Sam Stevenson: How Granola Won the Crowded AI Notes Market, Then Pulled Off a Bold Rebrand

0:11 So, hi everyone and welcome to the Design VC, the show where design meets business and creativity meets capital. And I'm your host Andy Bud. Each week I'll be talking to a series of founders, investors, and designers about the role design has to play in the world of startups. And today I'm really excited to be joined by Sam Stevenson, a designer turned co-founder of Granola, one of the hottest startups in the UK at the moment. So Sam, welcome to the show.

0:36 >> Thank you Andy. Thanks for having me. >> Really, really excited to talk like I've we've spoken to a few sort of tech companies been around for 10 12 years, people like Intercom or whatever. But it's really exciting to see someone that's still in the explosive phase of their journey. So I'm really looking forward to getting stuck in. but for people that don't know Granola, I can't believe there's anyone out there that hasn't come across you, but could you just give a quick sort of, you know, intro as to what you're all about?

1:02 >> Yeah. So, Granola is the line we usually use is it's a it's an AI notepad for people in backto-back meetings. So, what that means is it's a it's designed to feel very familiar like Apple Notes or any note-taking app you're used to, but it's much cleverer under the surface. It will it basically will listen transcribe to the conversation you're having. And because of that, you can do all kinds of interesting AI stuff on top of it. So you can you can ask it questions during the meeting about what's going on. It will enhance any notes that you write during the meeting into a much more useful summary afterwards. And then as you use it, the idea is over time you kind of like accumulate this big treasure trove of context of like your kind of memory of all of the meetings you've been in. And that that becomes a really useful thing over time.

1:45 >> That's a that's a really great summary. And I have to admit, I'm I'm a fan. And I'm a user of Granola. with my coaching or my advisory work, I often use Granola as a great way of summarizing the sessions we have and I've written a whole bunch of personal kind of templates that shape the output into a way that is meaningful for my for my purposes. So it's it's a lovely tool. Also interesting like we first met we've only met once before but it was a group dinner and I think actually one of the people in the dinner got out it might have been you got out granola and tried to capture the whole kind of conversation of about 10 people and did an amazing job. So the diorization and the kind of like the the audio quality is brilliant. but I'd just like to take you back to the sort of the founding days. Can you tell us a little bit about sort of where the initial idea came from?

2:30 >> Yeah, totally. So I think we got to the granola idea because I I I was in a period of my life where I'd like I quit my previous job which I was I was like solo designer at an early stage company building a note-taking app as as it happens. personally I like really enjoyed working on that kind of tool you know like you do a note-taking app well it it it's like becomes very deeply embedded in your life and you rely on it for a lot of stuff. That was a very satisfying kind of product and problem to work on for me. So I was kind of like I'd quit that instead of getting another job, decided to just hack on stuff by myself for a bit. Partly to get better as an engineer like I kind of had done a bunch of website building but not much full stack development before and I wanted to get better at that.

3:16 >> And just to be clear, was this in the age of VIP coding or was this before VI coding? Did you actually build it yourself? >> I guess I've always been like code curious. I I learned a bunch of HTML, CSS, and stuff as a teenager, like cuz I was kind of learning about websites and how to do, you know, how to make stuff on the web. I've been a freelancer for a lot of my career. And one thing I really liked about that was every now and again I just not get another job in between jobs and like mess around with stuff myself. So I've had a couple of like periods in my career where I've had a few months where I just kind of dedicate myself to hacking on side projects and like learning about writing code and stuff like that. So, I was like I'd built a bunch of React like side projects with React, I think, at that point, but never like a fully working app that I could I could rely on. and so that was that was the interesting challenge at the time for me was like could I could I do the whole thing to the point where I was like a reliable enough app that I would use every day. Yeah. And so I was I had a few months of like hacking on building my own personal like note-taking app for myself, which is a lot of fun. I got kind of obsessed with it. nobody else uses it and it's still I still use it today but it's like it's yeah purely just for me. but yeah I I was doing that and I guess like a few months into that met my now co-founder Chris who was Chris was like explicitly looking for a co-founder and I think found me through a a meetup group for people into tools for thought is the like I guess the the name of the niche but it's like >> a co-founder speed dating >> it was a I mean the the group definitely wasn't designed for that. It was designed for nerds of note-taking apps and like and you know but yeah I think that was his way of finding like someone you know in the right kind of space to to work with. I we you know we hit it off like as friends and we started hanging out a lot and we were I guess both you know both tinkering with our own things both exploring what we wanted to do next.

5:09 Chris was really interested in GPT3 at the time. this was like slightly before chatgbt and I was obviously hacking on note-taking apps and I've been thinking about that for a while and I guess broadly the like fuzzy idea that was interesting to us was like it feels like these these LMS like it's clearly magical. It's clearly going to change so much of the like of of all of the software we use dayto-day. And it feels like there's a really interesting interface problem where no one's figured out like how are we actually going to interface with these things and and and how are they going to fit ergonomically into our lives. and that just felt like a really fascinating problem and one we wanted to spend our time thinking about. And so you know we it took us a while to get to like meeting notes and and the kind of the shape of the product we have today. But that was the initial space that excited us.

