Krish Ramineni | Fireflies
KRISH RAMINENI
Co-Founder & CEO of Fireflies, a SaaS tool for automated notes from online meetings that allows users to automatically record, transcribe and collaborate across their meetings.
What Is Fireflies? Tell Us About Your Technology And What Your Mission Is.
Fireflies is an AI voice assistant that helps transcribe, take notes, and complete actions during meetings. Our AI assistant, Fred, integrates with all the leading web-conferencing platforms in the world like Zoom, Google Meet, Webex, & Microsoft Teams along with business applications like Slack and Salesforce. Our mission is to help organize the voice of your organization.
What Is Your Background? What Led You To Starting Your Own Company? And How Did You Choose This Space?
While I was Product Manager at Microsoft, I was working on building a customer voice platform that draws insights from customer feedback and actions. This got me interested in understanding the rich data that is buried in qualitative data sources like emails, messages, and voice conversations. NLP and language models have gotten significantly better in the last 5 years to make what we are doing today possible.
What Have Been Both Your Favorite And Least-liked Parts Of Your Entrepreneurial Journey? What Have Been Your Most Challenging And Most Exciting Moments For You And The Company?
Each stage of a startup brings its own set of challenges. Finding a product market is like walking through a desert without a map. You’re wandering in circles letting your customer feedback guide you. Once you are in scale up mode, you have to build processes and structure. You have to excel at recruiting. A startup is like sprinting all the way through a marathon. It’s important to pace yourself, but sometimes that’s not enough. Speed is everything and that can be overwhelming if you don’t brace yourself for it. .
Who Are Your Co-Founders Or People Who You Work Very Closely With? How Do Their Skills Supplement Yours?
My co-founder and CTO is Sam Udotong. Sam and I had collaborated on several projects going back to college. Sam studied Aeronautical engineering at MIT and brings a tremendous amount of knowledge on Machine Learning and autonomous systems.
What Was The Fundraising Process Like For You? Tell Us About Your Investors And What You Use The Money You’ve Raised For.
We bootstrapped in the early days staying as lean as possible. Proving out the tech took significant effort and conviction from our end. Our thought process was if we are going to invest our time and energy in doing something, we might as well go after a really hard problem space. Voice AI is one of the hardest technological areas in SaaS because it requires so much technical effort to get right. Before our seed round, we were fortunate enough to get small checks from really incredible operators in the valley including the CEO of Segment, execs at Salesforce, Slack, Dropbox, and Facebook. They helped us think about bottoms up SaaS. We also went through Acceleprise, an accelerator in SF while building out our product. Later we raised a sizable institutional seed round from Canaan. We’re fortunate to have investors who believe deeply in bottoms up SaaS and building software with the end user in mind.
With COVID-19 Causing So Many Businesses To Go Remote, How Has Demand Changed For Fireflies Over These Last Bunch Of Months?
Remote work has accelerated. Remote meetings on platforms like Zoom, Meet, Teams has increased 10 fold. Fireflies became a really important part of a company’s digital transformation to working remotely.
Tell Us Some More About Your Numbers. How Has Growth Been Over The Past Year Since You Launched?
Since rolling out our product in Jan 2020, Fireflies has been a part of meetings with several million people. Our notetaker has done 200 years worth of meetings just in the past year.
Anything Exciting Launching Soon?
In addition to our video-conferencing bot, we will be releasing a new product that will allow folks to capture and transcribe meetings across more platforms in a seamless manner. People have always wanted a way to use Fireflies to transcribe calls on dialers, telephony systems, and PBX solutions. It will be available soon!
How Do You Think Your Industry Will Change Post-COVID?
COVID has shown the world that companies can go completely virtual from anywhere. While I expect some parts of business to return to the office, I’m confident that remote work is here to stay. We will see a hybrid form of work going forward.
Tell Us About Your Typical Workday Schedule.
I spend a significant amount of time on product and engineering every day from reviewing specs to approving designs. We are a product first company and getting every aspect of the customer experience is a very high priority for us. I set aside two days a week just to focus on hiring and internal ops. The remaining time is spent on the front lines engaging with customers.
What Do You Do In Your Free Time?
I read a lot about businesses and industries outside of tech. Software companies sometimes live inside their own bubble. I’ve found that by understanding other industries of the past, there are many principles that can be applied back to tech. For ex: the automotive industry, oil and gas, and the diamond industry.
What Are The Most Important Skills A Modern Day Entrepreneur Needs In Order To Be Successful? What Advice Do You Have For Entrepreneurs Who Are Just Starting Out?
Grit - it’s not always glamorous as they show on TV or movies
Customer Obsession - You might think you know more than you customers but it’s your job to give them what they need to be successful
Data Oriented - As you grow data informs your decision making
If you’re starting out, don’t fall in love with the technology, fall in love with the problem you are solving.
Tell Us A Story Of Something That Happened To You, Something You Heard, Or Something You Saw, That Either Made You Laugh Or Taught You An Important Lesson.
I remember in the very early days, we would reach out to many folks within our network to use Fireflies. Cold emails get very few responses. A year later the same people I emailed found out about Fireflies when they saw it at one of their meetings with another colleague. Then they started using the service and then replied back to my email from a year ago. It was really full circle. It taught me two important things:
The best marketing is when your customers are advocating for your product.
You can’t brute force product market fit. .
If You Can Have A One-Hour Meeting With Someone Famous Who Is Alive, Who Would It Be And Why?
I’m a huge fan of Jason Lemkin and everything he’s done with SaaStr. He’s really the godfather of SaaS and gives you the straight honest truth. Huge respect for Jason and what he’s done for the startup community.
What Is Your Favorite Quote And Why Does It Resonate With You?
Satya Nadella (CEO of Microsoft) once said:
“Our industry does not respect tradition. It only respects innovation.”
The more time I spend in the software business, the more I’m seeing this to be true. The tech industry is always rapidly changing and the rules of the game can change instantly for incumbents. This is what makes being a small startup so significant if you can move fast and capitalize on a sector that is ripe for transformation.
What Does Success Mean To You?
My definition of success has changed over the years. Success is maximizing value creation for our users with the least friction. It’s a long process and we have a long way to go. If we can do that one thing really well, we find that the score will take care of itself.
Krish Ramineni’s Favorites Stack:
Books:
The Hard Thing About Hard Things- Ben Horowitz
The Joy Of Less- Francine Jay
The Power Of Now- Eckhart Tolle
Health & Fitness:
I have one-on-one meetings while walking
I don’t drink coffee
I have my first meal at 2 PM
Consumer Products:
The Samsung Note Stylus is a must have for creating wireframes and reviewing designs on the go.
