Introduction

My name is Pip and I'm the founder and CEO of The Dots and today I guess I'm gonna be just showing some ways that the tools have transformed my life and I was one of the early alpha testers of Mindstone so I want to show you the practical application of how I've been using it.

Before I start I'm gonna record with Granola because I love granola it's my transcription tool it's a British start -up and everyone okay with me recording? Fantastic, thank you.

Quick question, has anyone used Granola? Anyone heard of it? Only a few people.

I'll talk a bit more about Granola in a second, but for now I'll just start recording.

Who Pip Is and What The Dots Does

So, a bit about me. So, I started a platform form called the dots and we power private social networks so we help businesses get off meta and we basically power co -working spaces private member

club loyalty communities I do not have a computer science degree I do run a tech business I studied maths and economics at uni but not computer science I have have an amazing engineering team.

I think what's been really interesting about starting to think about AI as a business is I run a community product, and our whole product is around human -to -human connections. It's about meeting people in rooms like this.

Building Community Products in an AI Era

So we haven't done a lot on the front end of the actual product itself. There's a huge amount of research

that if you apply AI to the front end of community community or social networks, you lose trust and people engage with it less. So we've steered clear of it mainly product wise.

Why AI Became an Operational Priority

However, we've used it a huge amount operationally. And I think the reason what the main reason is, I never want to fucking raise again. Sorry, I just so I raised 10 million today, but it was horrible. I realized it was much easier to make a million than raise a million.

And but I still have a small team. And we power quite discerning brands, so my clients are everything from Soho House, the member club, to Apple, to United Nations. So it's been a bit of a kind of exercise of how do we super scale using AI without me ever having to raise again.

So we've been experimenting with lots of tools and really ingrained it into the business. And I realized the best way to kick start the team on it was just try and work out how How to automate the thing you hate doing most. And it was just a really useful exercise to get everyone going, oh, this is great.

It's not going to take my job. It's just going to make my job more enjoyable, which was really fantastic.

The Scotland AI Retreat: Hands-On Tool Discovery

So then fast forward to going on a retreat. So I'm in a community.

Oh, you've got all my stickies. That's really embarrassing. There we go.

I'm in a community, a founder community called ICE. I think there's a couple of ICE, put your hand up if you're in ICE. Yep, yep, there we go. So it's a later stage founder community.

I've tried every founder community. This is the one that I've stuck with. And they do amazing trips. I like the later stage ones.

And one of the ones that we went on was a AI retreat to Scotland.

Accessibility, Time Poverty, and Learning by Playing

I'm dyslexic and very dyspraxic. So this is gonna be really interesting. sorry if I drop something.

So we went to an AI trip in Scotland and just got to play with tools. I think what I loved about it is while we had implemented a lot of tools in the business, I'm so time poor. And so really playing just hadn't been possible. So it was three days where we sat down and played with different things.

And so there were different experiences in the room, but we, you know, text to voice was a big conversation. I love Super Whisper. Does anyone like Super Whisper? Yeah, there's one in the back.

I think Josh prefers, Josh, the founder of Mindstone, prefers Monologue. We were playing with like Replit, so coding, cursor coding. And actually, we're also playing with a little tool called Limitless.

Can you put your hand up if you've heard of Limitless? Limitless is the little thing that is like a wearable. It records your

life you suddenly you're in the circle if you've ever read that book I went promptly went what I love about it is that whole memory I did go home and say to my husband could I have a limitless for Christmas and he said he'd nearly divorce me if I got one they were then acquired by Meta so

I'm very glad I didn't so it was there that we started playing with what Greg has built and I think it just changed my whole perspective of what was going to be possible but much quicker than I thought it was going to be so we started using

From Cursor to Rebel: Getting Started with Mindstone

the well what they called the Mindstone operating system we've started first using it on cursor so it does anyone so this is how we've originally used the mind stone operating system so everyone anyone know cursor put your hand up if you know cursor great okay great so i am not an engineer so this environment for me was not my natural habitat

um but we basically uploaded um what uh greg has been working on we connect our digital tools and at that weekend i built a chief of staff which was the mentalist thing i literally built my new member of staff that I was spent a huge amount of money hiring.

And that for me just unlocked that I am now going to be able to super scale without necessarily hiring, which is very exciting.

