that's really, really interesting. The space that I'm most excited about outside of AI for the workplace is robotics. And I've been seeing a lot of really cool products where they're trying to build these AI humanoid-like robots that can do a series of tasks. They're not like the machines in, like, an industry or a factory. But they can make you coffee. They can clean the dishes. They can cook you some food. I think the market for that is massive. Like, if that stuff works, people are going to be able to pay a lot of money for it. Like, the amount you'd pay for a car, you would pay for a utility-based robot inside your house and, like, with nice financing options and stuff. So, whoever cracks that is going to be really, really successful. There's people companies that have raised a lot of money solving that. While I'm generally not bullish about hardware little devices, I am very bullish about, like, these general-purpose robots that I think the potential is immense. Like imagine every household having one or two of those; what that means for domestic productivity, like, someone's folding the laundry, someone is cleaning up the house, taking out the trash. These are jobs to be done, yeah. VICTORIA: Well, then what would my husband do [laughter]? I'm just kidding. I don't want to replace him. No, I think it's interesting especially just, like, thinking about elder care, and having someone in the home, and watching, and cleaning up, and all of those tasks and being able to live independently. I could see that having a huge potential. So, also, obviously, I think robots are cool. It's the title of the podcast. So, I'm very pro-robot [laughs] in most cases, not all cases. Yeah. Well, that's super interesting. Let's see. Do you have anything else that you would like to promote? KRISH: You know, besides embracing AI and using, you know, these tools and services, I would really be excited to hear about people's ideas on, like, how they're using AI in the workplace. Everyone has so many creative ways to go about it. So, each week, we discover new ways people are using Fireflies, right? Some people use it for taking notes. Some people use it to be able to take customer quotes from calls. So, they can literally ask our AI, "Hey, go through these, like, past two customer calls and pull out all of the nice things they said about us, and then turn that into a soundbite that I can share with my marketing team so we can run a marketing campaign on that" So, there's just so many interesting use cases. I do want to say that voice is going to be a great form factor for AI. We work in the voice space. Like, I love talking to my AI during the meeting. So, I think that's going to be something that I would say is if you are an end user in the workplace, think about how you would use voice to get work done and turn your words into AI. And we're trying to solve that at Fireflies. And if you are interested in that space, we would love to talk to you. And if you have some interesting use cases that you want to see for Fireflies, please send them our way. VICTORIA: I love that. And it's interesting when you bring up voice. One thing I was surprised about with my parents, actually, obviously, a generation older, I got them an Alexa Dot that I got from a conference. I didn't think they would ever use it, but they actually use it all the time. They're, like, asking for recipes, setting timers, and doing things like that. And, yeah, if you have, like, an AI voice, like, "Send an email to this person" or, like, "Open this task and do it." Maybe I would actually get some more tasks done [laughs]. I could just do it over voice. Sometimes like, the keyboard and the screen is part of the delay. That's really interesting. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. Do you have any questions for me before we sign off? KRISH: I'm curious to hear your thoughts on what are the biggest risks with AI you foresee for people, and what makes you more skeptical about AI? VICTORIA: Yeah, you touched on a little bit earlier when you said about the cost of AI and the cost-benefit analysis; I don't think is always there for every single use case, right? There are some use cases where it is so clear there is a benefit for that. Note-taking is one of them. There's a million professions, I think, that would benefit from having AI note-taking apps. I think the risks which we've already seen that impact people, you mentioned the biases, and things like people getting denied health care, getting longer prison term sentences. You know, the way that they might blindly incorporate these algorithms into decisions that really reinforce biases because of this historical data that it's based on. I think whenever someone asks me about the risks of AI and, like, people losing jobs, or, you know, rogue AI taking over the world, I always bring it back to that some AI is already hurting people, and it should be stopped, and people should be educated on it. Like, the big scary AI conversation is almost a distraction to what's really going on, and we need to all be smarter about it. At the same time, I love using AI. I think it really can, like you said, get your productivity up 100%. In some cases, like, you can just do so much more so much faster. And I see that potential. And I think that there's always that balance, right? Like, you have to be able to be aware and embrace both if you're going to stay current. But there are some people who still send faxes and still do everything by mail. But, you know, it's like technology never really dies. There's just more of it in different ways, right? KRISH: Absolutely [laughs]. That's awesome. Well, thank you. This was great. VICTORIA: Wonderful. Yeah, I really enjoyed our conversation. You can subscribe to the show and find notes along with a complete transcript for this episode at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions or comments, you can email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening. See you next time. AD: Did you know thoughtbot has a referral program? If you introduce us to someone looking for a design or development partner, we will compensate you if they decide to work with us. More info on our website at: tbot.io/referral. Or you can email us at: referrals@thoughtbot.com with any questions.
How did Fireflies thrive during the pandemic, and what does the future hold for AI in business?In this episode, Krish Ramineni, the CEO of Fireflies, shares his insights on adapting to remote work, turning it into culture, and the surge of new tools caused by the pandemic. Krish will also discuss why a good business model is key to long-term success. Together with Michael Maximoff, they explore the challenges and opportunities in the AI market, the importance of staying focused and innovative, and the impact of competition on driving advancements.Perfect for entrepreneurs and tech enthusiasts, this episode offers a deep dive into building a sustainable business in the AI era. Tune in to learn about the strategic decisions that helped Fireflies grow and the future trends that could shape the AI and tech industry.Timecodes:0:00 — Introduction1:26 — Initial Thoughts and Pandemic Impact1:49 — Fireflies' Remote Work Philosophy2:20 — Adapting to the Pandemic4:23 — Remote Work Culture at Fireflies4:57 — Growth and Adoption of AI Tools5:50 — Importance of Business Model in Startups7:02 — Innovating and Staying Relevant in Business8:26 — Focus and Innovation as Keys to Success10:15 — Competitive Landscape and Differentiation11:01 — Utility-Based Pricing and the Future of AI13:21 — Challenges and Opportunities in the AI Market16:01 — Role of Competition in Innovation18:13 — Strategies for Maintaining Market Leadership19:03 — Impact of Large Companies Entering the AI Space20:21 — Balancing Innovation and Commoditization21:07 — Personalized AI Solutions for Different Industries23:32 — Building and Scaling Fireflies25:01 — Challenges in Building Innovative Products26:27 — Role of Investors and Funding Strategy27:49 — Exit Strategy and Long-Term Vision30:23 — Role of Investors in Startup Success34:32 — Importance of Customer-Centric Approach36:43 — Managing Competition in the AI Space41:23 — Future Trends in AI and Tech Innovation45:13 — Building a Sustainable Business Model47:50 — Personal Interests and Future Plans52:24 — Advice for Startup Founders55:37 — Final Thoughts and Closing RemarksStay connected with us:
Krish Ramineni (@krishramineni, CEO/Founder of @Firefliesai) talks about what it is like to build an AI product company in both the pre-LLM era as well as post-LLMs. We also discuss privacy and security concerns and AI behind the scenes.SHOW: 805CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK - http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotwNEW TO CLOUD? CHECK OUT OUR OTHER PODCAST - "CLOUDCAST BASICS"SHOW SPONSORS:Want to win a Tesla Cybertruck or $100,000? Enter the WS02 Choreo Code Challenge (before April 30th)WSO2 Choreo - Why build a platform? Just add developers insteadSHOW NOTES:Fireflies.ai (homepage)Fireflies MIT ArticleTopic 1 - Welcome to the show. Before diving into today's discussion, tell us a little about your background.Topic 2 - Our show and listeners tend to be interested and employed in the Enterprise infrastructure and AI/ML space. Some may find it surprising that we are talking today, but we wanted to really dig into how an up-and-coming AI company provides value at scale from individuals all the way to large enterprises. What goes into both building the product as well as taking that product to market? So, let's start there. You recently posted about “Free AI” on LinkedIn. What was the problem you were trying to solve, and how did that influence the product you built? Topic 3 - As the foundational models in the industry keep improving and are going multi-modal, do you worry that the LLMs of the world might push out specialized models? How do you think about staying ahead of the curve? How does something like GPU shortages or big companies like Meta purchasing thousands at a time impact your decisions?Topic 4 - Fireflies.ai is all about the abstraction of the technology away from the user. They have no idea (and shouldn't) about the back end and everything “behind the curtain”. How do you think about this abstraction layer from a product standpoint?Topic 5 - Now, let's talk about PLG vs. traditional Enterprise software sales models. You did another post about that recently. We've worked in environments selling both (sometimes at the same time), and they are very different motions. Do you feel both are needed to build an AI company?Topic 6 - How does Security and compliance with IT departments fit into all of this? I've spoken to customers that have a policy of no AI tools at the personal level for instance or maybe client, company and private data might be at risk and only certain tools are vetted and approved. I've seen other companies only allow tools licensed by their corp IT. How do you navigate this issue? How does something like GDPR play here?Topic 7 - Last question, another AI specific concern we hear about is companies training models on user data. What is your thoughts here? How does a company fine tune and train new models and products but keep customer and company privacy from leaking out?FEEDBACK?Email: show at the cloudcast dot netTwitter: @cloudcastpodInstagram: @cloudcastpodTikTok: @cloudcastpod
