The Genius of Granola: Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom

This was supposed to be a quick LinkedIn Post but I want to write on my blog more frequently so here we are, 1 hour later.

If you’ve followed me on LinkedIn or have the (mis)fortune to see my WhatsApp status, you’d know how much of a fan I am of a note taking app called Granola. Today, I just used "Granola Recipe” called “Coach me Matt” and in Nigeria lingo “it opened my nyash”. Don’t Google, it means it made me feel exposed. And for the Nigerians, that’s the right spelling - but I digress.

Let me try to explain the Genius of Granola.

Some of us are familiar with this hierarchy: Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom

Recorded call transcripts are data. Take a one hour meeting with a founder for instance, it has a lot of talk. In between a list of priorities or specific agenda, there can be loads of fluff (AI has abused this previously rarely used word), could segue into talking about sports, politics family or random stuff. The call transcript will have it all for you, wheat and chaff in chronological order.

However, Granola presents to you the pure information from that call say it 5 to dos that you actually discussed for 10% of the meeting. You can also scribble notes down and it augments it. I use it to write out names I know it may have difficulty spelling say “Nwoye” and it recognises it.

Now here is the kicker! Recipes!  That’s a fancy term for prepackaged prompt. So for example, after a meeting about a product you are trying to build, you can use a product requirement document recipe - sure, you could write “create a PRD from this meeting” but we all know that, even if you believe all prompts are equal, some prompts are more equal than others. These granola recipes are prepackaged prompts from masters in their game. Nikita.

The recipes bring out knowledge from your meetings and draws context that you probably didn’t know existed.

Early this morning I was lamenting how I wished I had an Oo in my life. Someone who unprompted (ha!) would give me specific feedback on what I should do next. As I got to my desk and opened Granola, I saw a notification to try the “Coach me Matt” recipe and voila, it ran through my last 11 meetings and showed me myself - it could not have been more spot on. Unfortunately I cannot publish excerpts, as other people are involved. But let us say, I definitely will be reorganising my calendar for deep work, and creating agreement trackers (the culprits are reading this now lol).

You know what, let me share the excerpt from on a recommendation on one aspect of my life:

You're giving away your Zone of Genius for free

“The *xxxx* demo and *Investor* call show you delivering exceptional product strategy and positioning advice—this is clearly your Zone of Genius. But you're doing it reactively, one-off, with no systematic capture of value. You told *Investor A* "only 1-2 out of 10-15 founders show consistent progress"—that's a 10-15% conversion rate on your time investment. Concrete fix: Run an Energy Audit this weekend. List every activity from last week and mark whether it energized or drained you. I suspect these founder advisory sessions energize you, but the lack of structure around them (equity agreements only after 2-3 months, no clear selection criteria upfront) means you're spending 80% of advisory time on the 8-9 founders who won't execute. Create a written "anti-sell" document describing exactly what you expect from founders in the first 30 days—send it before the first meeting. This filters out time-wasters and lets you spend your genius on the 1-2 who will actually ship.”

I love speaking to founders and will keep doing so for free. I also had in my head what patters I wanted in founders I was happy to work with, but I just never documented it, talk less of sharing it upfront.

Considering it took context from just one week and gave me so much useful and specific advice wisdom gives me indescribable joy.

By the way, “Coach Me Matt” recipe is by Matt Mochary a legendary startup coach  who I would have struggled to afford but has already given me value from Granola.

I have not dime kobo in compensation for this, not even a referral link. I just want to write more especially about stuff I like. The last time I remember being so smitten by a product was with Dropbox which It was barely a year old when I wrote about how it saved my degree. Granola is such a joy to use, I pay for it and I am happy to shamelessly hype them for free. Though I would not mind if they sent me a Granola spoon or ask me to join the Android Beta (surely, it’s on the way. Right? Right??)