How Granola—and AI Note Taking—Grabbed Silicon Valley’s Attention
The note-taking apps have quickly changed privacy norms. No one’s unhappy about it.
At the moment, many in the tech industry have developed a rather profound addiction to Granola.
No, not to the crunchy breakfast-time oats—but to a software product made by a two-year-old startup that has come to dominate a crowded field of artificial intelligence–powered note-taking options. The tool from Granola, which was valued at nearly a half-billion dollars in May, has become something of an It App this summer among venture capitalists and startup founders.
For instance, Nikhil Basu Trivedi, a co-founder of Footwork, a San Francisco–based venture firm, no longer only fires up Granola in business settings: He’s also used it while meeting with his lawyer, his fellow board members of a nonprofit and his 3.5-year-old daughter’s preschool teacher, even though he pretty much knew what to expect from the latter. “Knock on wood—she’s doing pretty well,” he said. “A good kid.”
Meanwhile, Cat Noone, CEO of Stark, a Montreal-based software company, likes to turn on Granola while meeting with her therapist. Doing so allows her to stay more present in the conversation as it happens, she said, and she later reads the app’s auto-summaries to further reflect on what they discussed. “I don’t want to miss a thing,” she said.