Fireflies.ai is an AI powered app that is transforming meetings across the globe and is on a mission to derive actionable intelligence out of conversations.It was 2016, Krish had got admission for a masters program at Cambridge University after completing a stint as a product manager at the tech giant Microsoft. In the few free months he had before he was to join the course, he created some products as fun experiments with his cofounder, and those few months ended up becoming the start of the journey to build Fireflies.He realised that there was a lot of value in conversations, and ended up spending the next 8 years in building a product to truly help companies capture that value.In this episode Krish talks about How to find Product Market Fit How to make Product Led Growth work for your business How to using pricing as a strategic lever for growthGet notified about the latest releases and bonus content by subscribing to our newsletter at www.founderthesis.com
In this episode, I was lucky enough to interview Krish Ramineni, CEO and Co-founder of Fireflies.ai.Krish dives into his entrepreneurial journey from Silicon Valley to founding one of the most innovative AI platforms. Krish shares how his upbringing in a family of entrepreneurs fueled his passion for technology and startups, leading him from UPenn to Microsoft and eventually to co-founding Fireflies.ai.Krish recounts his early ventures, including building a campus event platform during college and his pivotal decision to forgo grad school for entrepreneurship. With Fireflies.ai, Krish and his team are revolutionizing productivity by unlocking knowledge buried within conversations. From seamless transcription and integration to upcoming mobile and multilingual features, Fireflies.ai continues to evolve, driven by Krish's unwavering commitment to customer satisfaction and relentless pursuit of innovation. Join us as we explore the future of AI and entrepreneurship with Krish Ramineni on The First Customer podcast!Guest Info:Fireflies.aihttps://fireflies.ai/Krish Ramineni's LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/krishramineni/Connect with Jay on LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jayaigner/The First Customer Youtube Channelhttps://www.youtube.com/@thefirstcustomerpodcastThe First Customer podcast websitehttps://www.firstcustomerpodcast.comFollow The First Customer on LinkedInhttp://www.linkedin.com/company/the-first-customer-podcast/
Learn how to scale your business with the power of AI As a founder and CEO, leveraging AI's power can greatly help scale your business. AI enables automation and efficiency, freeing up time and resources for strategic initiatives. With its scalability and growth potential, AI empowers businesses to handle increasing volumes and adapt to changing needs. Fireflies is an AI meeting assistant that automatically transcribes and takes bullet notes from user calls and meetings, identifying key takeaways from the meeting. It is designed to streamline productivity and efficiency in the industry. Krish Ramineni will be joining me today. He is the co-founder and CEO of Fireflies. He has been recognized as one of Gartner's top 25 enterprise software startups and Forbes 30 Under 30. Krish brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to the table. Together, we explore the impact of AI in the business world, the journey of scaling the company, the importance of taking bold risks in entrepreneurship, and provide valuable insights that entrepreneurs and business leaders can apply to their ventures. Key Takeaways: Fireflies.ai is an AI meeting assistant that transcribes, summarizes, and analyzes meetings Decision-making framework involves considering both the pros and cons and finding ways to mitigate risks Teams can achieve remarkable results by focusing on problem-solving and scaling initiatives The importance of building something that you would want to use. Finding the right product-market fit through trial and error Overcoming skepticism and headwinds in the early stages of a startup The benefits of diverse perspectives and collaboration in the decision-making process Embrace a long-term vision while being flexible in the short-term journey All this and more, on this week's episode of Beyond 7 Figures. Next week, I will talk to Justin Flom, one of the most visible humans on earth. So, don't forget to subscribe to the show to get that episode as soon it gets released. Until then, be profitable. Links: fireflies.ai linkedin.com/in/krishramineni twitter.com/krishramineni
Learn how to tailor health strategies for optimal outcomes It doesn't really matter how much money you make as a business owner or as a CEO. If you don't care for your health, you can't enjoy any of it. Ever since my father passed away, I made it a point to prioritize health. When you're healthy, you can do well in your job, reach your personal goals, and enjoy life. A sound health foundation contributes to increased longevity, allowing individuals to enjoy the fruits of their labor and pursue their passions well into the future. Ben Greenfield is an influential health and fitness industry figure, a performance consultant, and a New York Times best-selling author. Ben's expertise lies in a wide range of health-related topics, including performance, fat loss, digestion, brain health, sleep, hormones, anti-aging, and parenting. As one of the top influencers in the field, he shares his extensive knowledge and experience to help individuals optimize their physical and mental well-being. Together, we address key concerns, debunk common misconceptions, and provide practical advice on various aspects of health and performance. Especially as business owners, we need to be at the top of our health. Key Takeaways: Adequate sleep is crucial for optimal brain function and performance Tailoring health strategies to individual genetics and needs yields optimal outcomes Defining a healthy diet depends on context, and individual needs vary A healthy gut is vital for overall health, affecting neurotransmitter production and cognitive function Regular exercise, including cardio and strength training, boosts brain function Prioritizing mental health and human connection is crucial, as loneliness adversely affects well-being Regular health screenings can provide valuable insights into one's health status All this and more, on this week's episode of Beyond 7 Figures. Stay tuned next week when I talk to Krish Ramineni, Co-Founder and CEO of Fireflies.ai. So, don't forget to subscribe to the show to get that episode as soon it gets released. Until then, be profitable. Links: https://bengreenfieldlife.com/ https://www.amazon.com/stores/Ben-Greenfield/author/B002LVJACA
LongShorts - Banter on All Things Business, Finance, and People
We speak with Krish Ramineni, Co-founder & CEO of Fireflies.ai – a Canaan and Khosla Ventures backed startup whose flagship AI meeting assistant takes notes, transcribes, and analyses Meetings. Used across 200,000+ organizations, Fireflies is on a mission to transform work conversations into actions with its voice assistant, transcription tools designed to automate your team's workflow. The idea is to unlock the treasure trove of knowledge buried inside voice conversations by creating a searchable and shareable knowledge base. Fireflies integrates with all leading video conferencing platforms such as Zoom, GMeet, and Teams along with popular CRMs and ERP applications like Salesforce, Hubspot, Zoho, and Slack. Aside from covering Krish's journey at Fireflies and how he sees AI power future productivity tools, we try to understand the evolution of generative AI, early customer adoption, ethical and regulatory concerns and how the industry hopes to navigate these complexities. Hope you enjoy this TRANSFIN. Podcast with Nikhil Arora and Sharath Toopran, where we converse with entrepreneurs and business operators running successful startups, profitable SMEs and family promoted firms on one end, and top investment professionals representing VC/PE/credit funds on the other. The objective is to bring out an "actionable" perspective converging the world of business and investing. If you're a founder and if you'd like us to drill down your model, feel free to drop us a line at edit@transfin.in
Join us for a deep dive with Krish Ramineni, the innovator behind Fireflies.ai. Explore the fascinating world of AI tech, uncover strategies for product-led growth, and understand the global vision steering Fireflies.ai. Whether you're tech-savvy or a strategic thinker, this episode takes you into the heart of Fireflies' journey.Get the FREE Product Book and check out our curated list of Product Management resources here.
On this episode of the Inspiring Great Leaders Podcast, Craig Johns speaks with Krish Ramineni about how Fireflies.ai revolutionises meetings, providing value for your customers, and how AI shapes the workforce. We also dive deeper into AI vs. the human workforce, using resourcefulness as an advantage, and the importance of creating meaningful human connections.