5:58 >> I mean it's fascinating. And I think around the same time there were lots of meeting sort of summarization apps out there, but they were all basically apps that would join a call as a as a participant sort of very little interface capture the the recording in the background and then basically email you a transcription was I guess from what I'm hearing from you, you started as a notetaking app and then the AI element kind of like found its way into the note-taking app as the the technology caught up and as you met your co-founder. So you seem like you had a very different form factor from everybody else that was working on this problem at the same time.

6:33 >> Yeah. Yeah. I think so. I think like I would characterize it as like I think I think really what we wanted to build was like the future interface for how we do knowledge work or something. You know it's like that's a very lofty way of talking about it. But like that was the ultimate goal we were interested in. And I think we actually kind of begrudgingly decided we the first thing we needed to do was become a really good meeting notes app because there were so many others out there and like yeah it's just a really crowded space. but I think we there were a few things that gave us conviction there like one was just as we talked to lots of people about their work life and about where the pain was and what sucked the most remembering the things you promised and then acting on them like after meetings still came up a ton. And even among people that used one of these other meeting not meeting meeting summarizer things, it just felt like, you know, you want to build painkillers, not vitamins.

7:27 And actually, this was a real like potential painkiller for a lot of people. and two, like I think we had an inkling of this when we started and now I I I feel it in my bones, but like AI is like if you want to be able to do work with AI, the AI is only ever as good as the context that you give it and how well it like understands what's going on in your life. And for most people, so much of our day is made up of meetings and talking to people. And like I think for any AI to do well in the working world, like it's got to be in the meetings and understanding what's happening there. Yeah, those were kind of the reasons we we got into it. And yeah, figuring out, you know, how how we differentiate ourselves and how do we how do we stand out from the pack of all of the other meeting note summarizers was was definitely a tricky thing at the beginning, especially for fundraising.

8:13 Like I think we kind of believed we'd had a different product vision, but convincing other people about it was was tough. >> Well, this is what I wanted to ask you because I was just curious like what the what those initial fundraising conversations were like. Just being completely honest like I genuinely think if you'd have come and pitched to me, I probably would have had a similar attitude which was like there's lots of people already doing this at the moment.

8:32 Like how and why are you different? So what were those what were those early conversations like and how long did it take you to find someone that had that bought into the same vision? Yeah, I think yeah, it was a it was a journey, the fundraising stuff and and for me it was totally new. Chris Chris had a previous company, Socratic. so I'd kind of been through a few rounds of this before, but it was a real steep learning curve for me. But I I think I think over over the process we kind of learned that like I think the leaps people had to make to to believe in granola was basically like one you got to believe that like AI is going to change all of work tooling which I think basically everybody was there at that point.

9:13 Two you got to believe that this like interface problem hasn't been solved yet. And I think you had to believe that specifically for us because Chris has a product background. I have a design background. Basically, our argument was like there is a thing that nobody's figured out here and like a lot of a lot of the problem is like an interface and design problem and and so backing a product person and a designer to go chase after it is that's the right set of people to go do it.

9:39 >> I I would agree, but I'd imagine a lot of VCs would go this is an AI problem and actually I'm expecting a whole bunch of AI engineers and this is a business and sales problem. So, I want a load of marketers to be on board and what what is a product and a designer going to bring to the table? >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's true. And and a lot of people said no because of that.

9:56 Like prior to fundraising, we done we we'd been working on it for probably two two months or something. And most of that time had been like a lot of open-ended talking to people and understanding their space and how they work currently. and then a bunch of prototyping. And I think from the talking people to people we had pretty good conviction that one like the the current the kind of existing set of meeting summarizers was like not doing it for people. There was a lot of like oh yeah I guess I I've installed this thing. I I never really go look at it anymore like I don't it's not actually very useful to me. A thing we observed a lot which is like really stuck in my head was people would use like would their company would tell them they should use one of these meeting summarizers and so they would have it join their meetings but everybody would still keep a piece of paper to on their side and they would actually they would use that to write down the things that really matter to them and so you know the the the tool was actually missing the most important thing which was like the your couple of things that you thought were important. Yeah. So it's you know these tools are missing like missing the mark. I think for me there was also a bit of awkwardness. There's social awkwardness whenever I'm on a call and someone's bot kind of joins. I don't know why but it feels a little bit kind of weird and obtrusive and there's always a conversation around like do you really want to have the bot? Should we should we ditch it? And I've you know back in when when all of those kind of tools were blowing up like quite a lot of people would say oh I installed this thing and I can't get rid of it. It's almost like sort of malware like I don't want it on anymore but every time I have a call it kind of I can't disable it.

11:22 And so there's an awkwardness which obviously Granola doesn't do because it's not using that same kind of model. >> Yeah. Yeah. maybe to our detriment. We've been very anti all of the growth hacky like kind of like you know all the behaviors that where the product kind of latches on to you and doesn't want to let go. Like we've been to those and and maybe could have grown faster if we'd gone for a few few more of those.

11:49 But >> yeah. >> So you're you're out there. pitching. Do you remember like how many pitches you did in the end? >> I I think Chris did most of the first calls. I think he probably spoke to like 30 odd investors, something like that. I think over a short amount of time. >> Yeah. >> And and how many sort of term sheets did you get? Was there a bidding war or were you kind of like struggling to get it over the line? And and how was your experience being you said your your partner was doing the initial calls like when you were bought in to pitch like how how was that for you?

12:21 Yeah, it was a learning curve. I think I don't know. I feel like pitching is this weird dance where like you have to be genuine, but also you have to like sell a pretty lofty vision, which is like honestly like you only like 50% believe to be true or something like cuz who knows like what how things are actually going to p pan out. you know, you have to like paint a picture of like one possible version of the future, which which seems really exciting, but the reality is you're then going to go back to work and like actually, you navigate the mess of the real world and find your way to something good. So, it took me a while to get comfortable with that and like I don't know, it's just it just intimidating, you know, you're like speaking with these super accomplished people who work with people you really look up to and like and the idea that you should be taken seriously by them too took me a while to to feel good about.

13:11 >> Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I mean fundraising is really really challenging. As you'll know, a VC fund will maybe get, you know, like 5,000 or more presentations a year. They might only talk to 500. They might only invest in 25. And so the numbers are stacked against you. It's really, really intimidating. You've got to speak to lots of people. And again, a lot of them will have a very fixed view of the industry. A lot of them will be saying things like, well, isn't this isn't this kind of industry already sewn up? And so but you managed to convince a few people to kind of come on that journey with you. So like post investment what was the what was the next kind of like six months sort of like for you like building the team building out the product?

13:52 >> Yeah. for us it felt like the company really started once we raised around. Like before that we were kind of it was the two of us like coming up with an idea and coming up with a story you know that we could go tell to people. and fundraising was kind of the moment where we, you know, we did that and then we like we incorporated the company after that. We got an office after that. Like, that's kind of where it got real.

14:16 I mean, the first the f the absolute first thing for us was to to find a great engineer to work with cuz, I was the technical one of the two of us. And I'm not that, you know, wasn't that technical at all at the time. I could do a lot more with V coding now, but like I was I was very limited in what I could build, you know, so that took a while. we found Andre who who was like brilliant like the the dream first engineer to have on the team. I think that probably the next year actually was like just continual like trying to like find users who would talk to us and would be up for trying our thing and then giving it to them and then watching them figure it out live on a call. and studying how they used it, you know, through analytics and stuff and then trying to check in with them and learn as much as we could about how they were how they were using it. And just trying to keep a really tight feedback loop and and then iterating all the time, you know, trying new things in the product and seeing how that felt and and just rinse and repeat again and again and again.

15:15 We I think we incorporated the company in like March 2023 and we launched the product on May 2024. So it was like you know just over a year of like incubating the version one of the thing before it went out. >> Were you getting pressure from the investors to go faster to launch earlier to start getting that kind of like traction going and were you sort of pushing back saying no this has got to be this has got to be perfect.

15:42 >> we were yeah it it turned out to be helpful pressure. I think we wouldn't have launched as early as we did without that pressure and I'm really glad that that we got that push. I think Chris and I are both we really like the, you know, the crafting, the building, the thing. And so we were, you know, we we're kind of at risk at any given time of like polishing it too much and not yeah, but we did our investors were actually they were great. we I mean part of our pitch when we were fundraising was like you're kind of placing a bet on us as the right people to go solve this problem. And if you believe that, you got to believe that product building and design and stuff is not a linear predictable process where you put in resources and you get a response out. It's like a messy meandering thing and you don't really know how long it's going to take to get to a good solution. And if you get into bed with us, you kind of got to be up for up for that. And so yeah, like like Mike, our main our main investor at Lightseed was like super supportive of that and he's been great to work with. So yeah.

16:44 >> Amazing. So, one of the things I love about products that are developed or or created by people from a product or a design mindset is they do want it to kind of launch and and launch at a high level of quality. And I think in a market that's moving fast or is quite saturated, you need to have something that is different. On the other hand, there's the whole attitude of MVP, get it up, you know, it doesn't matter if it's a bit broken, it doesn't matter if it's a bit clunky. And so it sounds like there was a bit of a tension there, but maybe your your your designer brain was wanting to be perfect, but maybe the pressure from the the VCs meant that it kind of launched like, you know, if if you hadn't had that pressure, it might have taken another six or nine months to get to market. So that sounds like a really good combination.

17:24 >> Yeah, it was. It was. Yeah. And and I think on that that like there's definitely a tension and I I think we had this really helpful push from an angel investor early on who was he was like there like this tension exists and everybody struggles with it where like should you make your thing good before you put it out or should you put it out and then make it good while it's out in the open. And basically his argument was like everyone thinks of putting it out as this big moment, but really like you put it out in order to get users in order to learn how to make the thing better. And and that doesn't need to be like a huge public song and dance. Like you can count getting five of your friends to try it and getting feedback from them as like putting it out. And so, we had like a working version of Granola that we were using on all of our meetings and that a handful of our friends were using on all of our meetings kind of from day one, you know, like basically immediately. And the thing was really, really crap. Like, it used the speakers from your laptop, so you couldn't use headphones. it had no database, so you couldn't actually store any notes. You had to just copy paste them out and put them somewhere else to take them afterwards.

18:28 there was no authentication, no login, you know, nothing was secure. like it was it was a really bare bones thing and you know like it was our friends using it at the beginning because like you kind of got to just want to do us a favor to put up with that level of But but it let us like focus on the really hard problem of like trying to find the right interface, you know, and kind of kick the can down the road with all of the the more predictable stuff like authentication, infrastructure, security, all of that.

