How Granola saved my bacon.
Three days ago I had a meeting with a prospect. Big one. I'd set it up on Google Calendar, sent a Google Meet link, made sure transcription was running. When you do fractional AI ops you need to capture everything. Every idea, every throwaway comment, every half-sentence where the real problem slips out. I riff off the transcripts afterward to find what's actually worth building.
So we're ten minutes in. Going well. Then he goes — wait, I need to talk to my COO. Let me add him. He calls the COO on WhatsApp. They talk. Then he drops off the Google Meet and pulls me into a three-way WhatsApp call.
My Google Meet transcription? Dead.
Luckily, I'd been tipped off a few weeks earlier about a tool called Granola. I installed it, liked it immediately, had it running in the background. When the call jumped to WhatsApp, Granola picked it up. Every word. Perfectly.
I've used all the tools. Otter.ai. Zoom transcription. Google Meet's built-in. Fireflies. They're fine when you set the meeting. When you own the invite, control the platform, everyone joins your link. The moment things go sideways — an impromptu WhatsApp, someone else's Teams invite, a last-second platform switch — they go dark. They need a bot in the room or host permissions or a specific integration with whatever platform you're on.
Granola doesn't care about any of that. It captures audio from your device. Not from the meeting platform. WhatsApp, Teams, Zoom, a phone call on speaker — if you can hear it, Granola catches it. No bot. No permissions. It just works.
I'm cutting nearly every SaaS bill I have right now. That's the whole point of running AI ops — build the workflows yourself, stop paying monthly for things you can replicate. Granola is not one I'm cutting. Check it out if this fits how you actually work.
Revenue: $0 | Clients: 0 | Prospects: 5
Day 7 of 365.