Fireflies Talk Turns Voice Into Polished Work Text (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: I would say that tapping is effectively my fingers cardio all day, every day.

[00:00:10] Speaker 2: Hi everyone. Welcome back to our series where we sit down with people from Fireflies, get to know what they're working on, what they're building, and just getting to know them a bit better. And I'm so excited to have here with me today the one and the only Gilla. Gilla, thank you so much for joining me. Would you like to introduce yourself?

[00:00:34] Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me here. Yes, I would love to introduce myself. My name is Gilla and I work in product marketing at Fireflies which basically means that I spend a very lot of time explaining very useful technology to people and I try not to use the phrase seamless workflow while doing that.

[00:01:02] Speaker 2: That's me. Thanks for having me on your show. It's an honor to be here. Superb introduction, 10 out of 10. Before we get into anything, I want to know how much of your day do you spend typing?

[00:01:21] Speaker 1: An offensive amount of time, I would say. Slack messages, briefs, documents, emails, I mean other people's documents, comments on the person who commented on that document, and then commenting back. I'm in product marketing, so I would say that typing is effectively my fingers cardio. All day, every day. All day, every day.

[00:01:51] Speaker 2: And of course, why I'm asking that is because you are our product marketer behind our Fireflies talk. So tell me, tell me what it is. Tell me what is Fireflies talk?

[00:02:07] Speaker 1: Fireflies talk, if I were to say it in one sentence, would be it's free, unlimited voice dictation that's built into Fireflies. It's on the desktop app and it basically turns anything that you're saying into clean, ready-to-use text anywhere that you'd usually type. That was probably a few sentences, but that's what it is.

[00:02:31] Speaker 2: But what I'm wondering is Fireflies already transcribes meetings. Tell me a little bit more, walk me into the background of this. Why did we decide to build Fireflies talk?

[00:02:45] Speaker 1: Well, because meetings are only one part of the working day, whereas the rest of us are typing about the meetings for the rest of the day. So because Fireflies is already helping you to understand conversations, Fireflies talk is now coming in and tackling the other side of that work, right? So like the messages, the emails, the documents, the prompts, the updates, everything like that. That's all the stuff that you have to write out after the meetings. And there's a very, very big important difference between the two because in a meeting, you want very faithful transcripts, right? You want a faithful record of what happened. And when you're writing a Slack message, you actually don't want an actual transcript of what you're saying, right? You don't want the, wait, no, actually meant Monday instead of Tuesday. You want to be able to say, can we move that to Monday, right? And so Fireflies talk is essentially, it's taking the thought that you already had, and it's putting it onto the page without making you manually clean up the way that humans usually speak.

[00:03:58] Speaker 2: As someone who is an active user of Fireflies talk, I cannot emphasize this part enough. Like, as you just said, I clearly am full of ums and uhs when I'm speaking. I'm dictating something and I'm as always like changing my mind through it. And then I'm like, oh my God, understood exactly, like it's dictating it exactly how I wanted it.

[00:04:28] Speaker 1: A hundred percent. Because kind of summing up what you said, it was completely pointless, but I was like bringing it back to your question about what the difference is between the two. And I was, you know, when you said that you type so much, I was just like, yeah, that's exactly what it is, right? Because Fireflies is handling the meeting, whereas Fireflies talk is handling all the typing that the meeting creates. So that's what I was thinking in my head when you said that.

[00:04:54] Speaker 2: Okay. So, um, tell me, I just installed Fireflies talk. Walk me through how it's going to work. How does this work for me? What does it look like?