SaaS marketers know we've entered the era of the self-serve buyer, where prospects expect price transparency and free trials. While this might not work for complex enterprise deals, there are lessons to be taken from a PLG motion that most SaaS orgs should employ. Krish Ramineni, Co-founder and CEO at Fireflies.ai, dishes on how to execute a free trial successfully, what it takes to offer a freemium product, and shares his personal story on ignoring his investors' advice to stay away from a PLG model. Connect with Krish: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krishramineni/ Connect with Lindsey: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindseygroepper/ Learn more about BLASTmedia: https://www.blastmedia.com/
This week, Jim is joined by Krish Ramineni, CEO of Fireflies to discuss how grow a business through product led growth. Krish shares his insights about the importance of distribution and how to create proper culture within a startup before expanding on some of the best opportunities for someone starting a business in 2024.TOPICS DISCUSSED IN TODAY'S EPISODE What is Fireflies Creating internal growth Building a remote company How to structure your week Fireflies first 100 customers Product led Growth 2024 AI product opportunities Resources: Fireflies Jim Huffman website Jim's Twitter GrowthHit The Growth Marketer's Playbook Additional episodes you might enjoy:Startup Ideas by Paul Graham (#45)Nathan Barry: How to Bootstrap a Company to $30M in a Crowded Market (#41)How I Met My Biz Partner and Less Learned Hitting $2M ARR (#44)Ryan Hamilton on his Netflix special, touring with Jerry Seinfeld, & how to write a joke (#10)How We're Validating Startup Ideas (#51)
In this episode of the SaaS Marketing Superstars podcast, Krish Ramineni shares how Fireflies.ai grew to be used by over 200K organizations through product led growth. Krish also shares his opinion on what the future of AI might look like. Episode Highlights ● Fireflies features and vision (0:40) ● Who is the typical Fireflies user (1:50) ● How Fireflies successfully utilized product led growth strategy (5:46) ● Why it is extremely expensive to produce AI based tools (11:09) ● How AI has completely transformed the way he works (13:20) ● Predictions on the societal impact of AI in the near future (15:15) ● How he uses criticism from disgruntled customers to improve Fireflies (21:45) ● Favorite books, apps and business leaders (32:47) Check out the show notes and get links to all the resources mentioned in this episode here: https://aaronzakowski.com/podcast-product-led-growth-krish-ramineni-fireflies/ Follow Krish on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krishramineni/
This episode is sponsored by Riverside, your all-in-one podcast and video platform. Go to https://creators.riverside.fm/Anna and use the code MSM23 for 15% off. This episode is also sponsored by PDCflow, payment management made easy. Visit pdcflow.com/flow-billing to learn more. Krish Ramineni is Co-Founder and CEO at Fireflies.ai and he joined me in this episode to dig into growing from Seed to Series A, top focus areas for growth, their PLG approach from the early days, differentiation in a crowded space, and more. About Fireflies: Founded: 2016 Funding: Series A ($19M total) Description: Automate your meeting notes. Transcribe, summarize, search, and analyze voice conversations. In this episode: The early days of Fireflies.ai (Seed stage) - who was on the team, what was your GTM strategy; What were the high points and what were the struggles at Seed stage; How do you differentiate from other players in a crowded space (what if your competition can build a better product with better features); Top 3 things that you focused on to get you from Seed to Series A; Why is marketing important; How do you balance talking about the problem (education) vs. talking about your solution with your marketing content; Why do you think marketing can be so misunderstood; AMA - Krish asks me his burning question. You can find Krish on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krishramineni/ Learn more about Fireflies: https://fireflies.ai/ For more content, subscribe to Modern Startup Marketing on Apple or Spotify or wherever you like to listen, and don't forget to leave a review if you're lovin' the show! I would love that so much. And whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you: 1. fractional head of marketing for early stage startups >> www.furmanovmarketing.com 2. sponsor my Top 5% podcast and get startup founders, marketers and VCs hearing about your brand >> https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/anna-furmanov 3. sign up to get my monthly early stage startup marketing newsletter where I'm sharing playbooks and insights and cracking some jokes You can also find me hanging out on LinkedIn, definitely say hello and tell me what you're building >> www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/anna-furmanov/message
Krish Ramineni is Co-Founder of Fireflies.ai, which helps teams transcribe, summarize, search and analyze voice conversations. He previously worked at Microsoft and has been featured within Forbes 30 Under 30. He is also passionate about Product-Led Growth.In today's episode:• Fundamentals of Product-Led Growth (PLG)• How Fireflies.ai scaled with PLG• How to implement PLG into a business—Krish's contact and company info:• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/krishramineni• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krishramineni/• Twitter: https://twitter.com/krishramineni/• Fireflies.ai: https://fireflies.ai—Where to find the host, Adam Wakeling:• Twitter: https://twitter.com/adamjwakeling• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-wakeling-26494b35/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Introduction(00:47) Krish's background(04:18) What is Product-Led Growth (PLG)?(07:47) B2B vs B2C in PLG(13:28) Acquisition, Retention and Monetization(17:25) Aha moments and customer empathy(19:55) Challenges implementing PLG(23:30) How Fireflies.ai approaches PLG(25:53) First version of Fireflies.ai(28:53) How AI product SMEs can compete with Google and Microsoft?(32:48) Frameworks that Fireflies.ai leverages(35:26) Where to start with PLG implementation(38:09) Product-Led Sales(39:30) PLG to PLS funnel(40:46) OutroFollow the podcast on Twitter: @proddevpodcastGet in touch with the host, Adam Wakeling, on Twitter: @adamjwakeling
Krish Ramineni is the Co-Founder and CEO of Fireflies.ai, an AI meeting assistant that transcribes, summarizes, and analyzes meetings. Named on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, Krish graduated from UPenn. He was one of the youngest Product Managers at Microsoft, leading projects in customer voice and growth. He has guest lectured at Stanford on machine learning and holds patents in workflow automation. Krish is a thought leader in SaaS/AI and an active startup advisor.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Join us for an inspiring fireside chat with Krish Ramineni, the co-founder of Fireflies.ai, a cutting-edge conversation tracking platform. In this engaging conversation, Krish shares his incredible journey from his early days in India to becoming a successful entrepreneur in the United States. Krish discusses his background, including his education at UPenn and his experience as a product manager at Microsoft. He reveals how he met his co-founder and the spontaneous decision to dive into the world of startups. Learn from Krish's valuable insights as he talks about the mistakes he and his team made along the way and the critical lessons they learned. Discover how they transitioned from different product ideas to finding the perfect problem to solve with Fireflies.ai. Explore the technology behind Fireflies.ai, including natural language processing, ASR, and AI, that powers this revolutionary platform. Krish explains how Fireflies.ai can save organizations thousands of dollars in meeting efficiency and shares his vision for it as a personal assistant for knowledge workers. Find out how Fireflies.ai acquired users through a unique viral acquisition model and learn about their target market, which includes not just enterprises but every individual in the workplace. If you're interested in entrepreneurship, technology, or the journey of a startup founder, this fireside chat with Krish Ramineni is a must-watch. Don't miss out on this insightful conversation that provides a glimpse into the world of innovation and business.
Can you imagine a world where you never have to take notes again because you had a personal assistant who transcribed and summarized each meeting with notes including who was speaking and the follow up action items? This assistant would also let you easily search, review and find clips of the meeting conversation? This assistant is named Fred from Fireflies.ai When you add Fireflies to a recorded meeting it will be your best friend and let you focus on the meeting vs capturing what was said. In our conversation, we speak with Krish Ramineni, Fireflies co-founder about how Fireflies can help you improve your productivity in any area of your life. Krish shares his background, early influences, and why getting yourself a Fireflies free trial today will change the way you have any future meeting. Check out https://fireflies.ai/ Connect with Krish, follow Krish on Instragram Gartner's Top 25 Enterprise Software Startups Krish was featured on the cover of Entrepreneur Magazine: 12 Founders Changing Business 2020 If you enjoy this podcast, please share it with a friend and follow us on Instagram @meantforit Reach out to us anytime: contact@meanforit.com to say hello or recommend somone for a future episode. We would really, really love to hear from you. Go to our website www.meantforit.com for past episodes.
