Fireflies Startup Interview – Herman Miller Store

The Lost Art of Connection

Gone are the days when we had to work in the same building or the same time zone to get things done. Enter Fireflies.ai, an AI assistant created (pre-COVID-19) by Krish Ramineni and Sam Udotong. Master of WFH Krish shares how his team stays connected, hustling, and one step ahead of customers’ needs.

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The Myth of the Perfect Idea

"When people fall in love with an idea but not the problem they’re solving, it’s easy to fall out of love midway.

The best way to create a product is to get something that isn’t perfect into customers’ hands and then perfect it over time. In the early days of development, 90% of your ideas come from your opinions and hypotheses. But as you figure out what your product needs to become, 80% of the ideas will come from customers. You’re just guiding the ship. That’s why what I call 'builder DNA' is so important—the ability to be curious, ask questions, and think bigger. The same builder DNA that applies to products can be applied to building teams, your corporate governance, your investors, your brand.”

Fueling Your Hustle
(Without Burning Out)

“When it comes to remote work, especially as a founder of a startup, you really don’t have work-life balance. I’m currently in my bedroom, five feet away from my workstation, and I’m spending a lot of time in one room.

When I have free time on weekends, it’s important for me to engage with circles outside of tech. If I don’t do that, it’s just tech, tech, tech, work, work, work all the time! I try to separate my work from my personal life by seeking out different people and topics. Or I’ll break away and go on a hike or take a road trip, to help me reset and find other inspiration.”

The Future of the Workplace

"The reason we started Fireflies is because my cofounder Sam and I didn’t enjoy meetings anymore. We found ourselves going to the same meetings again because someone didn’t attend it last week, and having to explain the same thing multiple times to different people was overwhelming. Now I just say, ‘Hey go look at Fireflies, you’ll have full context and then let’s talk about that afterwards.'

In addition to automating meetings we don’t need to have and reducing the number of meetings we do need to have, Fireflies is a solution for workforces that are getting more remote and asynchronous. By asynchronous, I mean your team doesn’t have to be present at the same time in order to get work done. I can be working in the Pacific Time Zone while you work in Indian Standard Time, and we’re still able to collaborate and get work done.

COVID-19 did a complete 180 degrees on the belief that you have to meet your customers and investors in person. People are able to do a lot remotely—you’re having IPOs done remotely, large fundraising rounds done remotely, people closing big deals being done remotely. I think eventually we’ll have people meeting in person again, but instead of 80% in person and 20% remote, we’re going to see a shift to 50/50 or 60/40. And with tools like what my team is building, we’ll continue to connect, and improve how we connect, going forward.”