How to Build a Truly Useful AI Product

Building in generative AI is like running on a treadmill while traditional tech moves at walking speed. This speed impacts everything from the technical problems you tackle to your timeline for reaching scale. While this acceleration should change your strategy, it doesn’t change the fundamentals of building a good product. You need to build someth... See more

But here's the plot twist: Exceptional experiences for narrow use cases often have little to do with AI. We spend endless hours on note quality at Granola, but we spend just as much time on features like seamless meeting notifications and great echo cancellation (so our tool works whether you're using headphones or not). The "wrapper" around the AI... See more

For the first time, it’s possible to provide a better product experience for a small number of users than for millions of users. But this isn’t an obstacle—it’s a big opportunity for startups. Big companies with millions of users literally can’t compete with you because there isn’t enough compute available in the world to provide a cutting-edge exp... See more

Instead of treating AI models as something that just follows instructions, we should treat them like interns on their first day. An intern is smart but lacks context on what to do and how to do it. The key to an intern's success is to give them the context they need to think like you.

That's how we approach prompting at Granola now. We provide the m... See more

The only answer is to go narrow—really narrow. Pick a very specific use case and become exceptional at it. The cardinal rule of startups—building something people want—remains consistent in AI, but the bar is higher.

As a startup, you can give each of your users a Ferrari-level product experience. Use the most expensive, cutting-edge models. Don’t worry about optimizing for cost. If doing five additional API calls (server requests to your LLM provider of choice) makes the product experience better, go for it. It might be expensive on a per-user basis, but you p... See more