But off the back of that trip, that's where Rebel came across because there was so much feedback from everyone on that trip that this was quite a confusing environment and cursor cursor to be able to do so this is rebel I was one of the alpha testers and it's been an amazing

kind of process of going through it and kind of training it and I think the most important thing is it's just like hiring a human you literally hire rebel and it gets things really fucking wrong at the beginning and you're having to train doesn't take sick leave though which is really

useful so it does get things wrong but I've really learned to kind of just do a be as patient as I am with a human that starts human with my team when they start training it letting it know where things are correcting if it's where it's wrong it's like you know it's really about being honest with machine I guess

so the first thing I did when I set up rebel is what we did and the reason and these aren't checked is because I actually did it at the retreat in Scotland in Cursor first,

Connecting the Tool Stack (and the DPO Check)

but first thing I did was connect to all my digital tools. I will say as a business, do get your DPO's approval first. He said yes, but not our API. So that's a good first track.

So I am a diehard Apple fan. I love everything Apple, but we do use the Google suite for email Gmail and Docs, Slack for collab internally, and we use Granola, which I showed you earlier for meeting transcripts.

What an MCP Is (In Plain English)

So what was brilliant is I connected that all up using their MCPs, which someone asked me what the fuck is an MCP? Sorry, I've got to stop swearing, it's been recorded.

What is an MCP? I like to think of an MCP as just an adapter. So it's really connecting, for those that don't know, all my digital tools then to MindStone.

So back to that doing the thing that I hate most.

Automating Sales Follow-Ups with Granola + Mindstone

Every single pound I make I deploy into my engineering team and innovation. So I am the core salesperson at The Dots.

I was about to swear again, I don't enjoy it. I love people, I love building relationships, I love meetings, I love building that trust.

I hate the bureaucratic burden around that side of my business.

So I'm quite interested to know who in here is in a start -up? Anyone? Okay, amazing. Yep, great. Scale up. Yeah. You're on the cuff.

Who's in established corporate business? Great. And who's who's studying I probably shouldn't have said a stab at what we're called but studying brilliant

The Calendar Reality of Founder-Led Sales

brilliant okay amazing so yeah as a startup I do I used to do a lot of what the business is but now my whole role is kind of working with sales now we are really lucky that we get a huge amount of inbound and the reason being is like one of my first clients was so house people who buy our product were members there people join our wait list we then vet the wait list and make sure they

have buying ability but the huge problem is I spend so much time on calls all day just to see what how disgusting my calendar is but this unfortunately is my life basically so you know if you're looking at a Tuesday I can have back to back to back to back to back back back Granada's

The Follow-Up Email Workflow (End-to-End)

joining all of them and recording everything so in the old days i would have to i would have to get a member of staff to join those calls to take meeting notes which are now being done by granola um and i they would then and it's you know a sales resource or an account manager or one of the team and they would draft the follow -ups they would send the follow -ups um or i would be doing it myself and I would literally be like tearing my hair out.

And it just meant that I was doing this admin instead of actually doing my job.

But what has been amazing is now literally granola joins me at every meeting.

And then the first thing that I automated, which was the one that changed my life. And the one that I did when I was in the Scotland retreat

is I literally said so I just had a meeting or I had a meeting on Wednesday oh recording what did that say there yeah I had a meeting on Wednesday with Fulham football club they have a member club within Fulham called Lighthouse can you use my skill that follows up on meetings it was a new client prospect yay also what I love about that

is I'm dyslexic so usually I would have miswrote that so what is it now doing so what is now doing is it's finding the skill that I created and I actually trained this skill at the beginning so what it's doing is it's going in through

the connector into my Google suite it's going into my calendar checking when I I had that meeting. It's then going into my email to get the context of that meeting.

Is it a new client pitch? Is it a current client? Is it a personal meeting?

From there, once it's worked

out that, it's then going into my transcript, which is via Granola, to work out the context of the actual meeting. And basically, it's working through everything to write that follow -up email for me at the end of the process and we'll let it do its work by now I'm

going off and doing other things by the way by the end of the process it will have a draft in my email that I can then review and send so far so good great alright while that's doing its thinking work what I'm going to do perfect found

it all looking good so far sometimes this is where by the way it can come off kilter and what I love about Greg and the team they've been so responsive to feedback so sometimes it can forget where to find my granola transcripts

forever for example but now whenever something like that happens I asked please remember how to find this file it's basically like saying to a team member where to find stuff in an office and it will go off and it will find it

okay brilliant found the meeting now it's looking at the transcript so I I basically, in the memory, I added all of our kind of meeting, all our meeting templates and all the response templates as well. Great.

Why Granola Matters: Frictionless Transcripts and Shared Memory

So while it's doing that, what I'm going to do is also go back to granola and why granola has been so important to this process. So who said that they, who uses granola in this room? Okay, amazing.

This is granola for those that haven't used it. The reason I love Granola, and I've tried all of them, I've tried Fixer and had Zoom recordings, and what's the difference? I'm going to take this jacket off because I've got hot all over the place.

