

The founders’ initial note-taking solution, built in short bursts between classes and homework, tracked action items written in messages, sending reminders to users later on.įollowing Udotong’s graduation with a degree in aeronautics and astronautics in 2016, the founders decided to use a $25,000 stipend they received from Rough Draft Ventures, along with $5,000 from the MIT Sandbox Innovation Fund, to work on Fireflies through the summer. We thought, ‘What if we just had an AI that could keep track of conversations for us?’” “And every time we would build a different iteration, we would tell our friends, ‘Download it, use it, and get back to us next week, we’ll grab coffee.’ We were making all these agreements and promises, and it became really challenging to keep track of all the conversations we were having to get our products out there. “We ended up building six iterations of Fireflies before this current meeting assistant,” Udotong remembers. That's also when Fireflies was born - although the founders would go on to change everything about the company besides its name as they sought to use artificial intelligence to improve efficiency in a range of fields. That’s when he met Ramineni, who was a student at the University of Pennsylvania. Later, during his first MIT hackathon, he sought to use machine learning in a cryptography solution. Udotong was introduced to the power of machine learning in his first year at MIT while working on a project in which students built a drone that could lead people on campus tours. People have told us it makes them look smarter in front of clients.” So being able to search back to exact points in conversation and remember that is powerful. “The dream is for everyone to have perfect recall and make all their decisions based on the right information. “ is giving you perfect memory,” says Udotong, who serves as Firelies’ chief technology officer. And the founders believe Fred can do more than simply help people adjust to remote work it can also help them collaborate more effectively than ever before. In the last few months, driven in part by the Covid-19 pandemic, Fred has sat through millions of minutes of meetings involving more than half a million people. They can use the service to automate project management tasks, screen candidates, and manage internal team communications.
Fireflies.ai notetaker zoom software#
It also works with collaboration platforms like Slack and customer management software like Salesforce to help ensure plans turn into coordinated action.įireflies is used by people working in roles including sales, recruiting, and product management. The tool integrates with popular meeting and scheduling software like Zoom and Google Calendar so users can quickly add Fred to calls. “We let people capture that data, search through it, and then share it to the places that matter most.” “There’s a tremendous amount of data generated in meetings that can help your team stay on the same page,” says Sam Udotong ’16, who founded the company with Krish Ramineni in 2016. Fred transcribes every word of meetings and then uses artificial intelligence to help people sort and share that information later on.

The startup Fireflies.ai is helping people get the most out of their meetings with a note-taking, information-organizing virtual assistant named Fred. But in order for that meeting to translate into results, participants have to remember all those details, understand their assignments, and follow through on commitments. Many decisions are made and details sorted out in a productive business meeting.