18:56 >> Yeah. >> So So you've built a good product, you've iterated over kind of nine months or a year. It's working really well. You launch it and day one millions and millions of customers come flowing in. I presume that yeah we I I'm I'm really pleased with how our launch went by happy accident. I think we ended up with a lot of investors and like founder friends using the product kind of in the towards the end of the closed beta period we had. It meant that on launch day, our whole marketing strategy was basically to lean on our investors and our early users to tweet about the thing we were announcing. And it it worked great for us because between them, they had a really big following. You know, there's quite a lot of like influential people in that group.

19:42 So, we had a good amount of attention and and traction like on the first on the first day. And yeah, you know, it's not it's it's tiny compared to like the numbers we have now, but like it it it felt like a good we were really proud of what we've done, you know, on the launch day. >> The reason I sort of slightly sort of tongue-in-cheek joked about the numbers is like a lot of founders have this idea, you know, if you build it, they will come. There'll be a you know, you launch and that's the end of the journey. And actually often after your friends and family and your investors come in, suddenly then there's a little bit of a lull. And then you've got to go, okay, well, how do we deal with that? Is this by building more features?

20:17 Is it by figuring out marketing? Like what what was the sort of the post-launch feeling and go to market strategy? Did it did it just click immediately out the gate or was there a lot of kind of work to kind of encourage people to give your product a try when they were already probably using like you know one of your many competitors? >> Yeah, for us it honestly like we've never had like explosive moments but it has been continually strong kind of since day one. With hindsight, this was like a cost us a few months in in building the rest of the company out.

20:49 Like we kind of we were sitting around kind of waiting for that slump to come and not wanting to like count our chickens, but the product did just keep spreading by word of mouth organically. and I think I think because of that we kind of realized that we had product market fit like several months later than we than we we should have done. But yeah, no, it did it did just keep going up and to the right, which was kind of nuts to to >> I was going to ask you about I mean obviously the first few months or or years even like a lot of startups expect to get product market fit in in six months and often it takes them a year or two. It sounds like you were pretty quick. Like what was the first inkling that you had that okay, we're really on to something here? Like >> Yeah, I I I'll say actually I think I always talk about our launch date as like a big thing, but I think in terms of like the journey of the product, I would argue that like product's been on a continual journey since day one. And I think the launch date was just the day that we like allowed anyone to come and start using it. And so I I think like a thing we were very like deliberate about was was we wanted to know that the thing worked and that it was retentive and people liked it before we open the floodgates to everybody else. So like honestly with hindsight I would say we maybe we even had product market fit before we launched because the signal for us that we should launch was that we had 100 people coming back day in day out using the thing heavily relying on it. and you know, it's a tiny group of users, but like all of the behaviors and the signs were there that it was going to work at a bigger scale.

22:16 >> I think you're probably right. I mean, again, the fact that all your investors were using it, I mean, investors can be incredibly critical and often they won't even use the products that they're they've invested in. So, the fact that they were probably using it for meetings and pitches, I think you're probably right that you're one of the the few companies that probably had product market fit out of the gate. And it sounds like the the growth has been sort of relatively organic rather than lots of kind of fits and starts. I'm curious in terms of like product decisions, you know, like I when I've used Granola, I've looked at the product and thought this is really cool, but like wouldn't it be even cooler if it did the notes live? And you you talked about that recently. You said that this was actually something that you started with and then you rolled back. I just wondered if you could explain that kind of story and and why you made that decision to to to not have live updating.

23:04 >> Yeah, this was we were obsessed with this idea for like the first six months probably. it just it felt obvious to us at the time that like AI is with you in the meeting. AI should be like writing the notes for you in real time during the meeting. You know, it feels like so sci-fi and and like and like kind of obvious. So all of the first six months for us were like pursuing different interfaces for for like real time taking notes during the meeting. We tried like a GitHub copilot style like tab complete thing, you know, where you'd like type a note, hit tab, get it to fill out the rest of the note. We tried one where the whole interface was just you mash the space bar whenever anything interesting gets said.

23:47 We tried things in between that. We tried like you write on one side of the screen and the AI interprets what you're writing on the other side of the screen. yeah, tried lots of these things and really wanted it to work and and I think like in the end there was just we we went through enough cycles of it not working and like picking apart why it wasn't working to kind of come to the conclusion that there's kind of a fundamental problem where like we want our tool to help you be more present in the meeting and spend more time making eye contact with the person you're talking to and understanding what they're saying. And when you write notes, that's fine because your fingers can can type while your eyes are doing something else. But as soon as the AI is writing for you, you can't help but like check its work, you know, and like make sure that it's getting the right thing.

24:34 And and that would just it was just it was just incredibly distracting like however we sliced it to to be kind of having to evaluate what this LM was doing on the side of your screen all the time. I >> I think you're absolutely right. I think you know when I thought about it like initially my desire was to want to have live note-taking but if you're in a one-to-one meeting or group meeting and this thing is constantly doing its magic it's going to be pulling you out of the meeting constantly particularly if it's not quite getting things right or I guess also if you're wanting to annotate those notes like them things are jumping around and so it's probably quite brave to take a feature which was one of the early driving features and go no actually we should pull pull this out or we should we realize that this is not the right solution. So, you know, kudos to you. One of the other things I'm kind of curious about is the name Granola.

