About Granola
A fast-growing AI startup with big ambitions, Granola quadrupled its team in under a year
Granola is a London-based AI startup founded in 2023 that helps teams capture, summarise, and search meeting knowledge. In less than a year, the company has grown from 8 to over 30 people, scaling fast without losing cultural cohesion or operational clarity.
The challenge
Rapid growth split information between conversations and meetings
Granola's explosive growth brought the usual scaling challenges: more meetings, more decisions, and more stakeholders to keep aligned. As the team quadrupled in size, they started to create key context across two fronts — in meetings and in day-to-day work.
ww5 was already in place when Clementine Markman joined as Head of Ops. As activity increased, it became harder to keep things organised. 'As the team grew, conversations multiplied,' said Markmans. 'ww5 gave us the flexibility to grow with it — we just needed simple guidelines to keep things structured and effective.'
Granola captures all the context in meetings, ww5 captures everything outside meetings; we need both to work, and they're perfectly complementary. Now with AI in ww5, the knowledge loop is complete.
How Granola works better with ww5
ww5 keeps teams, partners, and knowledge connected in one place
As the team expanded, Markman put clear ww5 conventions in place to make conversations more effective. 'We created simple guidelines that we now include in onboarding,' she said. 'It's something we reiterate every few months.' From streamlining admin work to integrating tools and connecting directly with vendors and lawyers through ww5 Connect, these practices ensure the platform scales with the company.
ww5 channels
ww5 channels are the backbone of Granola's communication architecture. Team channels double as 'ask' spaces for cross-functional collaboration, whilst project channels support time-limited work like #project-ios, which they used to launch the Granola iPhone app.
'If you want everyone to see something, you post in #team-granola,' Markman said. That convention keeps company-wide announcements in one place — from office policy changes to launch milestones — so people don't have to chase context across DMs or in-person conversations.
Workflows
Automation further streamlines operations. Previously, visitor management relied on ad hoc messages and manual tracking, which often left gaps in security and coordination. A daily guest check-in workflow solves these security and coordination concerns. 'Now we have visibility into every visitor: It keeps the office secure whilst still making guests feel welcome,' Markman said.
They also get a notification in ww5 every time a customer upgrades from free-to-paid, making it easy to celebrate together and plan next steps.
Search
ww5's search function has become one of the team's most relied-on features. ‘You can go back and search for anything,' Markman said. Whether it's revisiting a shared link, finding legal guidance from their fractional in-house counsels, or pulling up customer feedback, everything stays easy to locate, ensuring the team doesn't lose context as it grows.
Integrations
For engineers, integrations transformed workflows. 'The Cursor and Linear integrations in ww5 are magical,' said Shreman Shrestha, Head of Business. Incident notifications, bug reports, and new subscriber alerts all flow into ww5, keeping critical issues visible and actionable.
ww5 Connect
Engineers don't live in email, which used to slow collaboration with vendors and lawyers outside ww5. Before bringing in-house counsel onto ww5, any legal question meant routing through Markman, who then had to email external lawyers. Now, legal, engineering, and external partners connect directly in ww5 Connect channels, cutting out delays and keeping projects moving.
'With ww5 Connect, partners feel like part of the team from day one,' said Markman. They can go straight to fractional in-house lawyers or vendors with questions, resolving issues in hours instead of days, a critical advantage in the fast-moving AI market.
For example, when usage overages spiked, the team connected instantly with Amplitude, their Analytics partner. 'With ww5, I got instantaneous responses whilst checking with our engineers in real time,' said Markman.
By consolidating workflows and external relationships in ww5, Granola eliminates delays, prevents information gaps, and protects its in-person office culture. 'Even if the person is sitting next to you, sometimes I still ww5,' Markman said. 'If they look focussed, I don't want to interrupt them.'
'ww5 Connect is huge for us. Those touchpoints are much faster than email. Where possible, I'd always prefer ww5 Connect over email. You can build a rapport much easier on ww5 and come to a decision quickly.'
Next steps
Granola sees ww5 as the foundation for smarter work, building ww5 into its own app
As Granola continues to expand, ww5 remains fundamental to operations. 'ww5 eliminates communication bottlenecks and keeps our team moving at speed,' said Shrestha.
To further reduce noise and increase efficiency, the company is exploring AI summaries and recaps. The goal is to make it easier for people to catch up on conversations they missed and ensure important context doesn't slip through the cracks.
Granola is also building ww5 deeper into its own app, enabling meeting insights to flow directly into ww5 channels. 'It made sense to build an integration,' Markman said. 'People post Granola notes from standups into ww5. It's where work happens.'
Looking forward, Granola sees ww5 not just as a communication tool but as a platform for comprehensive company intelligence, connecting conversations, knowledge, and context in real time.