AI for Creatives is a podcast by Creatives for Creatives connecting art, innovation, and humanity. Segment 1: Kamilah and Nova talk about what they've been up to recently. Kamilah talks about her new website – Impactaccelerator.global, and her involvement with social impact starters. Nova talks about having spent Fashion Week In NY. She also talks about her upcoming LinkedIn Audio talk connected to the new House of Nova Collective and her upcoming AI Masterclass. Segment 2: Nova asks Krish for his AI origin story. He talks about his thesis for people being better able to remember things during meetings. With Fireflies.ai, he can recall past meetings stored in the businesses' notes for total and complete recall and knowledge. Kamilah agrees that having notes to go back to for referencing is great. She also asked Krish to explain how Fireflies analyzes notes. Being able to get into the “meta” of the conversation can provide many useful insights. Segment 3: Nova asked Krish what he's most excited about as it relates to the future of AI. Krish believes AI will do much of the work the people using software today via interaction with people. AI will provide technology that will do a lot of the work for you. Kamilah discusses how AI will assist with things like marketing, and help to do the things people don't like currently doing. Kamilah asks Krish what he sees for the future of work. Krish says knowledge will be ubiquitous, at your fingertips, and more accessible via AI, making us the “10X version of ourselves.” Segment 4: Nova asks Krish how we continue to put humans first, what could go wrong, and what we can do to prevent that from happening. Krish says, in theory, AI could lead to inaccuracies and bias. He goes into a lot, as well as being mindful of overreliance. He talks about the guardrails that Fireflies employs. Nova points out we're not going to “let the horse run around the track on its own.” Kamilah talks about how the tech has evolved – but human common sense is still important to rely on. Segment 5: Nove expresses how much she appreciates Krish joining the podcast, as well as sharing his vast knowledge. She asks Krish how he can be followed online. Krish says he can be found on LinkedIn, Twitter(X), and Instagram, and shares how Fireflies has become a de facto notetaking AI – and a mobile version is coming soon for Apple and Android OS. Segment 6: Nova and Kamilah reminisce about some of the older tech, and what they've seen come along compared to what will be coming. Kamilah talks about how impressed she is with how robust Fireflies is – and a mobile OS will be amazing. Nova asks if, in the future, Kamliah will send her bot into the meeting rather than showing up. They both agree that they need the person to be there. But maybe in the future, that could change. Conclusion: Whatever the future holds, AI will be a part of it. AI Generative AI AI for Creatives Crypto for Creatives Fireflies.ai Notetaking https://www.novalorraine.com/ai-masterclass Pink Kangaru
Some of the best companies succeed by entering a market before having full confidence in the technology. Just ask guest Krish Ramineni, founder of Fireflies, on this episode of the Integrate & Ignite Marketing Podcast. Listen in as he talks about timing, execution, and growth with host Lori Jones, as well as about the nuances of category creation, early market entry, and the importance of customer satisfaction.
On this episode, Krish Ramineni, CEO at Fireflies.ai, gives his perspective on building product partnerships through integrations as a key growth driver for businesses. There is great value in integrations for both existing customers and new users. Integrations should align with the customer's workflow, enhancing their experience and creating value. Integrations can act as a strategic moat, contributing to engagement, retention and monetization. Practical strategies for leveraging integrations include partnering with established brands, engaging in co-marketing initiatives and tapping into the existing reseller ecosystems of product partners. There are long-term benefits to integrating with partners, including early access to features and strategic product differentiation. Careful partner selection is critical, and it's important to consider factors like ICP matching, customer overlap and the quality of APIs. Resources mentioned: Krish Ramineni - https://www.linkedin.com/in/krishramineni/ Fireflies.ai | LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/fireflies-inc/ Fireflies.ai | Website - https://fireflies.ai/ Thank you to our amazing podcast team at Content Allies. Want to launch your own B2B revenue-generating podcasts? Contact them at https://ContentAllies.com. #saas #software #cloud
In this solo episode, which follows the two-part interview with Krish Ramineni, Founder and CEO of Fireflies.ai, Eric discusses the perils of sunk-cost fallacies and the ultimate consequence of over-investing in unfruitful projects: driving your business into the ground. All too often, founders become excessively attached to the product they've been developing, even when the rational choice would be to start from scratch. Avoiding this common pitfall played a significant role in the success story of Fireflies.ai. They have secured a $14 million USD Series A Round, expanded their team to over 75 people, and earned a household name status in their category.Don't forget to subscribe to the Chaos to Clarity Podcast for more invaluable episodes to help you grow your business and stay ahead of the curve!To reach out to Eric, visit FullCycleProduct.com
In this podcast 57, I had the honor of inviting, Krish Ramineni, the co-founder and CEO of Fireflies.AI to talk about the future of work and how conversational intelligence plays a big role in it. We talked about the various aspects of remote work and how conversational intelligence plays a big role to transform conversations into actions. We did a deep dive into the concepts of voice assistants, transcribers and the tools there-on that augment and automate team's workflow with AI. Stay tuned for more interesting conversations from the (XTrawAI.com) podcast series on machine learning and AI applications. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/raghu-banda/message
Today on the show we have Krish Ramineni, Co-Founder and CEO of Fireflies.ai.Krish shared some amazing insights on topics like transitioning from product management at Microsoft to CEO of a startup, the challenges and advantages of working in a small organization, and the importance of synthesizing qualitative and quantitative insights.We also delved into the impact of ChatGPT and generative AI on the market, the strategies Fireflies has used to stay ahead of the competition, and the future of AI in meeting assistance.We can't wait for you to tune in and, as always, your feedback is invaluable to us. Let us know your thoughts on this episode!
This episode of Chaos to Clarity continues the conversation with Krish Ramineni, the Founder and CEO of Fireflies.ai.Krish's approach to pricing stems from Atlassian, Calendly, and other product-led giants. The goal is to avoid wasting time on negotiations and keeping pricing transparent to make the enterprise sales cycles more efficient.Krish and Eric dive deep into the concept of eliminating friction in the buyers journey. Krish predicts that those who are focusing on activity metrics will be replaced by AI, and only true relationship builders with backgrounds that are relevant to the product they sell, will retain their sales positions.A great way of eliminating friction in the buyers journey is implementing a product-led growth motion. Instead of having your salespeople focusing on outbound, they can effectively have an infinite amount of leads with a functional product-led motion. Having a functioning PLG motion is a huge selling point when trying to attract top-tier salespeople, as the concept of brute-force outbound is rarely anyone's preference nowadays, and has proven to be ineffective in this economic downturn.Tune in to this episode to learn more about how to eliminate friction in your sales process!HIGHLIGHTS:00:00 Krish's Approach to Pricing03:20 Eliminating Friction in the Buyer's Journey07:21 How PLG and Sales Align12:25 Be True To Yourself as a Founder16:07 Surviving the Economic Downturn19:15 Fireflies Market Expansion Plans21:02 Krish's Growth Journey as a LeaderConnect With Krish - https://www.linkedin.com/in/krishramineni/Try Fireflies.ai - https://fireflies.ai/Don't forget to subscribe to the Chaos to Clarity Podcast for more invaluable episodes to help you grow your business and stay ahead of the curve!To reach out to Eric, visit FullCycleProduct.com
In this episode, Eric is joined by Krish Ramineni, the Founder and CEO of Fireflies.ai. Fireflies allows you to record, search, & collaborate across all your meetings in one central place.Krish shares his journey into product management, starting from his college days to working with startups and landing a PM role at Microsoft. Krish chose to go into product management due to the freedom and flexibility that the role brings, and it's what ultimately led him to start his own company. The concept of Fireflies.ai stemmed from the fact that there's a lot of valuable information in everyday business conversations that gets buried. The huge pain they wanted to help solve is that meetings come with a ton of waste. Krish drops the stat from the Spotify research paper that highlights the true cost of meetings, which they evaluated at average of $1500-$2000/hour, assuming a 4 person attendance, and the status quo approach simply does not make the most of this investment.Today, they've grown to a team of 75+, and a lot of their growth can be attributed to the organic visibility of the app - once someone joins a meeting with a Fireflies user, they are automatically exposed to the Fireflies brand through the notetakers seat on the virtual conference. Tune in to this episode to hear more about Krish's journey from Product Management to Entrepreneurship!HIGHLIGHTS:[00:01:58] Finding the Pain Point[00:04:08] Meetings are Expensive[00:11:00] Scaling Your Tech[00:15:00] The Flintstone Method[00:19:07] Building a Freemium ProductConnect With Krish - https://www.linkedin.com/in/krishramineni/Try Fireflies.ai - https://fireflies.ai/Don't forget to subscribe to the Chaos to Clarity Podcast for more invaluable episodes to help you grow your business and stay ahead of the curve!To reach out to Eric, visit FullCycleProduct.com
Welcome to another episode of the Build In Public Podcast.Today's episode features Krish Ramineni, co-founder and CEO of Fireflies - an AI note-taking assistant designed to streamline corporate productivity.In this interview, Krish and KP delve into Krish's founder journey, sharing their perspectives on topics such as:● Introduction to Fireflies.ai● Krish's background story● How and why Krish decided to build a startup● Krish's realization that he is meant to be a founder ● His experiences during his first few years in startup● Advantages of using Fireflies for different kinds of companies● The inflection point of Open AI / Generative AI● Subscription rates of transcription tools and how it changed● Factors that helped Fireflies build conviction ● Krish's advice to aspiring founders● Advice and realizations on fundraising● Role of a community in Krish's early startup journey● What's next for FirefliesBuild In Public Podcast is an interview show where KP chats with ambitious startup founders, CEOs, and top Internet creators to unpack their stories, insights, and lessons.Thanks for listening!Links:Krish's Twitter: https://twitter.com/krishramineni?lang=enFireflies on Twitter: https://twitter.com/firefliesaiFireflies: https://fireflies.ai/KP's Twitter: https://twitter.com/thisiskp_KP's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/KarthikPuvvadaKP
In this week's SlatorPod, Fireflies.ai CEO Krish Ramineni joins us to talk about scaling the AI meeting assistant and building on the latest advances in large language models.Krish starts with his journey to co-founding Fireflies, which began as a drone delivery service and as a result of conversations with customers and investors, evolved into an AI meeting assistant to solve their own pain point.The CEO shares how they found their product-market fit after focusing on automated transcripts over human-assisted note-taking. He discusses the early days of AI investment and how with the rise of APIs and large language models (LLMs), you no longer need multiple PhDs to attract investors. Krish explains how Fireflies leverages technologies like Whisper to improve their language transcription, allowing them to be more accessible to global companies. He talks about their decision to improve their Super Summaries feature through GPT technology.The CEO shares his excitement about the potential for LLMs and how Fireflies are building a Chrome extension that uses LLMs to summarize any article or video on the internet. He advises that simply building a wrapper on top of OpenAI is not a defensible moat for companies, but rather you should build a unique platform with a unique angle into the industry you're selling to.Kirsh talks about the current fundraising environment where there is a lot of money being thrown around for generative AI companies, but only a few will weather the storm. When it comes to hiring machine learning talent, Krish doesn't believe in prompt engineering and also holds the view that machine learning companies may no longer need to hire large cohorts of ML PhDs to scale.The pod rounds off with the company's roadmap for 2023, which includes creating an ecosystem of extensions on top of Fireflies. These extensions will offer powerful functionalities to users in different sectors like healthcare and recruiting.
