The story of Nigerian born Sam Udotong is probably the most inspiring story you will read today and thats because the young Nigerian has been able to move from a place of irrelevance and lack to building a startup which has just successfully raised $14 million from top investors.
Indeed, there is no overnight success for every success you see today began with many nights and days of toiling and sweating.
In 2016, Sam had just moved to San Francisco with $100 in his pocket but today, his startup, Fireflies has just inched a notch higher in its valuation.
Fireflies.ai, an AI that joins conference calls and helps attendees takes short bullet point notes like a human, on Tuesday announced it has raised $14 million in series A funding.
With the aid of transcription tools, Fireflies takes notes and also forms short bullet points from conversations.
The company which began in 2016, is designed to work as a voice assistant transcription tool, and is used in connection with video conferencing apps like Zoom and Google Meet.
Sam’s journey has been far from easy. For years his daily diet consisted of a bottle of Soylent and three slices of pizza • He and his co-founder pivoted the company *7 times*
Sam & co-founder Krish Ranineni started Fireflies.ai at an MIT hackathon. Rather than take jobs at companies like Facebook and Google after graduation like many of his classmates did, Sam took a bet on himself and decided to bootstrap his company.
He moved to San Francisco with $100 in his pocket and worked 15 hour days from free co-working spaces. He would ask family members in Nigeria to introduce him to engineers willing to work remotely and for years, his daily diet was a bottle of Soylent and 3 slices of domino’s.
Sam didn’t give up when the product wasn’t resonating with customers. Fireflies started as an on-campus food delivery app that you could pay for in bitcoin today it has evolved and is now a tool that transcribes video meetings into notes. It took him and his co-founder seven years to get there.
Today Sam and Krish have been able to raise $14 million from investors Khoslaventures and Canaanpartners and an impressive list of angel investors.
This certainly is proof that if you work hard enough at it, soon enough, you would share your story publicly.
Here’s an interview with him:
