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$1.5B AI Founder: The ONE Rule for Building an AI Startup in 2026

📌 Head to https://granola.ai/marina and enter the code MARINA for 3 months off. Chris Pedregal built a $1.5 billion AI app in 3 years, in a category where Zoom and Google already had similar features before he launched. In this conversation he hands over the exact playbook for breaking out of a crowded market with a tiny team and a small marketing budget — a playbook anyone can use to win in the AI era. *Timecodes:* 00:00 — Can you still compete with Big Tech in 2026? 01:16 — If anyone can vibe-code, why build anything? 02:31 — Is there still room for new AI startups? 04:31 — The launch strategy almost nobody uses 06:23 — How to find a winning startup idea in 2026 09:55 — The startup advantage Big Tech can't copy 14:10 — The 2×2 framework for what's worth building 17:00 — The Slack and Dropbox growth playbook 18:20 — 500 installs on day one — no marketing 21:40 — The hidden signal of product-market fit 23:56 — Inside Chris's AI workflow 27:07 — The one job Chris won't give to AI 28:42 — The prompt that found Marina's bottleneck 29:20 — The prompt that makes any AI tool better 32:25 — Turn every meeting into a chief of staff 37:40 — Why some AI feels magical and most doesn't 39:22 — What Chris tells people who fear AI 40:52 — Chris on dealing with AI anxiety 43:24 — Chris's #1 warning for AI founders *Links:* 📩 Follow my Newsletter: https://siliconvalleygirl.beehiiv.com/subscribe?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=futureproof-sub&utm_content=Christoper-Pedregal 🔗 My Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/siliconvalleygirl/ 📌 My Companies & Products: https://Marinamogilko.co

Chris PedregalguestMarina Mogilkohost
May 29, 202644mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 1:16

    Can you still compete with Big Tech in 2026?

    1. CP

      If you believe AI's gonna have a big impact, then you should try to stay close to it. Think about the core things that you are good at and figure out how you could augment those with AI.

    2. MM

      This is Chris Pedregal, CEO and co-founder of Granola, the AI notepad valued at $1.5 billion. He built it in three years and turned it into a standout product in a crowded AI market. When it comes to competing with big corporations, is there still opportunity to build something major in 2026?

    3. CP

      There are a lot of products out there, a lot of people trying to do things. It's like can you care more than everyone else? There's so much advertising that's happening that I think that if you don't have a product that itself can, like, pop out and get noticed and loved, it just feels like a, a losing proposition.

    4. MM

      If you had to start from scratch today, what would be your playbook?

    5. CP

      I would definitely build [beep] .

    6. MM

      Welcome to Silicon Valley Girl. I am so excited to be chatting with you because we've been using Granola for I think over six months now.

    7. CP

      Mm-hmm.

    8. MM

      I know you launched earlier, but when we discovered it and started using it, uh, it's an amazing product for our team. And what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna launch a task right now so it starts recording so that at the end of the conversation we'll be able-

    9. CP

      To see notes

    10. MM

      ... to see-

    11. CP

      Chat with it

    12. MM

      ... how it actually works.

    13. CP

      Yeah, perfect.

    14. MM

      Back

  2. 1:16 – 2:31

    If anyone can vibe-code, why build anything?

    1. MM

      in 2024 you said it's so much easier now to build very specialized workflows for a small group of people versus earlier 'cause now you can use AI. Your bet was-

    2. CP

      Yeah

    3. MM

      ... that with current AI tools we can build something for a small group of people because we don't have to use so many resources, right?

    4. CP

      Mm-hmm.

    5. MM

      Uh, 'cause we can vibe-code all this stuff. We can-

    6. CP

      Yeah

    7. MM

      ... ship faster.

    8. CP

      Yeah.

    9. MM

      Versus like 10 years ago if you wanted to build something you would need a huge team, so serving small group of people wouldn't really make sense. Do you think it's still the case in 2026 or we moved to a world where anyone can vibe-code anything so that you don't really need to build a very specialized tool? What is your sense of the market right now?

    10. CP

      The one thing I know is that everything's changing, and it's, it's hard to predict the future. Just because people can vibe-code things doesn't mean that we're only gonna use vibe-coded software all the time.

    11. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    12. CP

      I think, uh, vibe-coding, building tools from scratch, is incredibly powerful if you're building like an internal tool that your team's gonna use. I still think that there's certain areas where you wanna have the best possible tool, and that takes tons of time and effort and care and continued investment. So I, I do think there will be lots of software out there that exists, but it, it's hard to predict exactly where the line of what will be vibe-coded versus

  3. 2:31 – 4:31

    Is there still room for new AI startups?

    1. CP

      what will we pay for.

    2. MM

      Do you feel like it's much harder to build now? 'Cause you have experience building in pre-AI era, comparing that to building Granola.

    3. CP

      Harder now?

    4. MM

      Yeah. Just because I feel like the market is so crowded. Like you see... 'Cause anyone can become an entrepreneur. If 10 years ago in order to build something if you were not a coder yourself you needed to find an engineer. If you were an engineer you needed kind of to find the product person.

    5. CP

      Yeah.

    6. MM

      So you needed those resources. Feels like now there are so many solo founders and the market is really crowded.

    7. CP

      Yeah, it's two sides of the same coin, right? I think it's so much easier to build now. You don't need as many people, as many resources, which means more people are trying it. It's kind of like, uh, when digital photography, uh, became common. It used to be really hard to get a camera, right? And then only a few people had cameras that were photographers. And then, um, digital photography made it easy for everyone to take photos, right? It doesn't mean that professional photographers aren't still needed and way better than your average person.

    8. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    9. CP

      So I think it's the same thing with starting products today. There are a lot of products out there, a lot of people trying to do things. A lot of them aren't that good, right?

    10. MM

      Mm.

    11. CP

      And I, and I think, uh, that's what it's all about. It's like can you, can you care more than everyone else, and can you create something better?

    12. MM

      Yeah.

    13. CP

      Like I'd... What, what I've seen in terms of the one thing that seems to help an AI company break out from a crowded marketplace is just that the product actually works and is the experience of using it is better than, than the alternatives. We see people are more willing to switch for slight improvements in products now. So it's like people are very, very attuned to the quality of the products that they're using. And in that sense I think it's, it's no different than before.

    14. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    15. CP

      It's like you, you still... You, like, it's just you have to fight for that.

    16. MM

      Yeah.

    17. CP

      And you have to, you have to be really, really focused on it.

    18. MM

      I really like how you said you have to care more. I feel like that applies to any niche where you're competing, anything that you're doing.

    19. CP

      Mm-hmm.

    20. MM

      If you care more than others, then this is kind of... this helps you, uh, stand

  4. 4:31 – 6:23

    The launch strategy almost nobody uses

    1. MM

      apart. Talk to me about launching a product in the AI era, 'cause you didn't do like a public launch. You started with a few users.

    2. CP

      Yeah.

    3. MM

      Uh, saw their reaction. If you had to start from scratch today, what would be your playbook?

    4. CP

      Yeah, I think the, the conventional startup wisdom before was launch as soon as possible, get feedback from real users, and then, um, iterate your way to, to something great. And I think because of precisely what you said before, there's so many people putting out slop, like putting out crappy products, that it is actually a differentiating factor, a differentiating approach if when you launch, when you come out into the world, your product is better. [laughs]

    5. MM

      Yeah.

    6. CP

      Uh, and so we, we didn't have this whole strategy about building an AI. We were just like our philosophy when we were building Granola was basically we'll do whatever it takes to learn as quickly as possible what we need to do to make our product better.

    7. MM

      Mm.

    8. CP

      And, um, for the first year, uh, the way we learned the most was literally by sitting next to someone, watching them try to, you know, install it and use it, figure out everything that was wrong, go home, try to fix that, do it again the next day with a new person, and do that over and over and over. And we didn't need to launch publicly, uh, to learn what was wrong with the product because every day we would see exactly what was wrong with the product-

    9. MM

      Mm

    10. CP

      ... by just watching one or two people use it. After about a year it got to the point where it was like it was actually pretty good for those folks, and we said, "Okay, it's, it's now time to, to launch publicly because then we'll learn at scale what's wrong with it-

    11. MM

      Yeah

    12. CP

      ... how we can make it better." Um, so that was the approach we took. And-I think that really, really made the difference. Where like in, in a world where anybody can make software, the only thing that really matters is, like, how good of the- is the software that you're trying to use. So I would... If you said if I was starting it from scratch, I would definitely, uh, build in private or closed beta until I felt really, really secure that the product was meaningfully better than, than

  5. 6:23 – 9:55

    How to find a winning startup idea in 2026

    1. CP

      the competition.

    2. MM

      Yeah. And when, when it comes to picking out idea, was that your initial idea, smart notes, or did you have to iterate through ideas as well?

    3. CP

      Yeah. Ideas are, are tricky, right? Because it's like on one hand you wanna be thoughtful from a strategic standpoint. Like, if I build in this space, is it a dead end or is there a big opportunity there?

    4. MM

      Yeah.

    5. CP

      Right? And that's kind of high-level thinking. Um, and then on the other hand, really a lot of building is, is, is better not to think and it's better to just put something in front of people and, and, and learn how they react to it and, and kinda, uh, follow that, you know?

    6. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    7. CP

      And, um, and I think when you're, if you're trying to think about a startup idea, you wanna do both of those things. You wanna make sure you're building in a space where there's, uh, there, you know, there's legs.

    8. MM

      Future. [laughs]

    9. CP

      Yeah, there's a future. Exactly. But then it's sometimes better not to think too deep. Like, once you make that bet, uh, it's almost better not to think at a high level and an abstract level, and really just to, like, follow the scent in terms-

    10. MM

      Mm

    11. CP

      ... of what people like. And, um, in 2022, I, I came across LLMs for the first time. This was about, um, eight, nine months before ChatGPT launched. And I was... Immediately I was, like, convinced. I was like, "Okay, this, I don't know what this new technology is, but it's gonna, it's gonna change everything."

    12. MM

      Mm.

    13. CP

      "It's gonna change all the, the tools we w- we use for work, for productivity." I felt that very strongly, and I knew, um, I knew that was in a space I wanted to build in and be excited about. But then when we had to figure out where to start, that's where, uh, we put some prototypes in front of users, in front of people, and, um, they didn't care about most of them. But this idea of, like, a real-time notepad that would take notes for me and that I interact with, people's eyes really lit up when we put that in front of them.

    14. MM

      Was it, like, a just word-by-word description of what you wanna build, or did you vibe-codes... Well, vibe coding wasn't a thing back then.

    15. CP

      Well, vibe coding didn't, it... Yeah. Vibe coding wasn't g-

    16. MM

      Yeah

    17. CP

      ... wasn't quite a thing. But it was more the vibe-code. It was, um, uh... I'm a big believer in prototypes, so like-

    18. MM

      Mm-hmm

    19. CP

      ... like cheap, basic prototypes that let people actually mess around with a thing. Um, I feel like you're gonna learn a lot from that. So my co-founder and I built a few different prototypes, and the, the notes one was just, it was just some JavaScript on an HTML page that, that we threw together manually. And, but it was enough to give you a f- uh, a flavor of what it would be like if it, if it worked properly.

    20. MM

      How did you select those first people who were evaluating your idea?

    21. CP

      Friends, friends of friends. It was just people we had access to.

    22. MM

      Was there any qualification criteria? 'Cause now that I'm thinking about it, if I'm trying to build something, I also wanted to put in front of the right people.

    23. CP

      Yeah.

    24. MM

      Like, people who are maybe paying for a lot of tools, people who are working in a big corporation so they have access to, you know, some budget because just randomly asking people... 'Cause some people don't know-

    25. CP

      Yeah. No, that's, that's a good point. Maybe we're a little bit more thoughtful about it than that. Like, we built Granola for ourselves, and by ourselves we mean people who are, like, knowledge workers, tech savvy, um, are using different types of tools, like live-in tools like Slack, and Linear, and, uh, Superhuman, and Gmail. So the folks that we would talk to were oftentimes folks working at startups of different-

    26. MM

      Mm

    27. CP

      ... sizes, just because that was kind of the, the environment that we were in.

    28. MM

      What was your criteria of deciding whether to drop idea or continue working on it? Was it just, like, somebody said yes, or were you tracking something? I know I was talking to, uh, Josh Woodward from Gemini, and he said the way they test products at Google, they watch how eyes light up-

    29. CP

      Yeah

    30. MM

      ... when users start testing it. So d- they don't really have a metric. They're like, they're relying on this intuition-

  6. 9:55 – 14:10

    The startup advantage Big Tech can't copy

    1. CP

      them to.

    2. MM

      When it comes to competing with big corporations, right? 'Cause we have Zoom, who has AI.

    3. CP

      Yeah.

    4. MM

      Like, every product now has AI notes. Can you walk me through your mindset, entrepreneurial mindset? 'Cause when I'm building something and I see a large company releasing something similar-

    5. CP

      Yeah

    6. MM

      ... like, my first thought is, "Oh, no, I'm done." But then I'm like, [laughs] "Okay, we're gonna make it through."

    7. CP

      Yeah. Things are moving so quickly and companies are launching things all the time, and I think now we've all gotten a bit more used to it, but maybe a year, year and a half ago, it w- just felt like, oh, the world's, like, just, like the sky is falling and, and the world's changing every five minutes. Uh, when we launched Granola, AI note-takers, uh, had already been around. Like, the earliest ones had been around for, like, seven or eight years.

    8. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    9. CP

      So there were tons of AI note-takers. The Zooms and the Googles of the world, they already had AI note-takers. Not as advanced as the ones they have now, but they, they already existed. And when we would go and we'd interview people and try to understand, like, were they using them, uh, were they being useful or whatnot, it became really clear that, uh, they were only, like, marginally useful. Um, and they weren't actually kinda doing the job that people wanted from a tool like that.

    10. MM

      Mm.

    11. CP

      I guess what I'm saying is, like, we kinda did it to ourselves 'cause we entered this, like, crazy saturated, uh, space, and I think we were able to break out because even though Zoom or Google create notes and Granola creates notes, the, the, the way we've designed Granola, the, the way we think about it is just very, very different from those tools. And Granola is very much a, it is your personal tool. It's, like, your personal notepad-

    12. MM

      Mm-hmm

    13. CP

      ... that you are in control of. And you, you can put notes in there. I can go into Granola and I can basically chat with all my meetings from the past two years. Um, and as the AI models get smarter, the level of, like, insights or the level of, uh, conversations I can have across that corpus gets, uh, smarter and smarter.

    14. MM

      Yeah. I would love to talk to you about that later in this interview-

    15. CP

      Yeah

    16. MM

      ... 'cause, uh, this is, like, if a company's not recording their meetings, I think they're losing... out of 50% of what they can build later with all of these insights that they're getting-

    17. CP

      Yeah

    18. MM

      ... 'cause this is their employees' taste. This is the way they make decisions.

    19. CP

      Mm-hmm.

    20. MM

      This is the way they move. And the only way to teach AI how to mimic or enhance that is to record all-

    21. CP

      Is to give it the context, yeah

    22. MM

      ... yeah, it's-

    23. CP

      Yeah, exactly

    24. MM

      ... it's just, yeah, it's the context, exactly, all the data. I want to thank the sponsor of this video, Granola. Granola is one of the apps I use every single day. There is a rule that I made for myself: if a task repeats and it's not the work that actually makes me money, I automate it. Cleaning up meeting notes was one of the first tasks I actually automated with AI. Every call I take, strategy partnerships, team syncs, intro chats, gets recorded and sorted. And because I've been doing this for a long time now, at the start of every new call with the same person, I have a clean list ready, what we agreed on last time, what I still owe them, what they still owe me. It's not a bot that joins your call. Nothing is really visible to the other side. You stay fully in the conversation, and after the meeting, Granola transcribes everything and turns it into a clean summary you can work with. And of course, at the beginning of the call, you disclose that you will be recording this with Granola. So here's my real example. Last week, I was in a partnership call. We were going through financials, timelines, deliverables. There were a lot of moving pieces, and my manager was not part of that call, but I really wanted to send her a follow-up email. I felt really engaged in the conversation. I could focus on the person I was talking to without having to take notes of every detail because I knew every number and every date would get captured. After the call, I opened the transcript, and I just asked Granola to create that follow-up email, pull a list of deadlines. Drafting the email part took me about 25 seconds, and I copied and pasted. That's it. As if my manager was on the same call with us. My team and I have been using this for a few months. We miss fewer things, which really matters because with AI, the number of tasks we're tracking has actually gone up a lot. If you wanna try it, use the code Marina and get three months free. The link is in the description, and now let's get back to our conversation with Christopher. For an entrepreneur who's starting today

  7. 14:10 – 17:00

    The 2×2 framework for what's worth building

    1. MM

      and thinking, "Okay, I really wanna build this tool, but I'm afraid that a big company's gonna release a similar..." I don't know, like, I don't know if you watched Google I/O, but they released a very similar tool to Whisperflow-

    2. CP

      Oh, did they?

    3. MM

      ... where it looks the same.

    4. CP

      [laughs]

    5. MM

      The soul bar appears.

    6. CP

      I didn't know that.

    7. MM

      Has the, the v- But the, the difference is-

    8. CP

      Yeah

    9. MM

      ... while you're talking to it, it also references all the files you have in Google Drive and Gmail. So you can say, like, "Oh, by the way, insert a table using this data," and it's gonna do it. So it's not only transcribing.

    10. CP

      Yeah.

    11. MM

      It's also adding context. And I'm like, I can see how I'm still using Whisperflow 'cause I'm, I want just the transcription, but I also see how I'll be using more of that as well. Like, can you give advice to an entrepreneur who's building something, but again, constantly in this era when everyone's competing [laughs] with everyone?

    12. CP

      Yeah, yeah. It's a great question, right? And it's one of those things where it's... And I think if anyone had a crystal ball and, and could say, like, "Okay, there's, there's an extreme world where we are only using, like, there's only one tool in the future," right? We use it for everything, and there's a, a different version of the future where we, we use even more tools than we have today. And I think we'll end up somewhere in the middle, but it, you know, it's hard to know exactly where we'll be. The way I would think about it is, so the, it's basically, it's a two-by-two matrix. It's basically how frequent is the use case that you're going after, and how important is it for the user? It's like if it's an infrequent use case, then I think it'll be really tough to compete with the, the larger companies or the larger tools that are more established. I think the... If it's an infrequent use case, people will go to the ChatGPTs or the Claus-

    13. MM

      Yeah

    14. CP

      ... most likely, right? In the same way that you didn't see a lot of verticalized search engines in, like, the 2000s because people are just going to Google and-

    15. MM

      Mm

    16. CP

      ... it's easier. They have the habit, and that's where they would go. So I think you have to choose a, a, a use case that's very common.

    17. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    18. CP

      Um, because if it's common, you have a, you have an opportunity to build a habit around it. And there, the question is, like, is it a common use case that the user doesn't really matter if you do a much better job at, or is it a, is it a use case that's really, really important-

    19. MM

      Mm

    20. CP

      ... to people, right? And it's... And I think you wanna be in that corner where it's basically, it's very important to people, where if the product experience is even just, like, 10% better, like, that's, that's reason enough for people to switch to you and use it. And if you're in that quadrant, then I think it goes back to this if you care more. And that's the one thing you can do over the big companies, is, like, you can just care more-

    21. MM

      Yeah

    22. CP

      ... 'cause they have to care about a lot of things, right? Um, then you can build that better product, and I think you can, you can compete.

    23. MM

      Do you think we should add a niche to whatever you just said?

    24. CP

      Yeah.

    25. MM

      'Cause I feel like if you're just going f- after a frequent use case for billions of people, then it's a big corporation kind of play field.

    26. CP

      Yeah.

    27. MM

      But if it's a niche, like, for your product, it's, like, people who are fixed on their productivity and want to record, want to be more effective with their notes.

    28. CP

      Yeah. Or you become a really big company one day. I think that's a-

    29. MM

      Or, or that

    30. CP

      ... yeah. [laughs]

  8. 17:00 – 18:20

    The Slack and Dropbox growth playbook

    1. CP

      using Granola at some point.

    2. MM

      That's... And, and you're moving into B2B.

    3. CP

      Mm-hmm.

    4. MM

      You started as B2C company, and now you moved into B2B.

    5. CP

      Uh-huh.

    6. MM

      How is, how is that shift?

    7. CP

      Well, yeah, it's a, it's a good point. Our strategy was to mimic, uh, like a Slack or Dropbox, like those types of bottom, bottoms-up companies. So it's basically a, a product-led growth. So the idea that someone inside of a company, uh, discovers Granola, they fall in love with it, they tell their, their colleagues. We kinda grow organically inside of the company. And then at some point, someone in a position of authority, maybe it's, like, the founder, maybe it's the, the chief compliance officer, what have you, um, legal officer, security officer, says, "Whoa. Everyone's using this software."

    8. MM

      Yeah.

    9. CP

      "We should, uh, we should probably, like, pay for it, have control over it, make sure we know where our data's going," and all that stuff. And, um, that was always the plan. We always knew that we would be selling to companies.

    10. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    11. CP

      Um, but uh, at the beginning, we were just worried, not worried, we just focused on just trying to build something people actually wanted and, and, and liked. Um, and that, that worked. So Granola did spread, like, virally, uh, organically throughout companies. And now, um, we have some very, very large companies who are on enterprise plans with Granola. But it all started either bottoms up, where it kinda-It spread through the company virally, or the founder or CEO was using... Like, heard about it and was using it themselves and found it valuable and said, "Actually, everybody should, should be

  9. 18:20 – 21:40

    500 installs on day one — no marketing

    1. CP

      using it."

    2. MM

      I think it's a great B2B marketing plan-

    3. CP

      Mm-hmm

    4. MM

      ... when you start with a consumer. How did you get to those initial customers?

    5. CP

      We posted on Twitter. Um, that-

    6. MM

      Mm-hmm

    7. CP

      ... like, that was basic-

    8. MM

      By yourselves? Like, the founding team, or...?

    9. CP

      Yeah. Yeah, I think we posted it from my account, and I, I didn't really have a Twitter following at all. Um, and I think we just, we got really lucky. It was, um, this idea... The way Granola works is, like, it, it looks like Apple Notes. It's a notepad, and then at the end of the meeting it'll take whatever notes you wrote and it'll flesh it out. And there's this really nice animation where you see your, your notes get, like, filled in.

    10. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    11. CP

      And, um, we had a GIF of that, and at the time I think a lot of the, like, the startup founders or leaders out there were really interested in new UIs or interactions around AI. And so we had a few famous, um... Like, uh, Guillermo from Vercel retweeted my tweet.

    12. MM

      Mm.

    13. CP

      And then, um, and then Nat Friedman also retweeted it. So basically there somehow, and I don't... Just, like, the universe-

    14. MM

      Wow

    15. CP

      ... made this happen. Like, it just caught a few people's eyes and, um, and they tweeted about us. And then we just started growing. Like, the first day I think we got 500 installs, you know? So it's like-

    16. MM

      That's pretty decent.