25:20 I'm just wondering like if you'd been called like Chatty Notes or Note Taker Pro, do you think it would have been successful or just is there something about the name that kind of actually has really helped with the branding and positioning? >> I think the name has been great for us. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a it's a pure happy accident. It was like a placeholder name that we threw in at the beginning with like no, you know, no thought whatsoever. Granola the product is a few things, right? It's like if we do if we do it well, it's like a companion that's with you throughout your whole day. and so it needs to feel like comfortable to be in and like a nice, you know, it's on your like a nice thing that's on your side. it also deals with incredibly sensitive data. And in an ideal world, you don't want the user to be thinking about like the fact that there's like scarily sensitive data in there, but you do want the user to feel like they can trust it and that that that it's secure and all of those things. And so like yeah, I think the name the kind of like light-hearted but positive, you know, playful but not too playful name is like has been really good for us. Yeah. Yeah.

26:25 >> It's it's nice. It's friendly. It's approachable. It's memorable. It's not trying to be clever. I see so many people that trying to create names that have some kind of deep meaning with the products that oh, we're going to, you know, we're going to pick a name that actually in in kind of, you know, another language means something that's related. And I think I think Granola is just kind of it's just it's really simple. It's really really memorable. So yeah, I think that's I I would I'd like to think that's a big part of its approachability.

26:55 You've recently had a redesign as well. How how's that been? I mean, that must be quite scary going a product that's growing so well and everyone's really loving it. Suddenly deciding we're going to change a bunch of things. Like hitting that kind of launch button that must have been terrifying, you know, risking losing a whole bunch of people. We've all seen these kind of big redesigns. I remember when delivery redesigned and people were up in arms like, "Well, I'm never going to use the product again. I miss the the kangaroo loco." So, how's that been? Come on.

27:24 Yeah, we we we we pushed we pushed the button on Monday. It's like we're recording this on Thursday. It was it's been a hell of a few days since then. Like by the time we pushed the button to do the rebrand, I think I I was like in it and convinced it was a good idea. And you know, like I kind of been through the mental journey already. So I'm sufficiently like convinced that this is this is the right thing to do that most of the criticism has bounced off in the last few days, which is which is good. I think I would have drowned in it otherwise. but yeah, the like the it was a real dilemma. I really like I I I guess I dragged my feet with this for a long time on like whether to do it and how to approach the brand and stuff like that cuz I think every everything we have on the brand like we had on the brand before was kind of like thrown together by me and a few prints, you know, when we needed a website or when we needed a an app icon or whatever. And you know there's like basic thought gone into it but not nothing nothing groundbreaking and it definitely wasn't like a fleshed out system. And I think as we've as we've tried to do more on the marketing front and the storytelling we have more surface area to express the brand. We don't have the tools to be able to like make granola show up in a way that feels granolay in all of the different places. So yeah like I guess a few months ago the dilemma was like we definitely need to do something.

28:42 Is it like we take what we have and we just we just work internally on fleshing it out a bit into more of a system? or do we take an opportunity to do a full pass and think about it from first principles? And yeah, I just I I don't know. I felt like the hard part was that like the granola brand is really loved and and I like I think we we knew that before the rebound, but I think we really know it now. and like a and I I think a lot of that love is like it comes from the product experience, how Granola feels to use. and maybe from what you see of us as a company and I think the old visuals like somewhat supported that, but I don't think they would they were like really pulling their weight. You know, it's not like if you just look objectively at what we had before, it looked very generic and like any other SAS company. so yeah, I just felt like we could do we could do much better and there was going to be a cost to like pulling the rug from everybody, but I ultimately feel like we we could get to something that was much more ownable and we could have a lot more fun with and like be much more expressive with.

29:46 and that felt worth it. I think it will be worth it in the long run. >> This is I think I think rebrands are really tricky but also really important. I think a lot of the time people don't understand the purpose of a rebrand. You know, sometimes they just think it feels a little bit kind of ad hoc or almost like kind of like repainting your house when you get bored of it. But for a lot of the time, a rebrand happens because somehow the the brand is no longer pulling its weight. As you said, it's no it doesn't have the ability to project in different directions. It's limiting the creative in marketing. It's it's holding the kind of the the website back. It's holding the product back. It doesn't have that that flexibility. And a big part of a rebrand is creating a a system, a language that gives you a lot more options to kind of play with. And so it sounds like that was kind of one of the main reasons that you went through the rebrand. It wasn't just a whim. It was a it was a a a strategic decision to give you more opportunity to kind of explore different areas.

30:43 >> Totally. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. We like I think I think one of the the main tipping points for me was like we we hired our first marketers on the team and and so wanted to start doing things as simple as like Instagram ads or whatever and suddenly you got this question of like what do we put on the ad? What are the words on the ad and what does it look like? And so much of what we like the initial stuff we have has come from me. And so I feel like if I sit down and come up with stuff, I can I can do an okay job at coming up with the things because it all came from me in the first place. but like we need to get to a place where you can like give a really smart, really creative person a highle direction and then let them go wild and create really cool stuff like from that brief. and we we didn't have that, you know, we didn't have like the the core like ideas and the principles that we we all agree we stand behind so that like smart people can go and and be free to go make up good stuff from that.

31:46 >> I don't know the sort of full story of the rebrand because like you said it's it's really fresh. Obviously, I guess you've gone through a few more rounds of of investment. You've got some money in the bank now. Were you tempted to fly over to New York and get Pentagram to do the, you know, the big whole thing or like find the kind of the latest kind of coolest kind of brand designer? >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I mean, we we we we did a version of that. We we we worked with Ragged Edge who were all of the you know we were going to like pull around the office among all the designers on who we respected the most and they were basically like top of everybody's list and they also were heavy users of the product like before we knew them as personally so they felt like a really good fit and we did we did debate a lot like should we do this internally you know there's a spectrum from like fully doing it ourselves to like getting a freelancer to come be in the building with us and work on it together to like working with an agency externally and I just it just felt like we have such an opportunity to have to be like a really iconic well-loved brand and I don't trust that if we did this internally we would put enough resources behind it to do it justice you know and and so like yeah working with an agency was like the way to get a group of 10 really really great you know designers, copywriters, whatever to to think about it for a few months and yeah I think we have a better thing for it. I mean like coming from you know my my previous history as an agency background and I do understand the value that agencies can bring having someone come in with an external perspective who can kind of take you on a journey and I think there is a lot of difference between designing interfaces and designing brand architectures that are work and expandable. it sounds like you had a really positive experience with ragged edge. So if you were if another founder watching this was looking to go down a rebrand you'd you'd point them in their direction I presume.

33:34 >> I would big time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I do like the the hardest bit was like the the first the first month or something. We've like lived and breathed what we think granola is for like years, you know, and so like getting on the same page about what the principles are we feel good about standing behind was was tough. I don't think that was ragged. I think that's just like it's a hard thing to get a one group of people to like believe the same things as another group of people. And yeah, I like once once we kind of got to that point, then everything flowed pretty easily from there. And I the stuff they did was phenomenal. So yeah.

34:12 >> So I'm curious. So you know, where are you now in terms of like the size and scale of the company? So it started with the two of you. You hired an engineer. I assume there was kind of like relatively steady growth. Are you are you now setting on a team of 100, 200 or you still kind of a small tight group of people? We crossed 50 couple weeks ago. So we're like 53 something like that now I think. Okay.

34:37 >> Yeah. >> So that's a really nice size. You haven't kind of you know I think 50 still feels like your your tribe your crew. but presumably over the next couple of years that is going to change and you are going to be you know I wouldn't be surprised if we speak this time next year you'll be a you know maybe 100 200 people. So h how has that been for you going from just you and a co-founder to now managing a whole ton of team of people and like how are you dividing up responsibilities?

35:05 It's been a yeah it's been a journey. I guess for me personally it's been I don't know it feels like an incredibly steep learning curve where I'm like slightly behind where I need to be all all of the time. You know before this I've only ever been an IC designer. I think I' I've never really worked on a team bigger than 10 people before. I never hired anybody. So, you know, so much of this has been totally new to me.

35:26 I'm fortunate that that Chris, my co-founder, you know, has run a team before. We've we've like hired like a vast our second engineer and and now CTO has grown teams before. So, like I've got to learn from really great, you know, from people who've been there before kind of at all the stages, which is great. But yeah, it's like a constant you have to constantly reassess like what what like what does my job need to be now, you know, because like it won't be the same as what it was a few months ago. and and my way of doing that so far is to like is to like feel on top of things and then slowly and slowly I feel more and more like I'm drowning and then at some point I reach a breaking point and I'm like I've got to like stop and figure out like why is this not working? And usually it's because I'm trying to do too many jobs. You know, I'm trying to be like a designer and a salesperson and a recruiter and a and a people manager and and the time has come where I need to give away a few of those jobs and then yeah, and then the cycle repeats.

36:25 >> I mean, it's a really common thing. I mean, again, as you're growing as a founder, you start by having to do loads of things because you don't have the time, the budget, the resources to have dedicated people. And and you know, often the founders become blockers. they become kind of that bottleneck. But eventually when you break through, if you're growing fast enough, you can hire that person who is looking after your HR. You can hire that person that is maybe doing more of the operational side of of things. You can hire that person that's now a product manager who, you know, you're still giving input to the product, but now you've got someone doing the admin and kind of like, you know, hoping to make your life easier.

37:00 But it's really, really tough. And I think you know going from a space where you know everything came from you to having a now a team full of people it does require quite a lot of change. I think that's one of the most challenging things like I think a lot of founders worry about whether their company is going to be a success. But when it becomes a success you've got to worry about like how are you going to be able to scale and and keep scaling and keep changing. And I think you are probably in a space where every four or five months you're actually doing a fundamentally different job to what you doing before. And it sounds like you're keeping up, but it can it can be stressful. Have you have you got any kind of tips or strategies or recommendations for other founders about how you kind of stay on top of stuff?

37:42 >> I don't know that I'm a great role model to look at. Okay. I do think I things I'm things I wish I'd done earlier was bring on like bring on team members outside of product engineering design like like like folks like the the oper folks in operations that we brought in have like made such a difference. They take a thing that we were doing extremely badly and they do it well and they also just free up so much of our our time that that it's just been it's just been a great thing every time every time someone someone's come to help with that stuff. what you said there I think is really important.