[00:05:04] Speaker 1: Well, first I would say to you, well done for installing it. Your life's about to change. So good job over there. And then I would say, essentially, you're just going to click wherever it is that you want Textopia, right? So on a Mac, I think that you just, you hold FN and you speak and you release when you're done. Whereas on windows you click, I think it's control windows key. I think, I'm sorry, I'm on a Mac. So that's why I just verify that. This is the part when you can do like a tick on the screen and say, yes, that's true. Um, and you speak and you release. Um, so basically once you've done that, Fireflies talk is going to put the cleanup text at your cursor where it already is. So you can use it like we said before in Slack, email, docs, wherever it is that, um, CRMs, right? Prompts in AI. It's amazing for that. Um, essentially any place where you would normally talk. Um, and then if you have a longer thought, if you're like me, who clearly rambles a very, very lot, you can also just double tap the shortcut key and you're going to get hands-free dictation that way. And it's very, very useful when your thoughts have chapters like mine do. And then, yeah, you, I could do a demo right now where I would just say, you know, Fireflies talk does this as it is. And I'll have all my arms, all my awkward eyes in there. It's going to clean it all up and it's going to send it out so that I actually look professional AF.

[00:06:31] Speaker 2: It really is so simple by the way, like, don't you think you get used to it so quickly? Yeah. I can't work anymore without it. So I think it's like a game changer. As you know, we are big Slack users at Fireflies. Tell me how Fireflies talk works with Slack.

[00:06:52] Speaker 1: Oh, I'm very glad that you brought up Slack specifically because we created a feature just for Slack. Dictate the whole message completely naturally, the way that you speak, the way that you think. You don't have to say comma or full stop or any sort of punctuation like those old time dictation apps. Fireflies talk is going to handle all the punctuation for you completely. And then the very useful thing about Slack specifically is that it tags people, right? So you can say a teammate's name or a user's group and Fireflies talk will turn it into the at symbol and mention it to all the people in your connected workspace. It'll pick up on the spelling, it'll get it right, which is huge if you're anything like me and misspells people's names all the time. So I could essentially say, you know, Karishma, can you review this launch copy by tomorrow? It's going to tag her right then and there and send it as a Slack tag, which is incredible and super useful.

[00:07:52] Speaker 2: Isn't it so crazy how it, for me so far, it's always gotten the name right.

[00:08:01] Speaker 1: Completely. I would almost go so far as to say that I'm going to backtrack on how I introduced myself and say, it's an incredibly seamless workflow, because it really is completely seamless. And I hate myself for having said that, but I actually couldn't think of another word in that moment. It's wonderful. And specifically on Slack where you have, I don't know other people's companies, but we have a bunch of people who have the same names. And so it's very refreshing to be able to just say, you know, at Greg, and somehow Firefly's talking, knows who I'm speaking about, and I don't have to tag the wrong Greg in that case. So it saves me a lot of internal incidents, shall we say.

[00:08:43] Speaker 2: Okay. So for anyone who's still confused or like more familiar with Firefly's Notetaker, how is Firefly's talk different from Firefly's AI Notetaker?

[00:08:55] Speaker 1: I would say that the simplest distinction between the two is that Firefly's transcribes meetings and Firefly's talk is dictation, right? So the Notetaker is listening to a conversation and it creates a record of what everyone has said, whereas Firefly's talk, it's listening to you because you want to write something right now in this present moment. So one is capturing a meeting, the other one taps at your cursor. And the distinction between the two matters a lot because meeting transcripts need to preserve what it is that happened, whereas dictation should give you that clean version that you intended to write. So you don't need a forensic record. Every time you change your mind halfway through a Slack message, you know, Firefly's remembers the conversation, whereas Firefly's talk helps you answer it. Oh, that's quite nice. Keep that in.

[00:09:49] Speaker 2: That was very well said. Thank you. I'm quite shocked. You should try marketing. Nah, sounds way too hard. You're searching for something easier. Let's talk about privacy. Like, is Firefly's talk private? Like, what I mean is, are my dictations being stored anywhere? And you know, all that stuff.

[00:10:19] Speaker 1: And all other private parts. So your past dictations are stored locally on your device, right? So Firefly's can't view them, neither can your workspace admin. And they're also never used to train AI models. So basically what that means is that if you install Firefly's talk on another computer, your previous dictations aren't going to suddenly appear there. They stay on the machine where you created them. Yeah. You can write that out as well.

[00:10:53] Speaker 2: Okay, so now a question that we've all been wondering about. Is Firefly's talk free?

[00:11:02] Speaker 1: Yes, it's completely and utterly free. It offers unlimited dictation on every single Firefly's plan, including the free plan, which is incredible. And it's not a, this isn't like a, oh, just for this trial. It's not for 10 minutes.

