Calendly throws its hat into meeting note-taker circus

Note-taking has quickly turned into a critical part of the productivity space, with many workplace software companies chasing the dream of having AI automate tasks based on action items created from meeting transcripts. Calendly, known for its scheduling and meeting booking software, is now entering the fray with a note-taking product.

Like others in the space, Calendly’s note-taker also joins meetings, records the audio and video, and transcribes it, after which it can generate a summary, action items, and draft follow-up emails. The company said it is also testing a Granola-like feature that uses system audio to transcribe meetings.

Calendly is also planning to release an AI assistant named Callie that taps the company’s existing meeting and scheduling stack to set up meetings, check peoples’ availability, and surface context from prior meetings. (Meeting notetaking startup Read AI launched a similar email-based assistant earlier this year.)

Calendly CEO Tope Awotona said the company wanted to automate workflows for its top users: people in outward-facing roles like sales and marketing whose workday is typically inundated with meetings.

But the competition in this space is intense. On one end, you have meeting note-taking apps like Granola, Fireflies, Read AI, Otter, and Fathom; on the other, productivity companies like Notion, ClickUp, and Wispr have also added note-taking assistants and features to their suites.

Still, Awotona says there’s big opportunity in automating tasks after the meeting is transcribed.

“There’s a litany of notetakers, and all of them do a great job of recording and transcribing notes. But a lot of work happens after the meetings. And we think that really that’s where the opportunity for our note-takers to be efficient,” he said.

Given that some companies in this space, like Otter and Granola, are facing allegations of violating privacy, Awotona said Calendly’ note-taker will inform users that their meeting is being recorded. The recording assistant sends a message in the chat to inform everyone of its presence and activity, and any user can ask the app to leave the conversation. It can even inform people before the meeting starts that the call will be recorded, thanks to its integration with Calendly’s scheduling system.

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Ivan covers global consumer tech developments at TechCrunch. He is based out of India and has previously worked at publications including Huffington Post and The Next Web.

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