    17. CP

      It's not bad. I mean, it was-

    18. MM

      Wow

    19. CP

      ... it, it's more than I expected, but it's also a, a drop in the bucket, right? And, um, and then it just started growing, like, little by little by little, 'cause we, we weren't doing any marketing. We, um... The crazy thing about Granola is all, all the, like, old school AI note takers, they're all s- super optimized for, like, growth hacking. They'll, like... At the end of the meeting they'll send notes to everybody who was in the meeting, whether they want it or not, whether you want it or not. And, um, Granola doesn't do anything like that. It's... Like, Granola's... Like, our only job is to serve the user and, and give the user wings. The fact that Granola was, uh, entering a space that was super crowded and had zero growth loops built into it, and it still grew virally, organically, and kinda was able to, to pop out and become really visible in that space, I think is a really... There's something going on there. I think it's a really strong testament that people are hungry for just better software and better software experiences.

    20. MM

      Good products.

    21. CP

      Yeah, yeah.

    22. MM

      Interesting. So basically all your marketing is based on-

    23. CP

      People loving it and-

    24. MM

      A great product.

    25. CP

      Yeah.

    26. MM

      Exactly.

    27. CP

      Yeah. The whole company is based on that. [laughs] Yeah.

    28. MM

      That's amazing. So would it be your advice for any entrepreneur building something, don't think about marketing yet, just think about the product and people sharing it?

    29. CP

      I think so, 'cause I think, um, to your point earlier, it's so noisy out there right now. There's so many people doing so many things, and there's so much investment, right? So there's so much, um, advertising that's happening, that I think that if you don't have a product that itself can, like, pop out and get noticed and loved, it, it just feels like a, a losing proposition. By default I always think about, uh, very user-facing products. I think it's very different if you're going after customer support. There it, it's, I think, all about having the right sales motion, and, and marketing is a part of that. But, um, but generally I think if you don't have a good product, you're... Like, it's the one thing that you can go and make better with a small team.

    30. MM

      Mm.

  10. 21:40 – 23:56

    The hidden signal of product-market fit

    1. CP

      and-

    2. MM

      What were you tracking when you gave it out? Like, 'cause you couldn't see their eyes, right?

    3. CP

      Yeah.

    4. MM

      But [laughs] what were you tracking? What... The frequency of use?

    5. CP

      Yeah. So what we would do is we would, um, we would set up a, a first call. We, we, we'd do it in person if we could. Otherwise we'd do a video call where we would ask them to share their screen, and then we would watch them try to install Granola-

    6. MM

      Mm-hmm

    7. CP

      ... and try to use it without us saying anything. And then we would schedule a call in three days, again share their screen, and walk through the, the meetings they used Granola for and talk about what was good or not. And that, that was the highest signal. That's, like, the super qualitative, um, uh... That's where you learn the most. But then once the product started getting good enough that people would actually use it, then we'd track usage. And, um, there's this, uh, there's this thing. I'd never heard about it before, uh, before Granola, but one of our mentors told us about it, and it's a thing called a dot plot. And a dot plot, basically it's, um... Think of it like a, like a, like a spreadsheet, and every row is a user.

    8. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    9. CP

      And every column is a day.

    10. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    11. CP

      Right? So the default dot plot we had would show the last 30 days. And then in each cell you basically put, for our case, like, how many meetings did they use Granola for on that day?

    12. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    13. CP

      And, um, and then you'd change the color of the cell. So if they used it for, like, 10 meetings, you should make it, like, dark green. If they used it for zero, you should make it white.

    14. MM

      Mm.

    15. CP

      And then you can at a glance very easily see, like, the patterns.

    16. MM

      Yeah.

    17. CP

      And, um, and the idea is that you start with a dar- dot plot when the product's not very good, and then you iterate and you iterate and you iterate. And what you should see happen-

    18. MM

      See it light up

    19. CP

      ... you should see it light up.

    20. MM

      Yeah.

    21. CP

      'Cause normally when you do analytics, you get... You, you group all the usage together and you just get, like, a usage graph, right? Which you're like, cumulatively-

    22. MM

      Mm

    23. CP

      ... are people doing more meetings or not? But that's not actually very helpful in teaching you what's wrong with your product and is it working. Um, and in a dot plot you can see things where it's like, oh, okay, like, this person was using it a lot and then they stopped using it, and then they, like, clearly remembered it existed and started using it again. Or, like, maybe they went on vacation. Or you could be like, oh, actually there's a few people who started a little bit and then they had, like, one day where they, uh, they did, like, five meetings, and from then on it became a habit and became hooked. And you can be like, "Oh, how do we get people to get to have that kinda day?" So it, it becomes, like, a very easy visual way to, to get a, to stay on, on top of the pulse of what's happening with your users.

  11. 23:56 – 27:07

    Inside Chris's AI workflow

    1. MM

      Amazing. All right. Talk to me about your AI stack.

    2. CP

      Okay.

    3. MM

      What are you using apart from Granola?

    4. CP

      [laughs] So I struggle with this question because I try to use Granola for as many things as possible, and I use, uh, we haven't launched it yet, but I just got this Apple Watch, and that is a, that's a really nice feeling because-

    5. MM

      Mm

    6. CP

      ... it's just here all the time.

    7. MM

      Yeah.

    8. CP

      Right?

    9. MM

      This is how I take my notes when I go to conferences. Either I will-

    10. CP

      What do you, what do you, what, what do you use?

    11. MM

      Well, they're just voice notes.

    12. CP

      Ah.

    13. MM

      And they go to my phone, and then I use whatever we're using to transcribe.

    14. CP

      Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    15. MM

      So it's, it's a journey-

    16. CP

      It's a few steps, yeah

    17. MM

      ... for my note. Yeah. [laughs]

    18. CP

      Yeah, but in terms of form factor, I think the, the Apple Watch is, it just feels, it feels very well.

    19. MM

      Oh, 100%.

    20. CP

      Yeah, yeah.

    21. MM

      It, it should be the form factor for all the conferences and everything.

    22. CP

      Yeah.

    23. MM

      Yeah.

    24. CP

      Yeah, yeah. Um, and then, uh, next, I mean, I use Claude, right?

    25. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    26. CP

      Claude's probably my second one. Um, and then one of the engineers, uh, at Granola set up this internal agent. We call it Nacho. I actually don't know why we call it Nacho. Um, it has, like, a little nacho as the icon. And, um, we've connected basically all of our internal tools to this one agent.

    27. MM

      Mm.

    28. CP

      So literally every single data source that we have, uh, is accessible to this agent. And there's, like, an internal portal, but we also interact with it in Slack, and that one's really interesting. So for example-

    29. MM

      Interesting

    30. CP

      ... I will... Oftentimes what'll happen is, like, I will notice something kind of weird in the product because, you know, that's my job, and I'll post about it in Slack. And then someone will ask Nacho to, like, be like, "Hey, can you look at the analytics for the last couple months-

  12. 27:07 – 28:42

    The one job Chris won't give to AI

    1. MM

      Okay. What, what haven't you delegated to AI yet, or what are you doing without AI?

    2. CP

      I think a lot of building great product, it's all about how does this make me feel?

    3. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    4. CP

      Right? And a lot of it is human intuition based. It's trying to put myself in the shoes of another person and, and imagining how they'd, how they'd experience that. I just don't use AI for that-

    5. MM

      And you can't

    6. CP

      ... kind of stuff at all.

    7. MM

      What you're describing is something so uniquely human.

    8. CP

      We have some really young people, uh, on the team, and they, they just naturally default to using AI for everything.

    9. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    10. CP

      It's, it's just, like, their, like, default behavior. And more often than not, I look at that and I'm like, "Oh, that's clever. I wouldn't have done that, but that's actually really smart and I should do it." I think the, the product stuff is probably, it's probably one of the last things, at least in, in our immediate work, that I think we'll get. Um, I don't actually know if AI will ever kind of fully, fully-

    11. MM

      Mm

    12. CP

      ... get in there, 'cause I think, uh, I don't know. The lived human experience is actually the one thing that we have. [laughs]

    13. MM

      Totally. Totally.

    14. CP

      Um, what, what it can help, uh, do, though, is, um... So we'll get lots of feedback from users, right? And then grouping, classifying that. Basically making that feedback, putting it into a form that's really easy for us to, like, build intuitions on top of and making decisions. Super useful for that. But then actually, what do you do with those intuitions? What changes you wanna make? That, that's still-

    15. MM

      Oh, yeah

    16. CP

      ... very, very manual.

    17. MM

      And it's a very founder driven thing-

    18. CP

      Yeah

    19. MM

      ... because you're, like, the soul of the product.

    20. CP

      Yeah.

    21. MM

      It has your vibes, so it has to have your feelings. I don't know if you can even- [laughs]

    22. CP

      Yeah

    23. MM

      ... uh, put it into a product, but I love that.

  13. 28:42 – 29:20

    The prompt that found Marina's bottleneck

    1. CP

      Yeah.

    2. MM

      Do you have any, I don't know, call them magic prompts, that totally change how you interact with AI? For example, uh, I just asked my Granola, "Can you identify bottlenecks in my company?" And it went and analyzed my conversations. Like, "Number one, and you know it, you're the bottleneck." [laughs]

    3. CP

      It's you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [laughs]

    4. MM

      That was number one.

    5. CP

      [laughs]

    6. MM

      And then it came up with, uh, a few more things that we're currently fixing.

    7. CP

      Mm-hmm.

    8. MM

      Do you have any other prompts that anyone can use with their AI that's gonna change their work?

    9. CP

      It all comes down to the AI needs to have enough context. So if you use Granola in all your meetings, then it does.

    10. MM

      Mm.

    11. CP

      And then you can ask it some pretty incredible things. So let's, let's just assume that the person's doing that.

    12. MM

      Yeah.

    13. CP

      Um,

  14. 29:20 – 32:25

    The prompt that makes any AI tool better

    1. CP

      the, the things that really opened up my eyes and where I was surprised at how good they were, were, um, coaching level things.

    2. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    3. CP

      Like, that really, there's a, there's one recipe in Granola which is called Coach Me, Matt. What's kind of great about coaching is that harsh f- If you ask an AI for feedback, an AI can give you harsh feedback, and there's no person... Like, it's not worried about hurting your feelings, right? So the... And it's, an AI can say something to me and I think I can hear it better than if, like, let's say my wife said something to me. [laughs] I might be a little bit more defensive, if that makes sense.

    4. MM

      Mm.

    5. CP

      So, uh, anything around, like-... deep coaching. Hey, what are these, like, patterns you observe-

    6. MM

      Yeah

    7. CP

      ... and how I do things that maybe I'm not aware of that are not helping-

    8. MM

      Mm-hmm

    9. CP

      ... or that I could, that I can improve? That's a really big one. Oftentimes I'll go into other tools. If I use ChatGPT or Claude, they feel quite dumb to me compared to Granola because they don't have all that context baked in.

    10. MM

      But you can connect now. I mean [laughs] you know.

    11. CP

      No, no, I can.

    12. MM

      Yeah.

    13. CP

      Uh, but, but what I mean by that is, um, so I have 2,000 meetings in, in Granola, or 2,500 meetings, right? So-

    14. MM

      Wow

    15. CP

      ... when I ask Claude a question, it doesn't read 2,500 meetings, right?

    16. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    17. CP

      It'll, it'll read 10, and it'll try to form a picture about me from those 10 meetings, right?

    18. MM

      Hmm.

    19. CP

      So I have a, a recipe in Granola which basically says, "Look at my last month of meetings and write me five pages about who I am, what Granola is, what's the Granola product."

    20. MM

      Can we try that? Can you give me my Granola? Okay, let's do it. [laughs]

    21. CP

      Yeah.

    22. MM

      I, I really like this one. Let me, let me see what, what it tells me.

    23. CP

      Perfect. So if I go here and then we just say, "I'm going to use ChatGPT to do some work, and I want ChatGPT to understand who y- who I am, what I'm working on, and what I try to, what I'm trying to achieve so it'll have better context about me. So please look at, um, all my meetings from the last month and write three pages that I can paste into ChatGPT so I'll have all the context on what I'm trying to achieve."

