We're developing AI assistants for real-time pitch guidance: Krish Ramineni, Fireflies

While Krish Ramineni may be looking to emulate Tony Stark’s development of his virtual assistant JARVIS (Just a Rather Very Intelligent System) with his company, the Fireflies.ai co-founder and CEO got inspiration for the product from working at a much more traditional enterprise.

“The idea for Fireflies stemmed from my time at Microsoft and observing executives who all had personal assistants. This inspired us to develop an Artificial Intelligence-based assistant that could handle repetitive, mundane tasks such as note-taking and transcription,” says Ramineni, adding that while the tool began by solving simpler problems, like transcription, and evolved as AI technology advanced, Fireflies now uses various ‘best-in-class’ AI models, including OpenAI, Anthropic, and open-source models like Llama.

“It started more as a wishful idea and then we said let's solve it brick by brick. First, it was transcription, then we figured out how to capture the meetings, how to build the dashboard, then we did the summarization, and later, when LLMs came out, we partnered with OpenAI and then brought that to market. So, we were able to do each thing systematically and today Fireflies has taken notes for over 16 million people across 300,000 organizations,” he says.

This leads us, naturally, to the marketing applications of the technology. “Marketers use Fireflies for customer feedback, testimonials, and for generating content for campaigns. The AI can automatically create sound bites from conversations, which marketers can utilize in their advertising efforts,” he says.

Fireflies helps digital marketing agencies generate ideas, create content, and even design ad scripts. AI aids in personalizing customer experiences and building effective advertising campaigns. “By utilizing AI, marketers can experiment with multiple versions of their creative work, improving their chances of success in advertising,” he adds.

 “Fireflies also offers an AI App Store with over 100 applications to assist with post-meeting tasks, such as drafting follow-up emails, writing articles, and coaching users on decisions like hiring. Each app is designed to streamline different workflows,” says Ramineni.

The San Francisco-based company has gone through its Series A funding. Although Fireflies is also used by individual consumers, its main focus is on B2B (business-to-business) clients, with Ramineni pointing out that it's integrated with big tech platforms like Adobe, Salesforce, Slack, Zoom, and Google Meet. “Fireflies is evolving into a more proactive assistant, capable of providing real-time guidance during meetings, similar to Jarvis from Iron Man. This could include tasks like surfacing important information or coaching users through decisions in real-time.”

 In doing this, Fireflies is expanding its capabilities in capturing voice conversations across platforms, including phone calls and in-person meetings. It is also developing features that enhance real-time interactions.

It recently launched other features including Fireflies Feed (a company-wide newsfeed that summarizes discussions across the organization); and Contacts (a CRM-like tool that organizes all past interactions with clients, helping users recall key points from previous meetings), among others.

“We're seeing a lot of knowledge workers being trained in using fireflies and that’s motivated us to release something soon called the Fireflies University, where we can give people certain certification in becoming experts at implementing and using Fireflies. We've launched 60-plus languages so we're seeing huge adoption across the globe,” says Ramineni.