In this episode: Lauren Hawker Zafer is joined by Krish Ramineni. Who Can Benefit From This Conversation?This episode is a topical listen that invites all of our listeners to think about the impact that generative AI will have on every day working practices and processes. What does the introduction of mass scale use of generative AI mean concretely for the software industry, for organisations, and for the knowledge worker? Will knowledge workers have to make trade offs and if so, what kind? How will the future of work be effected by innovations like the foundational AI technology? All of these questions and many more are answered in this episode. Who is Krish Ramineni?Krish is the Co-Founder and CEO of Fireflies.ai, an AI voice assistant that helps transcribe, take notes, and complete actions during meetings. He graduated from Upenn and was one of the youngest Product Managers at Microsoft where he led projects around customer voice & growth engineering. Krish guest lectures at Stanford on Deep Learning and Machine Learning and is an early-stage startup advisor. REDEFINING AI is powered by The Squirro Academy - learn.squirro.com. Try our free courses on AI, ML, NLP and Cognitive Search at the Squirro Academy and find out more about Squirro here.
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Overcast Support the Show. Get the AudioBook! AudioBook: Audible| Kobo| Authors Direct | Google Play | Apple Summary Hey everyone. Stay tuned to the end of the interview where I'll give you some actionable insights that I learned from my guest. These insights are also in the show notes. As always, thanks for listening. Now on to my guest for today, Krish Ramineni, CEO and founder of Fireflies.ai, a tool that takes notes - and more - to help knowledge workers be more productive. Krish got his start with Microsoft as a product manager after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania. He explains that his primary responsibility was having a lot of meetings. With meetings costing a lot in terms of money and time, Krish wanted to find a way to more easily record what happened during the meetings and be able to easily refer back to the conversations. For people who have 5-7 meetings per day, as much as 50% of the information gained from those meetings is lost. With the rise of Zoom and virtual meetings during the pandemic, it's no surprise that Fireflies AI took off. But, Krish says, it's actually seeing faster adoption now. The tool accrues value over time, Krish explains, as it builds up information and knowledge that you can go back to to analyze patterns and find key details. Krish is also dedicated to providing transparency with the product, explaining that everyone in the meeting knows the tool is being used. In fact, it is its visibility that has helped make it such a success. Another tool, Ask Fred, takes the usability of Fireflies even further by providing a way to easily search for information from the knowledge base created by Fireflies. Now, let's get better together. Actionable Insights Krish noticed something in how he and others worked that he thought he could improve on. While ultimately the company may branch out, he is currently focused on helping people in similar experiences as himself - the business professional. While Fireflies AI is not the only notetaking AI tool out there, Krish and his cofounder are clearly steered by their values, which means they provide a transparent solution for business meetings in order to help people be more productive and creative. While Krish also sees opportunities for branching out in order to grow in the future, he is focusing on what they can do right now. The time of simply churning out content is giving way to offering unique content. Krish sees Fireflies and other AI tools help access more unique content to help different brands stand out. Links to Explore Further Krish Ramineni on LinkedIn Fireflies on Twitter Fireflies AI website Keep In Touch Book or Blog or Twitter or LinkedIn or JSYPR Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Welcome to "Secrets of Scale," a new pod storm series hosted by Matt Brown. In this first series of 2023, Matt dives deep into the world of "scaleups" companies, speaking with founders and CEOs who have successfully reached scale, raised millions of dollars, and have valuable insights to share on scaling their businesses on a global stage. Join Matt as he uncovers the secrets to success in the world of scaling a business. Series: Secrets of Scale Krish Ramineni founded Fireflies.ai to make virtual meetings easy for participants. Their cloud-based technology automatically transcribes and takes bullet notes from user calls and meetings, identifying key takeways from the transcription. Fireflies.ai and has key partnerships with top providers including Zoom, Slack, Salesforce, Dropbox and Asana and has raised $19 million from Khosla Ventures and Canaan Partners, among others.The enterprise has grown from 10 employees to 70 in less than a year. Over 300,000 organizations and 2.5 million people have received AI-generated meeting notes from Fireflies.aiGet an interview on the Matt Brown Show: www.mattbrownshow.Support the show
Spotlight Four is a snippet from our upcoming episode: Krish Ramineni - Generative AI and The Knowledge Worker. Listen to the full episode as soon as it comes out, by subscribing to Redefining AI. Who is Krish Ramineni? Krish is the Co-Founder and CEO of Fireflies.ai, an AI voice assistant that helps transcribe, take notes, and complete actions during meetings. He graduated from Upenn and was one of the youngest Product Managers at Microsoft where he led projects around customer voice & growth engineering. Krish guest lectures at Stanford on Deep Learning and Machine Learning and is an early-stage startup advisor. This episode is a topical listen that invites us to think about what the introduction of mass scale use of generative AI means for the software industry and the knowledge worker. Will knowledge workers have to make trade offs and if so, what kind?
