The Evolution of AI Note-Taking & the Growing Importance of Sales

Since the release of ChatGPT 3.5, transcription and summarization tools have undergone three major stages of evolution. The second generation has gained the most traction, attracting a large user base with regular usage habits (monthly visits between 1 to 5 million). On the other hand, the third generation places a stronger emphasis on human-machine interaction and is still in the early stages of growth (monthly visits ranging from 100,000 to 1 million).

First-Gen: Quick AI Additions via Plugins

The first-generation note-taking products were essentially plugins, adding AI functionality in a quick and straightforward manner. These products offered transcript (text transcription) and summarize (automatic summarization) features, but often, the transcript content contained errors, and the AI lacked the ability to self-correct those mistakes. These tools were great for short-term or infrequent use, but when it came to long-term reliability and precision, they fell short.

Second-Gen: Heavy, Multi-Modal Tools with Advanced Features (Descript, Fireflies.ai)

Second-generation products like Descript took a more complex approach, requiring bulky audio and video uploads, making them less suited for quick, small-scale use. Unlike the first generation, these tools provided more advanced features, especially in terms of multi-modal capabilities, integrating video, audio, and text data. AI began to improve in these tools, offering corrections for transcription errors and providing summaries. With around 4 million monthly visits, these products gained significant traction, but their complexity made them harder to use in some cases.

Third-Gen: Enhancing Human-AI Collaboration (Granola, Quill)

The third generation of products put a greater emphasis on human-machine interaction, focusing on improving how users collaborate with AI. A standout feature here is how AI and human notes work together. After users jot down key points, the AI generates a summary based on those key words, focusing on what the user believes is important, rather than trying to transcribe everything. This approach makes AI feel more like an assistant that follows the user's lead, providing more personalized and detailed results.

In my experience, Quill has several advantages over Granola.

First, Quill excels in non-meeting scenarios, such as phone calls and YouTube videos, where Granola doesn't offer support.

Additionally, Quill provides more robust multi-language support and customization options during setup, offering a wider variety of language and scene-specific settings compared to Granola. In contrast, Granola currently lacks the ability to switch languages during meetings and struggles with higher speech recognition error rates.

Finally, Quill places a greater emphasis on transcripts (the original text), which is crucial for someone like me, who prioritizes learning methods over simple note-taking. In many work-related situations, particularly during phone calls or YouTube videos, only the verbatim transcript is useful to me, while the summary feature offers little value. On the other hand, Granola tends to focus more on summarizing content, whereas I need precise, accurate records of the original conversation.

Why Sales Are Becoming More Critical

A great product experience has a high barrier to entry, and the cost of choosing between different products is significant (especially when users download multiple apps to compare them). The cost of abandoning a product is also increasing, as all your notes tend to live in the same app.

In today’s online world, we’re bombarded with ads and influencers promoting products with exaggerated claims like"This is a game-changer" or "The future is now!"

However, few of these products genuinely deliver a good user experience. People often download the latest, hottest products—especially those with large marketing budgets—but they fail to become integrated into everyday use.

That’s where sales becomes crucial. People who genuinely use and understand a product are the ones who can spot the best solutions for their needs. These individuals are the ones who will help spread the word and promote the product. Those who have experienced the product firsthand and can genuinely vouch for it are becoming an indispensable part of driving product success.