    24. MM

      Wow. Oh, nice. It even extracted some stats, promotion cadence. Yeah. Nice.

    25. CP

      So what I find is now-

    26. MM

      Mm-hmm

    27. CP

      ... if you take this-

    28. MM

      Uh-huh

    29. CP

      ... and you can go to any AI out there, you can go to ChatGPT, you can go to Claude, you can go to any- anything. And if you, if you just say, "Here's some context about me," and you paste this in-

    30. MM

      Mm-hmm

  15. 32:25 – 37:40

    Turn every meeting into a chief of staff

    1. MM

      on-

    2. CP

      Moving towards it, yeah

    3. MM

      ... based on, on this data that you have.

    4. CP

      Yeah.

    5. MM

      I also write a newsletter where I go deeper on AI tools that I use, career strategies, and things I can't fit into a 30-minute podcast. It's free. Link is in the description. We've been talking for almost an hour, right?

    6. CP

      Yeah.

    7. MM

      And I'm remembering some things, but there are some details that I might be missing that are important to me. How does Granola work in terms of picking out those details? Uh, how does it decide what to surface? 'Cause-

    8. CP

      In the, in the notes, you mean?

    9. MM

      Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

    10. CP

      Yeah. So, uh-

    11. MM

      Oh, nice. It gave me product strategy in crowded markets. I really like it.

    12. CP

      [laughs]

    13. MM

      Building in the I- AI era: Market dynamic, dynamics product strategy.

    14. CP

      Yeah. What we realized early on is that what are good notes for you would be very different than what are good notes for me.

    15. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    16. CP

      Right? So, like, the point of notes is really, uh, dependent on who the person is and what they're trying to achieve.

    17. MM

      Yeah.

    18. CP

      I think we might've been the first to do this, is basically notes are generated for each person, and they're different for each person. And what we do is we take as much about the person into account as possible. So I, I don't know if this was a calendar event, but let's say you, you join a Zoom meeting, um, and use Granola. Granola will go and try to f- do research and figure out who everyone in that meeting is and what their roles are.

    19. MM

      Ooh.

    20. CP

      And then we'll use that to figure out what is im- what the meeting's about and, like, what should be highlighted in those notes.

    21. MM

      If I tell Granola-

    22. CP

      Yeah

    23. MM

      ... my goal for the next few calls is to, I don't know, make sure we follow up with everyone if we had agreed on-

    24. CP

      Yeah

    25. MM

      ... a to-do list.

    26. CP

      Yeah.

    27. MM

      Would it be highlighting that for me in every meeting? Does it have, like, a universal memory of how I want my notes to pres- to be presented?

    28. CP

      Not an automatic one yet.

    29. MM

      Mm.

    30. CP

      Yeah. So that's something... You can go and set up a template in Granola. You can basically say... You can have different templates and s- and so you can kind of say, "I want notes in this structure." During a call or during a meeting, you'd be like, "Hey, Granola, make sure to say include this in the notes," and it'll do that. But it won't... It doesn't have, like, a, a memory about, "You said this in the last call-

  16. 37:40 – 39:22

    Why some AI feels magical and most doesn't

    1. CP

      like, an example there that's really important is, for example, let's say, um, oftentimes people will need to send a link to, like, an important doc. Like, for example, before this you sent me a doc saying, "Here are some instructions," right? That doc might change. Like, next month you might decide to use a different doc.

    2. MM

      Yeah.

    3. CP

      And if it, if you had to tell Granola that you changed the doc, you might forget. Whereas, if it has access to your emails and it notices that, "Oh, you now use this new doc, I'm gonna start using this new doc," you don't have to think about it at all.

    4. MM

      Mm.

    5. CP

      So I think there's, I think a, a great model for AI is one where the best designed things become invisible, right?

    6. MM

      Exactly.

    7. CP

      And, and I, and I think the, like, the best AI is gonna be stuff that you don't even realize is there. And the, and the-

    8. MM

      Self-learning, self-

    9. CP

      Yeah

    10. MM

      ... updating, learning from what's changing. This is exactly what you're describing.

    11. CP

      I try to get everyone at, at Granola to think about product in the, the same way. And, um, when someone new joins the company, I basically paint them this picture where I want Granola to feel like a handrail. You know when you have stairs, there's that-

    12. MM

      Mm-hmm

    13. CP

      ... that railing? And, and people always look at me like, "Like, what do you mean by that?" It's, like, such a weird thing. And I'm saying, "Well, um, handrails are basically invisible, right? They're on every staircase. You never notice them, right? Uh, you don't pay attention to them until you trip, right?"

    14. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    15. CP

      And then your hand shoots out, and it needs to be, like, right there.

    16. MM

      Yeah.

    17. CP

      And it needs to, like, hold your weight.

    18. MM

      Exactly.

    19. CP

      And it's a really, really important thing, and it needs to be, like, super intuitive. But then you go back to living your life and going up and down the stairs and, and that's, that's how I want Granola to feel. Like, I want Granola to have your back.

    20. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    21. CP

      To, to... In any moment of need, like if you're tired, if you're tripping or whatever, it's like we're right there for you. But otherwise, you're the star of the show, you know?

    22. MM

      Yeah.

    23. CP

      You're out there doing things.

    24. MM

      Yeah.

    25. CP

      You're, you're living your life.

  17. 39:22 – 40:52

    What Chris tells people who fear AI

    1. MM

      You know, whenever I post-

    2. CP

      Yeah

    3. MM

      ... like, I'm excited w- this company just launched this and I've been using this company for so long, now I can do this. Oh, why are you happy? AI's stealing your data. Oh, AI's gonna replace you in three months. Oh, like, corporations are just eating, eating us, whatever.

    4. CP

      Yeah.

    5. MM

      What would you say to those people?