[00:11:18] Speaker 2: Okay, before we move on, I would love for you to share if there are any upcoming features, something cool that's planned, or, you know, what's, what should we be excited about when it comes to Firefly's talk?

[00:11:39] Speaker 1: I think essentially, we just started with the thing that people needed immediately, right, which was reliable dictation, anywhere that they're typing. But from here, we're basically looking at how Firefly's talk can work in more places to help more people do more with their actual voice, not just turn speech into text. I'm going to resist announcing a complete roadmap on this podcast show teammates episode between friends before the product team does, because I enjoy being employed. But I will tell you that mobile is one of the areas that we have been working really, really hard in, and that is coming to a device near you really, really soon. We understand that people aren't waiting. They don't expect that their thoughts are just going to happen every single time that they're at a desktop only. So it is coming to both Android and iOS very soon. I don't want to put a date on it, but soon.

[00:12:49] Speaker 2: I know like it's, it's like the one thing that I'm actually really missing. It's useful for anyone who's ever typing. Yeah, everyone, at some point, I definitely recommend anyone to try it once. And I can assure you that you will be hooked. Okay, Gila, thank you so much for sharing everything. It was super cool having you and getting to know about all these cool features and more about a product that I use every single day. And I love so much. I'm super excited for whatever's coming up. And I can't wait. But before I let you go, I have a surprise rapid fire round where I'm going to ask you some questions where you can be as rapid and as fiery as you like. I love that. We're going to start. Tell me, voice notes, love them or hate them.

[00:13:56] Speaker 1: Love sending them. Deeply resent receiving them.

[00:14:03] Speaker 2: That is the best way to put it, actually. Okay, next one. What's a word you've been saying on repeat lately?

[00:14:12] Speaker 1: Oh my God, I say apparently all the time, I've realized. And I'm not 100% sure why. I think it's because it can express, it could be like surprise, it could be skepticism, it could be like kind of mild professional disappointment. It just kind of works for everything. So I will say apparently all the time.

[00:14:34] Speaker 2: Did you start saying it ironically and then just never let go?

[00:14:40] Speaker 1: Probably. Apparently. Yeah.

[00:14:42] Speaker 2: Because I started using the thumbs up emoji ironically and now I can't stop using it because it's functional.

[00:14:51] Speaker 1: Completely. We are functional people.

[00:14:53] Speaker 2: What's your favorite Gen Z slang? Don't even ask me for options. Because don't ask me for options. I have no idea.

[00:15:01] Speaker 1: I don't need to ask you because I definitely 100% apparently am Gen Z myself. So I can just like sift through all the words that I'm saying on repeat. One of the words that I really like that me and my peers, the Gen Zers say is dilulu. I really like that. I really like the fact that it took us like decades to actually find a very fun word that actually kind of explains standard marketing strategy. So dilulu.

[00:15:32] Speaker 2: I love that. Okay. Thank you so, so very much for being part of this series. I have enjoyed this so much. Do you have any closing remarks, any thoughts you want to share, anything else like tell us?

[00:15:54] Speaker 1: Well, first of all, thank you for having me here. I was super stressed, but you are just such a wonderful, calm, reassuring, amazing hostess. So same time tomorrow. Closing remarks would be, apparently, you don't have to be dilulu to have a seamless workflow by using Five Lives Talk.

[00:16:23] Speaker 2: Thumbs up to that. Thank you so much. See you again soon, hopefully.

[00:16:34] Speaker 1: Very soon.

[00:16:38] Speaker 2: Today I have with me the queen of talk.

[00:16:44] Speaker 1: Do you like that? I just came up with that.

[00:16:46] Speaker 2: That's okay. You are so type B, like I should have.

[00:16:50] Speaker 1: You knew I wasn't going to read them.

[00:16:53] Speaker 2: But thank you so much for, wait, let me do that again. Okay, Gila, thank you. I love you so much. I'm like, what did I get to know more about? Um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um. I clearly am full of ums and ahs when I'm speaking.