Another inspiring conversation on the Zero to 5000 Podcast today. We were joined by Krish Ramineni, the Co-Founder and CEO of Fireflies.ai We discussed: Voice is an opportunity Word of Mouth is the best marketing Sometime the simplest idea can be the most challenging Adding value to customers even during a recession Removing the mundane Assist rather than replace jobs Open AI Thanks for Listening. Be sure to join our monthly email. One life-changing email to help you with your mindset, your methods, and your mission each month. https://zeroto5000.com/botw
No episódio do podcast em inglês eu recebi o Krish Ramineni, Co-Founder e CEO da Fireflies, um assistente de reunião que transcreve o áudio e tem também um mecanismo de busca baseado em IA que te permite você ter uma recordação do que foi discutido. O buscador deles permite o usuário fazer diferentes tarefas como sumarização (resumo), pesquisa de palavra chave, pesquisa por tópicos... Além disso, a Fireflies vai lançar daqui a pouco o chatGPT deles, chamado Fred. O Fred vai ser capaz de responder qualquer coisa que você quiser sobre a reunião. Durante o episódio a gente discutiu muito sobre IA generativa, chatGPT e diferentes aplicações que vamos ter baseadas nesses algoritmos. Site da Fireflies: https://fireflies.ai Linkedin do Krish: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krishramineni/ Linkedin da Fireflies: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fireflies-inc/ Linkedin do Podcast: https://www.linkedin.com/company/life-with-ai Instagram do Podcast: https://www.instagram.com/podcast.lifewithai/
In this episode I have Krish Ramineni, Co-Founder and CEO of Fireflies a meeting recording tool that transcribes your meeting and has search engine with AI superpowers to enable you to keep track on what was discussed. Their engine allows you to perform different tasks like summarisation, keyword search, topic search... Fireflies is launching soon Fred, their chatGPT like algorithm that will be able to answer everything you want from your meetings. During the episode we discussed a lot about Generative AI, chatGPT and different applications that we will have soon powered by them. Fireflies website: https://fireflies.ai Krish's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krishramineni/ Fireflies' Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fireflies-inc/ Podcast Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/life-with-ai Podcast instagram: https://www.instagram.com/podcast.lifewithai/
Today's guest, Krish Ramineni, Co-Founder and CEO at Fireflies.ai and a 2022 Fortune 30 under 30, joins us with his candid advice and insight gleaned from his success scaling Fireflies.ai - including two highly successful fundraising rounds. We discuss the importance of knowing when to pivot your ideas and how to use setbacks as feedback. We also delve into the value of discipline in fundraising and the benefits of leveraging existing relationships when seeking funding. We look at product-led growth — and how it can be incredibly successful. Finally, we'll provide tips and strategies for finding top talent in a slowing job market and offer guidance on effectively navigating these challenging times. Tune in for actionable insights and practical advice to help you succeed in today's challenging environment. Join us as we discuss the following: Being disciplined when fundraising and utilizing existing relationshipsDriving sales through product-led growthHow to hire and fundraise in today's economic climateKnowing when to pivot and treating every setback as feedback
Krish Ramineni was a former PM at Microsoft and stumbled into entrepreneurship. When focusing on productivity solutions, he and his co-founders decided to just build something that they would use. Fireflies AI was born and the rest is history!Fireflies AI assistant joins meetings across zoom, Gmeet, Teams, and several other video conferencing platforms to take notes, create searchable transcripts and provide insights into your conversations. In just two years, the company is globally distributed in 10+ countries and has been brought into meetings by more than 70% of the Fortune 500s today. In this episode, you will hear:How to identify the right moment to stick with a new startupHow a single thesis around productivity led to something moreHow the company used product-led growth levers to expand quicklyConnect with your host on Instagram at @shauna.armitage and listen to more Startup Renegade stories at www.startuprenegades.com
Krish Ramineni, Co-founder at Fireflies.ai talks all things Pipedrive and Fireflies with Evolve Sales Director, Bruce Bignell. Fireflies.ai helps your team record, transcribe, search, and analyze voice conversations. Covering: - The Fireflies.ai journey - How Fireflies.ai integrates with Pipedrive - The roadmap for Fireflies.ai - Top-tips for new users - Best-practices for advanced users Check out the Fireflies.ai demo: https://youtu.be/1DALhhockPs Try Fireflies.ai for FREE: https://fireflies.ai/ Considering Pipedrive? Sign-up for a free 30-day trial here: https://www.pipedrive.com/?utm_content=copy_text&utm_medium=partners_program&utm_source=Evolve&utm_term=pdp-evolve Evolve are Pipedrive Elite Partners, helping our clients with implementation, consultancy, and training. Book a free Evolve consultation here: https://calendly.com/bruceatevolve/30min?month=2022-04 Our website: www.weevolvebusiness.com Discover more of the best Pipedrive apps for email marketing: https://www.weevolvebusiness.com/best-pipedrive-apps/for-video-calls-solutions --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/evolve-pipedrive-podcast/message
1:55 - Parents' Profession3:03 - Entrepreneurial activities as kid4:56 - Crazy New thoughts & strategies6:04 - West Coast to East Coast7:18 - Entrepreneurial Vibes9:07 - Why Microsoft? Interview Process16:00 - Rounds of Interviews18:35 - Origin Story / Problem with The Office21:12 - Opposing Viewpoints23:00 - Start of Firefly24:29 - Product Stand-out26:55 - First Mistake28:18 - Adoption > Monetization29:45 - Legal Round31:55 - Data Security32:54 - Remote Company33:29 - Tricks for Different Time Zone employees34:53 - Biggest challenge as a Leader36:25 - Next Milestone37:32 - Single Greatest piece of advice39:07 - Krish's North Star
With the prevalence of Zoom and other video meeting programs, it is much harder to remain detail-oriented, take notes, and pay attention to lengthy digital discussions. If you're struggling with that, Fireflies.ai is your best answer. This AI meeting assistant joins your meetings to take notes, transcribe verbal data, analyze conversations, and a lot more. If you want to rewind and go back to your meetings because you forgot something, you can simply check in with Fireflies. Join Vijay Damojipurapu as he talks to the Co-founder and CEO of Fireflies.ai, Krish Ramineni. Learn how he implemented NLP technology to create this AI-powered tool. Discover more information about its features and how Krish and his team spread Fireflies through word of mouth and product adoption. Check this episode out so you'll never miss a single detail on your next meeting ever again!
Krish Ramineni grew up in Silicon Valley, observing tech all around him. But really excited him was the innovation happening the in the last 5 years. He used to play sports as a kid - tennis, baseball, etc. - and he was always excited about filming his games or practice, and utilizing software to analyze how he executed the craft. He brings his analytical mainframe into his current venture, and still plays some sports, lifts weights, and tracks his nutrition.Krish went through meetings like we all do - conducting a meeting with expensive team members, and then forgetting most of the conversation afterwards. He decided he wanted to figure out a way to remember every conversation he had, and unlock the hidden metrics behind meetings.This is the creation story of Fireflies.ai.SponsorsAirbyteDopplerHost.ioIPInfomablLinksWebsite: https://fireflies.ai/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krishramineni/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Krish Ramineni is the co-founder & CEO of Fireflies.ai, a meeting assistant and voice intelligence platform. In this interview Krish shares the story behind his two previous startup ideas -- a drone delivery company and an AI chatbot, which he built along with his co-founder. These companies are directly connected to what Fireflies is today, but not always in obvious ways. Krish also shares with us how Fireflies has grown, how they built the early version of the tool (the MVP) and why it doesn't work the same way today. Enjoy the interview! Yaro YARO'S NEWSLETTER Join over 20,000 subscribers to the multiple streams of income newsletter: ✉️ https://yaro.blog/newsletter LAPTOP LIFESTYLE ACADEMY Learn the most important skill you need today -- how to use online content to sell anything. Join Yaro's coaching and training Academy:
Krish Ramineni is the founder and CEO of Fireflies.ai, an AI assistant that records and transcribes your online meetings. From 2016 to 2020, Krish and his co-founder, Sam Udotong, went through several iterations of what would eventually become Fireflies.ai. It was the “period of hell,” as he calls it. Krish has always had a goal of creating something that would be able to help and touch many people's lives. Today, Fireflies.ai is used by numerous high-profile companies and organizations, including Nike, Twitter, Salesforce, Uber, and Intuit. Listen in as Krish shares how he was able to raise $19 million and ultimately get Fireflies.ai off the ground. Links Fireflies.ai: https://fireflies.ai/
In today's episode of Category Visionaries, we speak with Krish Ramineni, CEO of Fireflies.ai, an AI meeting assistant promising to revolutionize the value of videoconferencing by unlocking actionable insights from our meetings. Harnessing a unique combination of machine learning, transcription technology and analytics, Fireflies.ai is on a mission to make our meetings better or reduce the need for them altogether, providing all of us with access to the most important insights from those key strategic discussions. Already active in more than 70% of meetings held by fortune 500 companies, if you haven't heard of Fireflies.ai yet, it's only a matter of time. Topics Discussed: Why traditional meetings have been letting us down, wasting time and costing billions of dollars in man hours every year The wasted potential of videoconferencing as a source of searchable material, and how Fireflies.ai identified a gap in the market The importance of privacy, security, and compliance when dealing with sensitive data Why the product-led approach works perfectly for the Fireflies.ai sales model, and how they outmaneuvered the top-down competition How extracting actionable data from meetings is empowering knowledge workers across in more than 100 countries
