The Secret to Building Sticky AI Products

TL;DR: Today we’re releasing a new episode of our podcast AI & I. I go in depth with Chris Pedregal, the cofounder and CEO of AI note-taking app Granola. We get into Chris’s philosophy around building useful consumer AI products and how you can hone your skills to do the same. Watch on X or YouTube, or listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Also ICYMI: Yesterday, we launched a new experiment, TLDR, a synthetic show of 3-5 minute AI-generated podcast episodes to catch you up on meetings you missed at your company. We used it to generate podcasts from our internal meetings at Every, and you can check them out on YouTube or Spotify. If you’re interested in bringing TLDR to your company, apply now. We’re looking to partner with 10 companies in Q1 2025. 

Chris Pedregal knows how to build AI products that people love. 

Chris is the cofounder and CEO of Granola, an AI-powered notepad for meetings. We use it for many of our meetings at Every—the app listens in on the conversation, transcribes it in the background, and when the meeting ends, creates automated notes and a shareable transcript for anyone who missed it. If you take notes during the meeting, Granola polishes them to be more organized and complete. 

Granola is one of my favorite consumer AI products because it’s equal parts delightful and useful. It’s not a bland chat interface. It’s not an over-the-top demo that you wouldn’t use more than once. Granola is a product with “soul,” imbued with the team’s vision for how AI can work alongside you to turn discursive conversations into clear insights. And I’m not the only one who thinks so—since Granola’s launch in May 2024, its user base has grown by 5x, with around 5,000 weekly active users, and half the people who try the app still use it 10 weeks later for an average of six meetings a week. The company also recently raised a $20 million Series A.

Granola has the marks of being built by a thoughtful, intentional team, which is why I was excited to have Chris on the show. We spent an hour talking about Chris’s product development philosophy, the role of intuition in making products with “soul” and how he balances this with user feedback, how you can become a better product thinker, and the kinds of consumer AI startups Chris thinks will succeed. Here is a link to the episode transcript. 

This is a must-watch for anyone interested in building valuable, sticky AI products that users will love.

Watch on X or YouTube, or listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. 

If you want a quick summary, here’s a taste for paying subscribers: