Fireflies started as a small experiment by two young engineers trying to fix a simple workplace problem: remembering what was said in meetings. A decade later, it has quietly become one of the few profitable AI companies operating at global scale. In this episode, of ET in the Valley, host Himanshi Lohchab talks to Co-founder & CEO at Fireflies.ai,
Krish Ramineni traces that path from manually joining calls as “Fred” to validate demand, to rebuilding the product after securing early access to OpenAI’s APIs. He discusses the pressure of fast followers, why note-taking was only the entry point, and how Fireflies is now expanding into sector-specific workflows across healthcare, finance and retail. Krish also explains why the company resisted the fundraising race, how it approached M&A interest, and why he believes the next phase of AI will involve “AI employees” handling routine work across tools. It’s a grounded conversation about discipline, timing and what real adoption looks like in an overheated AI market.
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Check out other interesting episodes of ET in the Valley: ET in the Valley: Grant Lee, Co-Founder & CEO of Gamma, ET in the Valley: Databricks Co-founder Patrick Wendell, ET in the Valley: Replit Founder and CEO Amjad Masad, ET in the Valley: ElevenLabs Co-Founder Mati Staniszewski and much more.
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