Mike Adams, Co-Founder & CEO of Grain: $22 Million Raised to Power the Future of Meetings

In today's episode of Category Visionaries, we speak with Mike Adams, Co-Founder & CEO of Grain, a meeting insights platform that raised $22 Million in funding, about how to build the next in-demand product by really drilling down into the problems people deal with on a daily basis. Grain exists to capture, copy, and share key points from live conversations automatically so clients can concentrate more effectively on the conversation itself instead of losing focus on writing notes about it.

We also talk about how Grain acquires customers as a startup and builds strong relationships with them, tailoring their solution to a client’s specific problem. In addition to that, we also talk about Mark’s challenges in navigating remote work through the pandemic, despite his dislike towards remote working.

Topics Discussed:

• Mike’s journey from Utah to San Francisco where he built his first start-up and eventually started Grain
• Mike's experience building MissionU, an education company which was sold to WeWork back in 2018, which is where the idea for Grain came from.
• Mike's admiration for Sid Sijbrandij, the Co-Founder and CEO of GitLab, particularly about their solid business and company culture.
• How Mike met his Co-founder and decided to start a company that could record every meeting or interview and store that data in their own software.
• How Grain acquires big names as a startup. He talks about building good and genuinely needed products that actually solve problems. They were always doing one-on-one on-boarding meetings with their customers to build relationships and tailor the product to the customer's needs.
• Grain’s competitive landscape and market creation. Mike considers Grain as a ‘new flavor inside an existing category’.
• Mike’s greatest challenge while building Grain: COVID and navigating through completely remote work. 
• Grain’s vision for the next three years and how those visions excite Mark.

 

Favorite book: 

The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown