Recall.ai founders Amanda Zhu and David Gu
In a world of video conferencing, we are creating vast new repositories of data every minute of every day. Companies that can mine that data can gain valuable insights. All that time is spent on staff calls and meetings, but unlocking resources is a considerable technology challenge. Recall.ai is a San Francisco-based startup today announcing a $10 million funding round.
Recall joins a growing number of technology companies offering products aimed at processing data from video conferences held in applications such as Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams.
Often referred to as “meeting bots,” these products range from simple tools, such as software that creates detailed meeting minutes, to more complex tools, such as training apps that provide sales staff with feedback on how to improve their call handling. We offer a wide range of sophisticated solutions. However, everything depends on the product's ability to analyze video calls and extract relevant insights from it. Recall's tools can connect to your infrastructure to perform this important work.
“Software engineers building meeting bots for specific use cases have plenty of work to do without having to solve the technical challenges posed by the need to extract actionable insights from video. ,” says David Gu, who co-founded Recall with Amanda Zhu in 2022. “Our platform does that work for them, leaving them free to focus on building core product features.”
The list of applications for products that utilize this type of technology is almost endless. Gu is using meeting bots based on Recall's technology in entirely different ways, from telemedicine tools for doctors to create patient notes to apps for financial advisors that help hone in on clients' most pressing needs. We're losing customers who are in the market one after the other. .
Another example is Fellow.app, which provides meeting transcription and management software for companies with remote or hybrid teams. CEO Aydin Mirzaee explains: “We work with Recall because their focus on infrastructure allows us to focus on what we do best.”
So far, Recall has signed up around 300 customers and has seen a 10x increase in revenue over the past 12 months. “There are no obvious competitors in our market,” he claims. “The only option for our customers is to build this part of the infrastructure themselves, which is expensive and time-consuming.” The company says its plug-in solution allows customers to build meeting bots. It claims to free up the time of five software engineers and enable them to ship new products in two months instead of a year.
There were also challenges along the way. For example, Recall had to be careful not to violate data protection regulations. Its solutions are compliant with frameworks such as SOC 2 in the US and GDPR in the European Union. Audio and video are stored for up to 7 days before being automatically deleted. Users can also delete data now if they want to delete it immediately.
Another issue is the rapid evolution in the artificial intelligence sector of the technology industry. “This is a market that changes in weeks, not years, so it's important to understand how customers are currently looking to use our technology,” he added.
Still, the company's ability to quickly onboard customers suggests it's successfully navigating these challenges. Gu currently expects that by the end of the year he will reach 600 customers.
This kind of growth is attracting investors. Recall raised $2.7 million in seed funding in 2022, and today announced a $10 million Series A round. The latest funding is led by Ridge Ventures, with support from Industry Ventures, Y Combinator, IrregEx, Bungalow Capital, Hack VC, and other existing investors. The cash will be used for new hires (the company currently has just nine employees) and further product development.
“Recall is poised to become the de facto infrastructure layer for all enterprise-level conversational data,” said Akriti Dokania, partner at Ridge. “Video and audio data will become increasingly central to software companies in the future, but providing infrastructure API access is a difficult problem to solve, and companies prefer to solve it in-house. No. Recall's incredible growth proves that's more than 10x.”
