The Meeting Tool We Actually Rely On
The one thing you need to know in AI today | AI-Ready CMO
As you know, we don’t take direct sponsorships unless we actually use and like the product. When Granola approached us, I was genuinely excited as I’ve been using it for almost a year now. Let me show you why – Torsten.
If you’re anything like me, the moment you start a call, three or four apps pop up offering to record and summarize it. I disabled all of them except Granola. And there are many reasons for that.
Let’s start with the basics, because basics matter.
Granola has never failed me. In almost a year, I’ve never lost a single transcript. From experience, that’s not always true for other tools in this space. The summaries it generates are genuinely a magnitude better than anything else I’ve tried: well-structured, complete, and easy to digest. No walls of text.
And here’s the thing that might matter most for me: there is no bot.
No awkward AI participant joining your one-on-one with your manager. No “Notetaker Bot has entered the meeting” announcement, making everyone suddenly self-conscious. Granola just sits on your computer and does its job quietly. It captures audio directly from your device without announcing itself to the world.
(Obviously, you should still tell people you’re taking notes. But you can do that on your own terms, not because a robot just crashed the party.)
The features I actually use
Beyond solid fundamentals, a few things have made Granola genuinely sticky for me.
Mid-call catch-up. We all multitask during calls. Or maybe you are better than me, but I sadly do, all the time. When I phase out or get distracted, I can ask Granola “what did I miss?” with a single click—and it gets me up to speed while I’m still in the call. Honestly life-saving.
Chatting with transcripts and folders. You can ask questions about any meeting after the fact. “What are my action items from this call?” is the obvious one, but the real power is folder-level chat. Granola automatically files recurring meetings into the same folder, so if you have all your project calls in one place, you can ask: “Summarize the developments on Project X over the last two weeks.” It pulls from multiple transcripts and gives you an actual synthesis. Insanely useful for anyone managing several workstreams.
Custom vocabulary. We use internal project names pulled from obscure cartoons (don’t ask). Being able to configure custom words so Granola actually recognizes them has saved me hours of confused re-reading.
The use case I didn’t expect
I use Granola’s mobile app for brain dumps. Before our Monday morning team call, I’ll walk around, talk through my priorities out loud, and let Granola capture it. By the time I sit down, I have a structured outline of what I want to discuss. It’s become a ritual.
This isn’t a feature Granola markets heavily (they should!), but it’s one of the ways it’s become genuinely embedded in how I work.
Who this is for
Granola makes the most sense if you’re in back-to-back meetings, if you need to produce consistent notes for your team, or if you just want to actually listen during calls instead of frantically typing. It also works across platforms—Zoom, Meet, Teams, whatever—and the mobile app means you can capture conversations on the go.
The free tier is generous enough to actually test it. Paid plans start at $14/month if you need more.
Add the promo code AIREADY at checkout and get 1 month free on their paid plan.
Register here → https://go.granola.ai/aireadycmo
AI-powered note-taking apps are everywhere. I’ve tried many, and Granola is the one that stuck. It reliably does the core job—and then adds genuinely useful things on top.
If you’re drowning in meetings and struggling to track what was said, decided, or committed to, give it a look.
— Torsten