    6. CP

      I think the world's gonna change a lot over the next couple years, and I think whenever there's a period of a lot of change, there's gonna be turbulence. That is just a reality, and I, I don't think we're... I don't think anyone knows exactly where we're gonna end up. I'm excited about AI as a tool that augments us and enables us to do more and better things than ever before. Um, and I think there's a lot of areas where, where that's the case, where actually, uh, AI's not gonna replace people. It's actually gonna let people do more. And, um, there are all these, uh, examples in history where all of a sudden if something becomes more accessible, the demand for it goes up because now people can use it. That's, uh, Jevons paradox, I think it's called.

    7. MM

      Yeah. Yeah.

    8. CP

      Um, it's not gonna be everywhere though.

    9. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    10. CP

      Right? Like, there's definitely gonna be, uh, pockets of society where it's gonna be very disruptive, right? And I think, um, that's happened lots of times in history as well, but it's, like, change can... Change is, can be exciting, but it can also be really hard. I think it's important to hold the excitement, but also the, the reality of the downsides, uh, in our minds at the same time.

    11. MM

      Yeah.

    12. CP

      Um, 'cause I, I think that's what's gonna happen.

    13. MM

      What do you tell yourself

  18. 40:52 – 43:24

    Chris on dealing with AI anxiety

    1. MM

      when you have fears about AI, if you ever have them?

    2. CP

      Uh, I... So my, my view there is I think about what I can control. Generally, this is my, like, philosophy in life. I think about what I can control and the things I can't control, and I don't worry about the things I can't control. And I think, uh, about the things you can control is if you believe AI's gonna have a big impact, then you should try to stay close to it. And by that, I, I think you should, you should try to use it.

    3. MM

      Yeah.

    4. CP

      And I think that's really the only thing you can do.

    5. MM

      Totally.

    6. CP

      Honestly, right?

    7. MM

      100%.

    8. CP

      And I think that, um, and I've seen this. I've seen... 'Cause I think what's happening with, uh, engineering is it's, like, you can kind of see what happens in engineering, and the same thing that's gonna happen with coding and engineering is gonna happen in other sectors later. And I see, again, we have a guy on our team, he's 20, and he's, uh, the way he uses AI is incredible, and he's just able to do all kinds of incredible things that I never would've expected. And so, like, I think the only advice I have to people is, like, don't shy away from it-

    9. MM

      Mm-hmm

    10. CP

      ... and, and, and lean into it. And that doesn't mean you need to... There's a lot of, like, AI theater, productivity theater. It's like, I think there's a lot of people, there's almost, like, more talk about how AI has helped them than it's actually helping them be more productive.

    11. MM

      Yeah.

    12. CP

      Right? I think we're-

    13. MM

      I totally agree with that. Yeah

    14. CP

      ... I think we're in the productivity, AI productivity theater phase.

    15. MM

      Mm.

    16. CP

      But I think we're gonna come out on the other end of that where it just... really does augment your productivity tremendously. But it doesn't mean you have to spend 24/7, you know, like f- following every single launch. Like, I... That's, that's not what I mean. What I mean is, um, think about the core things that you are good at that you need to achieve in your job, and figure out how you could augment those-

    17. MM

      Mm

    18. CP

      ... uh, with, with AI. And like we were talking about for product, for me it's not, "Oh, how do I get, how do I get ChatGPT to make product decisions?" But it's maybe, how do I get AI to, uh-

    19. MM

      Get all the data

    20. CP

      ... get all the data so I can be-

    21. MM

      So you can make this

    22. CP

      ... better, better informed to make-

    23. MM

      Yeah

    24. CP

      ... better product decisions.

    25. MM

      Totally.

    26. CP

      And so that, that's how I would think about it. I've... You know, I have a six-year-old and an eight-year-old.

    27. MM

      Mm.

    28. CP

      And, and I think about what's the world gonna look like when they're older and, and I, I don't know, right?

    29. MM

      Yeah.

    30. CP

      Um, but, um, it's perhaps gonna be a little bit easier for them because it, the world's gonna change a lot over the next few years. So... Well, I don't... I mean, again, I don't know but it's... They're gonna... They're already growing up in a world where-

  19. 43:24 – 44:54

    Chris's #1 warning for AI founders

    1. MM

      advice for founders building in the AI era. What should they be avoiding?

    2. CP

      I think this has always been the case but it's, it's so much more extreme with AI. There's so much noise. Um, there's so much FOMO. There's so much imposter syndrome. Like, if, if you were just... If you just look at Twitter you'd, you'd assume that everything is just-

    3. MM

      Oh

    4. CP

      ... like solved.

    5. MM

      Companies are run by agents.

    6. CP

      By agents.

    7. MM

      Everyone's a millionaire.

    8. CP

      Yeah, exactly. All that stuff.

    9. MM

      Oh, yeah.

    10. CP

      And, um, and I think the rea- the, the reality is very far from that. And I think ultimately the thing you can do, again, what can you control, is you can understand a problem and a user better than anybody else in the world if you really wanted to. And you can just care more about building a really great solution for those folks. And you can have a peripheral awareness of, of other stuff that's happening. I think it's good to understand directionally where things are going. But do not let it mess with your head because it's so easy to obsess and to look at those things and to assume that they have it figured out.

    11. MM

      Oh, they're shiny. Yeah.

    12. CP

      And they're shiny objects and it's like the, what's the, the fashion of this week versus that week or what have you. But the underlying problem that you're trying to solve, that probably hasn't changed at all-

    13. MM

      Mm

    14. CP

      ... in the last, like two weeks, right?

    15. MM

      Yeah.

    16. CP

      Or even the last two years probably. And so, like that's, that's what you need to work on, right? That's your job. It's exciting but it's also... You have to, you have to manage that mentally because otherwise you'll, you'll-

    17. MM

      You'll be too distracted

    18. CP

      ... you'll get lost. Yeah.

    19. MM

      And you have to care more about your particular problem.

    20. CP

      Yeah.

    21. MM

      Love it. Thank you so much. It was awesome.

    22. CP

      Thank you so much for having me.

    23. MM

      Thank you

Episode duration: 44:55

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