38:15 Like I I meet so many founders. I think particularly it's areas they don't like doing. Like if you're if you're a product or design founder, often sales and marketing or operations or HR aren't the thing that you love. And so you want to be spending more of the time doing the stuff you're really good at. And so it's really tempting like well let's just hire a whole bunch of people around that. However, until I think you've done that job yourself, it's really hard to hire the right person because you don't you don't if you don't fully understand the job, you just give it over to somebody wholesale. And quite often I find that that first sales hire, that first marketing hire, that first product leadership hire often doesn't work out because you haven't figured it out yourself. And like I think a lot of the time as a founder, you need to get it to that kind of messy 80%. And once it's there, you can hand that thing over to somebody else. particularly with sales, I think, you know, if you're not doing fandal sales, if you're if you're a B2B company, like expecting someone just to come in and sell for you when you haven't kind of built that playbook. And so, it sounds like you're doing the right thing. And I'd weirdly argue that you are a good role model cuz like you're you're figuring this stuff out as you go along, but it sounds like you're making the right decisions. and when you're making wrong decisions because no one's perfect. I'm sure there's been a bunch of wrong decisions, a bunch of wrong hires, but it sounds like you're you're flexible enough to realize that and and and and bounce back. One of the things I was going to say cuz like I I meet a lot of founders who they really miss the early days. They really miss the days when there was like just 10 people in a room and so they try and hold on to that for much longer than is is practicable. And often the rest of the organization breaks because at some point you can't run a 50 person company with a 10 person mindset. You definitely can't run a 100 person company. And it sounds like you're you've been willing to kind of make those make those leaps.

40:01 So kudos to you. >> Thank you. Yeah. Honestly, I I yeah, I when we were tiny, I dreaded being the idea of being 50 was like, "Oh gez, I don't know if I ever want to go there, you know." And >> and when you're 200, you'll be like, "I can't imagine being a thousand." When you're a thousand, you'll be like, I can't imagine being 5,000. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, we've been lucky to find really, really great people who like are like just really fun to be around, but also incredibly great at what they do. And so, like, by and large when we hire people, it's we're hiring people that are better than us. And so, like feel like the quality of what we're able to do goes up when we, you know, as the team's grown. It's just it's just like rather than everything having to go through Chris and I at the very beginning, it's like now there's like five amazing things going on at any given time, which is it's like something to behold.

40:49 >> I mean, yeah, in my previous company, I always used to say that I always hired people better than me, which made that me the worst person in the company pretty much because everyone else that hired in later was was always doing a better job. >> You're the person who sees across everything, you know, >> which is really helpful because it's kind of like nobody expects you in this day and age to know everything. I think there's this kind of this myth that the founder has every detail under control, but what you do is you have the the high level view. You're standing on the shoulders of other people in in a positive way, but you're able to kind of understand how these different things fit together, and you're often a coordinating factor. So, so I think it's a it's a it's a great attitude. Do you have do you have other people in your corner? Do you have do you have a coach? Do you have a mentor? Are there founders you look up to? like how active are your your investors in terms of like helping you through these these challenges because obviously there's a lot of people that have kind of been through this process before and so I think a lot of founders often feel that they're quite alone and so it's important to have that network around you.

41:49 >> Yeah. I could probably do more of this. I like our investors are great. Mike from Lightseed and Niel from Spark are both like we're really close with them. We talk with them a lot. anytime we have any kind of big strategic question they're usually the first people we go to. and you know, they they they're both been founders and they've also, you know, they invest in a lot of companies like us and so they can patent match across those. And then and then I think a thing which I probably underinvested in which I found really helpful is like is just having founder friends. ideally founder friends who are like a couple years ahead of you or like the stage maybe not too far ahead but like you know they they went through the pain that you're going through like like a year ago or something like that.

42:27 I don't know when when we were thinking about starting to hire for sales and like should we do that in the UK, should we do that in the US and if the US should it be San Francisco, New York and I I had breakfast with the incident IO founders who'd been through the similar dilemma like 6 months ago or something like that and and and just hearing through their thought process was super helpful there and you know there aren't there aren't like many people who in the world who have to grapple with these problems And so like finding the right people for you and then being close to them I think really really helps.

43:02 >> I think you're right. And I also kind of like have this sort of belief that the halfife of information is quite short. And so you know a lot of VCs you know they might have been founders 10 years ago but the amount of relevant knowledge like the the landscape has changed so much that actually there's probably very little that is the same and go to market in in engineering whatever. But if you're talking to someone that's a year ahead of you, they're still kind of the stuff that they're tackling is incredibly relevant and things have only shifted a little bit. So I think having a really good network of other founders is is hugely important. I'm kind of curious. So two things like obviously you're you're a founder and you're a designer from a designer's perspective.

43:39 If there was another young designer listening to this and they're like owing and about like whether they should kind of quit their job and start their own kind of startup like do you have any sort of advice or thoughts like of of of like whether you know whether designers make particularly good founders and whether they should consider going down that route? >> Yeah, good good question. I mean, this will depend on the kind of company you're interested in, but for a lot of companies and definitely like Granola, the the whole game at the beginning is building something great that people really want to use. And a lot of design is like is like understanding a user's problem and then figuring out the shape of the thing to fit that problem.