As an entrepreneur, there will almost always be fires to put out. But prioritizing which ones get your attention—and when—is a huge component to growing and scaling companies (and not burning out as a CEO). In this episode, we revisit our most popular interview to date, with Fireflies.ai co-founder and CEO, Krish Ramineni — with a few new updates, including why Krish found himself on the phone at 4 a.m. with his team recently to put out one of those fires. We also revisit our conversation from a few months ago, where Krish shared some of the biggest lessons he's learned along his entrepreneurial journey. Krish Ramineni is the co-founder and CEO of Fireflies.ai, an AI meeting assistant that helps transcribe, take notes, and complete actions during meetings. After graduating from UPenn, Krish started as one of the youngest product managers at Microsoft, where he also led projects around customer voice and growth engineering. He's previously guest lectured at Stanford on deep learning and ML and now serves as an early-stage startup advisor. Tune into the full conversation for more on the evolution of Fireflies.ai, the advice Krish got as he was founding the company (and the advice he ignored), the ways in which customer satisfaction can measure the success of a company, how to know when to say no as an entrepreneur, and more. Here's a Glimpse of What You'll Learn: An update from Krish on how Fireflies has progressed and what's changed at the company since he recorded his initial interview with the Measure Success Podcast How to know which fires to put out and why that prioritization is such an important piece of the entrepreneurship journey More about what Fireflies.ai is, and how it can help business owners The backstory of how Fireflies.ai started and developed over the past few years The value of Fireflies.ai, and why that value extends to such a variety of people and functions across industries How the Fireflies.ai tool can help to eliminate or reduce conflict and confusion in business Some potential future features you could see from Fireflies.ai How Krish measures success at Fireflies.ai, including the benefit of simplicity when it comes to customer satisfaction The benefit of experiential knowledge — and why it's not always necessary for entrepreneurs to learn lessons from a textbook or class How Krish and his Fireflies.ai co-founder actually went against some of the common advice they received as they were starting the company — and why that paid off What Krish thinks is one of the most important things an entrepreneur can learn if they want to succeed Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Fireflies.ai Fireflies.ai on LinkedIn Krish Ramineni on Twitter “Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies” by Reid Hoffman “Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future” by Peter Thiel “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu 40 Strategy Contact 40 Strategy Carl J. Cox on LinkedIn
Krish Ramineni, Fireflies CEO and Microsoft alum, learned the value of NLP working with Skype and Office as a Product Manager. He set out to solve a problem he had: note-taking in meetings and following up afterward. Fireflies has been used by more than 60,000 organizations to make meetings more efficient. Krish has raised nearly $20M from an A-list group of investors including Canaan Partners and Khosla Ventures. Listen and learn...The evolution of speech recognition technology in the enterpriseHow Krish and the team build an AI voice assistant that joins meetings in 100 countries every dayHow to start with 85% ASR (automated speech recognition) accuracy and make it better using AIHow to mitigate the impact of biased training data where foreign accents and uncommon speech patterns are underrepresentedWho owns voice transcripts used to train AI modelsHow being recorded changes participant behavior in meetingsThe future of "voice-first" computingReferences in this episode:Krishna Gade from Fiddler discusses AI explainabilityFireflies on Twitter A whole breast, AI-based ultrasound system was cleared by the FDA to improve mammogram accuracyDentists now use AI to improve the accuracy of spotting cavities
Humans and technology are converging more and more, and the only way to stay relevant in the technology industry today is by continuously scaling innovation. Join us this week for a discussion with Krish Ramineni from Fireflies on why quality is more important than speed when it comes to innovation and why work ethic is more important than talent when it comes to employees.About Krish Ramineni:Krish Ramineni is the co-founder and CEO of Fireflies.ai, an AI assistant for note-taking in meetings to help users gain the most valuable insights from their conversations. Krish was featured on the cover of Entrepreneur Magazine: 12 Founders Changing Business 2020 and was named one of Forbes' 30 Under 30. Episode highlights: Iterating quickly is valuable in the early days to establish your business as a key industry player. However, as your company grows it becomes more important to focus on the quality and sustainability of execution if you want to continue to thrive. (04:30) Listen carefully to what your customers say about your product/service. Feedback from users is the most valuable guide for how to innovate going forward. (11:44) Customers don't want to change much about how they do things. If you want people to choose your product/service, you need to provide value without asking them to change too much about the way they are currently doing something. (22:00) Keep this in mind when hiring people: Work ethic, hustle, and drive are more important factors than talent, knowledge, and skill. In an innovative industry, the ability to learn quickly and be adaptable is invaluable; you don't have to be an expert from day one. (25:00) Krish's best advice for entrepreneurs:“The day you stop innovating is the day that I believe the company really stagnates.” (07:05) To keep growing, keep innovating! Connect with Krish: LinkedIn YouTube Website Follow Beyond 8 Figures: LinkedIn Twitter Website
In this episode, I interview Krish Ramineni, Co-founder and CEO of Fireflies.ai based in San Francisco, United States. Krish set up his business to help people facilitate their work. From working as a Product Manager at Microsoft, Krish decided to leave and pursue bigger opportunities. Fireflies.ai was established in 2016 and has been running for over 6 years. Became a global startup based in 11 countries across 41 cities with over 100 FTEs. Krish has said that growing a small business requires knowledge and consistency and he thinks it's one of the hardest things in growing a small business. However, he also said that being consistent can help maintain and improve the quality of your service. So he says, “It's not just about being smart. It's about showing up.” This Cast Covers: An AI assistant that helps people take notes, transcribe meetings, search back, and remember conversations. Participates in different video conferencing platforms, like Zoom, Google meet, Skype, and WebEx. Branching out as a whole suite platform. Helping entrepreneurs to focus on the conversation of the meetings. Dedicated to being a product-first product lead company. From attending 100 meetings weekly, now into 10s of millions of meetings. Learning how to do advertising without the need to do marketing on it. Sharing the benefits of hiring knowledgeable people. Teaching on how to enable your teammates to do well. Learning how to be progressive in business through focusing on quality over quantity. Additional Resources: Fireflies.ai High Output Management by Andrew Grove ——————————— Quotes: “Success is always an evolving metric.” —Krish Ramineni “Your expectations and projections may not always pan out the way you want them to.” —Krish Ramineni “There are times when you have to push and times when you have to pull back and let people solve things.” —Krish Ramineni “Be continuously customer-centric.” —Krish Ramineni “Bring on people that are aligned with a vision that is taking the chance.” —Krish Ramineni ——————————— Music from https://filmmusic.io “Cold Funk” by Kevin MacLeod https://incompetech.com. License: CC by http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Fail fast, move fast, and don't reinvent the wheel. If there's something that's been done you can use it. Especially in engineering products, use APIs, use things off the shop. You're Initial goal should actually prove that this technology is possible or the product is possible. So, get that MVP out, get it to the hands of people and have them use it. sometimes all the planning in the world won't do any good unless you actually take that first step and take action. It's not gonna be perfect the first time around, they're gonna be a lot of holes, bugs, gaps in whatever you do but you own it, you actually built something, delivered it. That is the most important thing. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-inventive-journey/message
In this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat with Krish Ramineni, Co-founder and CEO of Fireflies.ai. The Fireflies.ai video conferencing bot is an AI assistant that takes searchable notes to help teams maximize their productivity on Zoom, MSFT, Webex, and other video conferencing platforms. We dive in with Krish to get to the heart of why Product-Led Growth has proven to be the right approach for his team, why it is not right for everyone, and why Fireflies now plans to move beyond their purely self-serve model. And that might be what makes this conversation so interesting. Even though Fireflies has crushed it with PLG they are also learning and adapting every day. “Let people buy the way they want to buy” is a mantra for Krish and his team, but through data and experimentation, they are continuing to better understand what drives value for their customers. They have learned that some users do need a more conversational approach to succeed, so Krish is hiring a sales team to support that audience. We have seen evolutions like this from purely self-serve to hybrid models in other fast-growing companies like Slack and Hubspot and it shows how the best PLG companies are always working to better understand their growth engines and customers. So dive in with Sean and Ethan as they look to uncover what’s driving breakout growth success at Fireflies.ai The Breakout Growth Podcast is also on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-K_CY4-IrZ_auEIs0j97zA/featured We discussed: * From Project Manager at Microsoft to Fireflies.ai (06:35) * Let people buy the way they want to buy (12:19) * Why hiring salespeople is now on the radar (13:54) * Not every product is right for PLG, but it shines for collaboration tools (16:49) * Building and monitoring predictability in growth (41:12) * Growth is repeatable (54:16) And much, much, more . . .
In this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat with Krish Ramineni, Co-founder and CEO of Fireflies.ai. The Fireflies.ai video conferencing bot is an AI assistant that takes searchable notes to help teams maximize their productivity on Zoom, MSFT, Webex, and other video conferencing platforms. We dive in with Krish to get to the heart of why Product-Led Growth has proven to be the right approach for his team, why it is not right for everyone, and why Fireflies now plans to move beyond their purely self-serve model. And that might be what makes this conversation so interesting. Even though Fireflies has crushed it with PLG they are also learning and adapting every day. “Let people buy the way they want to buy” is a mantra for Krish and his team, but through data and experimentation, they are continuing to better understand what drives value for their customers. They have learned that some users do need a more conversational approach to succeed, so Krish is hiring a sales team to support that audience. We have seen evolutions like this from purely self-serve to hybrid models in other fast-growing companies like Slack and Hubspot and it shows how the best PLG companies are always working to better understand their growth engines and customers. So dive in with Sean and Ethan as they look to uncover what’s driving breakout growth success at Fireflies.ai The Breakout Growth Podcast is also on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-K_CY4-IrZ_auEIs0j97zA/featured We discussed: * From Project Manager at Microsoft to Fireflies.ai (06:35) * Let people buy the way they want to buy (12:19) * Why hiring salespeople is now on the radar (13:54) * Not every product is right for PLG, but it shines for collaboration tools (16:49) * Building and monitoring predictability in growth (41:12) * Growth is repeatable (54:16) And much, much, more . . .