44:15 And so like I think a lot of the initial process of of building a company is like is the design process, you know, like the two are the same basically. We're also at this beautiful time where like designers can build stuff without having to learn too much extra too many extra things. So I think it's like the the there's never been a better time to be a designer if you want to start something. A thing that a thing I found about like building Granola that that I haven't encountered to any to such a degree before in all my other design roles was like you really like feel like there's nowhere to hide building a building a product from scratch if the if nobody likes the thing that you're building. you just you just it's it's kind of brutal, you know, like they they don't use it. The feedback loop is like incredibly intense and and and and powerful and in previous jobs, you know, where I've been a designer on a more established team, you're kind you're a little bit insulated from that. Like you don't feel the the pain internally of your thing not working so well. and so I I love that about building a company is like that that I I feel the the friction of the real world and I like to get the the you know the work I produce is like really tested by reality and you know if it's good it works and if it's not good that I very quickly learn about it. But I also think that's kind of a tough it's tough thing to have to to contend with. You know when you're used to to being a bit more insulated in the design team. I mean, I think you're absolutely right about the value design can bring.

45:40 Designers are really great at understanding user needs, the empathy, the kind of like the ability to sort of put yourself in their shoes. I think, you know, these days with so many competing products around like often the product that has a better user experience is the one that people fall in love with. there are all also other ways of of of being successful. You know, there are plenty of products that are much better that wither on the vine because their distribution or their sales or whatever hasn't worked. But I think really leaning into building an amazing experience is really positive.

46:10 But also like at the same time I think you know being a designer you can obsess over things that aren't that important or there is a risk that you know >> you know we can be a little bit kind of quite dogmatic around like well this is absolutely the right thing to do for the user. And I'm kind of wondering like are there particular things being a founder that you've had to go a different route that you might have gone like two or three years ago if you were working for another founder and you were designer like have you advocated for things in the past that you're like oh actually I can see why that doesn't work you know and because I've now got my business head on.

46:45 >> Yeah for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I I think there's no way I could have like granola would be here without Chris and and like on the product building side I think Chris brings like he's incredibly good at keeping us keeping us honest to like what's the actual problem the person has and like are we really solving it which for us you know is like at the beginning it was just is the set of notes at the end of the meeting actually useful for the person and that was more of a like prompting like the solution to that was good prompting more than it was where the pixels were on the screen, you know, and and of course my brain is programmed to go and fuss over the pixels. And and it needs still honestly needs like constant dragging out of that into into thinking about like the real problem. And you know yeah, I think I think that's I don't know. I would I wouldn't be here without like that that force that keeping me honest. I mean, I think a pairing of someone that's a bit more kind of business focused with someone that's a bit more user focused keeps everyone kind of balanced and and sort of working well together. So, that sounds like a really really good pairing. and I think having a having a good co like being a founder can be quite tough. It can be quite lonely. You know, I end up working with a lot of like solo founders and like that can be quite tough. And so, it's really good that you found someone that can be a bit of your, you know, ying to your yang or however it works. you just touched on something earlier like, I'm just kind of wondering like how much has AI and prompting found its way into your design and engineering process? Like are you are all of your designers now kind of like, you know, they're prompting new features or is it still a bit more traditional like Figma is the main tool?

48:30 How how are your product managers kind of dealing with this? Obviously, you know, I spoke to Des Intercom recently and they've gone full in on the idea of like AI designers, designers who really understand the materiality and have a whole range of tools that are outside Figma. So, I'm just curious your take. >> Yeah. probably similar like I guess a third of my time is still design and and like of that 70% is in cursor raw claw code and 30% is in Figma maybe.

48:56 And I think yeah it's it's it's fairly true of the of the other designers too actually like it depends on the problem and like what you know what you know you use different tools for different jobs. Tanya, one of our designers at the work moment, is working on a feature and basically entirely in like in code. You she's not touching the code, but you know, like in a in a prototype that she's built and is trying out variations of with clock code and cursor and stuff, but then equally like Ru, one of our other designers, is is working on stuff where like it's it's a more complex like system design problem and so actually seeing it all mapped out on a canvas is like and figuring out how the pieces fit together is is most of the problem. And the the small interaction details don't matter so much. So, yeah, I think it's just like we have a bunch more tools at our disposal now. And I think, for me the like coming up with perfect mocks in Figma is like is a waste most of the time. Now, I use Figma the way I would use a whiteboard, just slightly higher fidelity. And then like and then as soon as you go from like the the expansion part of the design process or whatever and you get into the contraction part, that contraction part is all code like for me now. And it makes sense considering where, you know, where Granola started as a as a homecoded sort of product. So, so look, thank you so much. It's been really nice chatting to you. If if people want to sort of follow you, if people want to kind of follow your your founder journey, where's the best way people can kind of keep tabs on you?

50:17 >> Yeah. well, I used the use granola to start with and, we have like a beta channel. You can turn that on and join our community and and you'll kind of be a breast of the new stuff there. Yeah. And then I I don't really have personal channels like I don't know you could follow me on LinkedIn I guess but but all of my time and effort is put into granola and so whatever we're coming out with next is like the the the thing to be follow.

50:43 >> Brilliant. Well I I mean that's that's great to hear. You're you're so focused on granola. You're not kind of spending all your time on on social. You're kind of like you're pushing the company forward. So look it's been an absolute delight chatting you. Thank you so much for the time. >> Likewise Andy. This is really fun. Yeah. Thanks a lot. >> Brilliant. And to everyone who's been listening, thank you so much for tuning in to the Design VC. If you enjoyed the episode, please do subscribe, leave a review, share it with someone you think might find it really interesting, particularly anyone that's interested in the intersection of design, startups, and venture. And I've been Andy Bud, and I'll see you next time.