The founding story of Fireflies.ai told by co-founder Krish Ramineni sounds like a post-college rock band that turned into software hack. Instead of going to graduate school (working as a PM at Microsoft), Ramineni took his would-be co-founder up on an offer to “hang out” and “work on different things” in some free co-working space that a VC had given them in Boston.When they had something real, they went back to San Francisco, went heads down, bootstrapped, went through an accelerator, and raised a seed round. A month later, the pandemic hits, everyone goes remote, and the roller coaster ride begins. In the past 4 years, Ramineni and co-founder Sam Udotong have been scaling up the abilities of an enterprise voice assistant (or AI) meeting assistant. But it's a lot more than the mystery attendee you see popping up in your Zoom meetings. But competing in a crowded space (with technology that wasn't new) Ramineni and co-founder Sam Udotong knew they needed a broader vision for the product. So, they started looking at what teams needed that could be accomplished beyond automated notetaking. Their idea was transforming the product into voice workflow system for enterprises and for organizations. For example, if you're in a zoom meeting, you could say “Fireflies, pull up the Q2 financial reports and tell me what went right and what went wrong.”Fireflies has capitalized on a product-led growth strategy from the beginning. They don't spend very little on advertising today, and instead, doubled down on the freemium model, which gets the Fireflies.ai name is naturally viral in every single meeting. Also, because they've spent a lot of time and effort to integrate with the major CRMs, and because they have a compelling vision of what could be done with the tech in the future, we're switching our transcription service now.
Subscriptions: Scaled - A podcast about subscription businesses
In the latest episode of Subscriptions Scaled, we speak with Krish Ramineni, CEO at Fireflies.ai.Fireflies is an AI meeting assistant and conversational intelligence platform. It includes an AI assistant named Fred that follows you around during your meetings: these include Zoom, WebEx, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and other major conferencing providers.The AI assistant, Fred, joins your meetings and transcribes. It takes notes and summarizes them, allowing you to search back through your discussions for analytics and insights.The goal of Fireflies is to help people be productive, eliminating the need to take notes during meetings. Krish started Fireflies in 2016 when he left Microsoft. He intended to go to grad school but started working on different projects instead.In the early days of Fireflies, the team was consulting, bootstrapping, and contracting out. It built chrome extensions, among other projects.Today's version of Fireflies was established in 2019 and rolled out in 2020. There was a three-year period where the team experimented with machine learning, chatbots, and natural language processing. They fell in love with the voice space and decided to focus on that. When the pandemic came, everyone started using video conferencing and Fireflies became highly successful.Learn all about Fred—the AI assistant that joins your meetings, transcribes, takes notes, and summarizes them—tune in to the latest episode of Subscriptions Scaled, with Krish Ramineni, CEO at Fireflies.ai.Fireflies.aiReady to get started with Rebar?Head to rebartechnology.com or email info@rebartechnology.com to schedule a call today.
Krish Ramineni is the Co-founder and CEO of Fireflies.ai, an artificial intelligence assistant platform that records, transcribes, and organizes voice conversations for virtual meetings. The platform integrates with various project management, CRM, and storage apps like Slack, Asana, Trello, Zoho, Salesforce, HubSpot, and Dropbox. Before founding Fireflies, Krish worked in Product Management at Microsoft. In this episode: Do your company's processes and procedures limit the speed of your operations? Do they involve layers of bureaucracies and approvals that reduce your team's efficiency? If your business system slows down your company's productivity and growth, it's time to review it. Good processes should not be bureaucratic; they should be balanced, simple, and provide guidance. They should also give employees the freedom to execute their tasks effectively based on the documented procedures — without having to reach out to the company's management. Krish Ramineni, the Co-founder and CEO of Fireflies, joins Adi Klevit in this episode of the Systems Simplified podcast to talk about his systems for automating meetings and using processes to increase productivity. Krish also shares his tips for building a remote company, talks about his hiring process, and discusses the benefits of using Fireflies.
Krish Ramineni wanted Fireflies.ai to make virtual meetings easy for participants. His cloud-based technology automatically transcribes and takes bullet notes from user calls and meetings, identifying key takeways from the transcription. Fireflies.ai and has key partnerships with top providers including Zoom, Slack, Salesforce, Dropbox and Asana and has raised $19 million from Khosla Ventures and Canaan Partners, among others. The enterprise has grown from 10 employees to 70 in less than a year. Over 300,000 organizations and 2.5 million people have received AI-generated meeting notes from Fireflies.ai. In this conversation we chat about how to use the tech but also Krish's experience as a new entrepreneur. Connect with Krish: Website: https://fireflies.ai/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krishramineni/ +++++ Subscribe to the Podcast! ▶︎ PODCAST | https://bit.ly/3bU6D3l Please Follow & Connect with me! Link's Below ▶︎ WEBSITE | https://tyzerevans.com ▶︎ YOUTUBE | https://youtube.com/c/tyzerevans ▶︎ INSTAGRAM | https://instagram.com/tyzerevans ▶︎ FACEBOOK | https://facebook.com/grindsellelevate ▶︎ LINKEDIN | https://linkedin.com/in/tyzerevans ▶︎ TWITTER | https://twitter.com/tyzerevans ▶︎ TIKTOK | https://tiktok.com/tyzerevans ▶︎ PATREON | https://patreon.com/tyzerevans Check out Tyzer's other podcast "The Book Legion" at https://thebooklegion.com
Krish Ramineni Co-founder & CEO @ Fireflies.ai - Graduated from Upenn. - Started as one of the youngest Product Managers at Microsoft. - Lead projects around customer voice & growth engineering at Microsoft. - Guest lectured at Stanford on Deep Learning & ML. - Early-stage startup advisor. Fireflies is an AI meeting assistant that helps transcribe, take notes, and complete actions during meetings. Our AI assistant, Fred, integrates with all the leading web-conferencing platforms in the world like Zoom, Google Meet, Webex, & Microsoft Teams along with business applications like Slack and Salesforce. Mission The future of the workplace is one built on top of voice and video collaboration. Our mission is to help people complete and automate business operations with just their voice. We type at 50 words per minute but can speak at 150 words per minute. Voice can allow us to turn talk into actions instantly. Organization We are building a globally distributed, remote first workplace from day 1. The Fireflies team is based in 5 different countries in 9 different locations. Remote work allows us to hire a diverse team to build a product that takes into consideration all types of users from across the globe. With the recent pandemic, companies have had to adapt to COVID-19 and make their teams work remotely. The rise of remote communication & collaboration tools has further increased the need for a platform like Fireflies to organize all the different conversations that happen in meetings. Whether that is recruiting remotely, selling remotely, or managing the team remotely, Fireflies creates an automated knowledge base of all the meetings that are easily searchable and shareable.
How can you capture the knowledge buried inside conversations and convert them into actions? After graduating early from UPenn in 2015, Krish Ramineni dove headfirst into Microsoft as a Product Manager. Krish enjoyed his job and he was learning a lot but he realized that he was making incremental improvements to existing products instead of being truly innovative and building new products. When graduate school at Cambridge was right around the corner a year later, a fateful meeting with Sam Udotong (current Co-founder and CTO) led him to tinker around. Together they build the foundation for Fireflies AI: an AI note-taking assistant for your meetings. Fireflies raised $14M in their series A round and $5m in their seed round. Krish Ramineni and Sam Udotong recently made in on Forbes 30 Under 30. Fireflies went through at least 5 pivots before finding product-market fit and Krish and Sam both lives on pizza and soylent for over a year before building something that could attract the attention of investors. ❗ What PROBLEM is Fireflies AI solving? Approximately 40% of our time is spent in meetings daily, but that knowledge is rarely captured in an efficient and reusable manner. We also speak an average of 150 words/minute, but write approximately 50 words/minute. Meetings are often not easily transferrable to output. Moreover, how do you extract value from an audio recording or transcript? What if you want to pluck only the action items, important dates, or metrics discussed? Whether you're preparing to sit down with competitors, investors, or your internal team, extensive manual effort is required to condense a meeting into digestible, high-value morsels.
The 74 episode of dToks features Krish Ramineni, CEO of fireflies.ai, a leading meeting AI company used by Google, Uber and fortune 500s everywhere. He talks about: 1. The nature of problems always changes, accept your reality and stride forward 2. Choose your battles carefully and reflect 3. One must trust their gut, and take advice with a pinch of salt. 4. If you are going to fail, fail on your own terms and learn from it. 5. There are very few people whose leadership is acknowledged by individuals, but it is possible.