The reason I love Granola is it doesn't interrupt the meeting. I hate when you join a meeting and you're suddenly getting those kind of Fixer things joining. So this doesn't interrupt the meeting or the flow, but more importantly, I can also record in real life meetings. meetings.

So this means that wherever I am, and this is why I quite like the limitless thing, even though my husband would divorce me, is wherever I am, I now have a record of all the conversations that I had.

So today, one of my clients is Gangels, which is an investment network that only invests in LGBT founding teams. We met at Soho House.

I literally on my phone was just recording the meeting with his permission, obviously, and that then created that transcript but the amazing thing is then I can also put the transcripts into folders so perfect example of this is we for example we

work the UN and lots of our team are having meetings with the UN but we need a central brain to work out what's happening in the project so there's shared folders that you can create that you can put into the thing you know it's

never happened even with it's a great question though it's actually never happened I feel I feel people are getting more used to it it's a bit like having someone in a room I think as long as you're transparent I've had cases where people have said do you mind pausing this so actually the meeting today he did have a little bit where you do mind pausing we'll do an

offer record and go back on but yeah no I've never I'm actually to date but then I will say we don't you know, we run social networks, we don't work in, I don't know, we don't work in defense.

I think it's been tricky for investors, interestingly, because when we're in Scotland, lots of the investors want to plug in all these tools. But, you know, you don't necessarily want a full record of everything that was said when you're an investor, apparently, I don't know.

But that's a great question. Any other questions, Roland? Yes.

Speaker Recognition and Training in Messier Settings

Does it have a feature where it recognises different persons and do you...? Yeah, yeah. So this is the other brilliant thing about it. It recognises who's speaking based on

your calendar. So it's pulling everything from my calendar and then attributing records. You can also train it.

So weirdest side hustle I have, I'm also on my parish council, partly because I'm just one of these people, if things are broken, I just want to fix them.

And we've, I'm in Kent and they went reform anyway so to your question with we are now recording every council meeting but I had to train it who was saying what because they weren't in a meeting invite that was publicly available but it keeps a record of all of that but it also means my team

can go into you know one of our clients like the roof gardens and ask a question and it will bring up the transcripts and the meeting notes from my meeting. So it could be, which happens quite a lot, why has Pip asked us to do this?

And he will give a reason on the client call, which is great. But what I love about this is this tool has been, I've been using this for a year now. And the reason I know that is I started using it because I listened to a podcast called Lenny's Podcast.

Does anyone else listen to it? It's brilliant, isn't it? You're nodding. Yeah, it's great.

so in Lenny's podcast they give away free AI tools for a year and I got that a year ago off Lenny's podcast and I know that because they've just asked for renewal and I'm so stuck in I can't not renew but it was very clever but um but yeah the reason I'm showing you this is actually that

From Zapier Hacks to a Native Granola MCP

was one of the complexities when I started working with the team at Mindstone is they didn't um Granola didn't have an MCP it didn't have an adapter that I could connect anything anything. So I had to hack it by doing a Zapier from Granola into Google Docs to do the transcript

and then get MindStone to read the transcript. Last week, or week before last, Granola came out with an MCP. So I was like, hallelujah.

But what I loved about that process is the moment I heard it and got way too excited and really showed what a geek I really was, is the moment I heard that, I literally went and said to mind stone Can you help me connect the new granola MCP and it helped me and did it for me?

So I didn't even have to think about looking through things and everything like that So what happened meeting with on the third bar bar current situation recommended approach wait for the draft now gmail for next week So what's really clever about this is? It's worked out.

I've done this once before so it's saying you've already sent that bloody email you're an idiot why are you asking me to do it again shall I instead draft an email to nudge that person next week so that's how smart it is it's gone into my gmail and worked out that yes indeed I did this earlier in the week and this

was the email that it then wrote for me and put into my email drafts so it's literally got that smart now that it's refusing to now draft another email because it's already done it instead it's

Beyond Email: New Skills for Networking and Life Admin

saying nudge that email which is mind blown from that point what I then started to do and what I love is that I then started creating other skills so some of my favorite skills some of the fun ones actually have been I've now got more time because this is doing more of my

work so I've started going out more which is really lovely and I'm accepting dinner invitations which is really lovely so this Monday I was invited to an

industry dinner and it was the Disruptors dinner now I this dinner was hosted by a guy called Brent Hoberman of Founders Forum and literally can you see here, all I said is can you pull the names and titles of the people from the event? So

I just dumped in the PDF. And can you then connect with them on LinkedIn? So it pulled all the names.

LinkedIn Outreach via Browser Connectors (and Current Limits)

It then goes via an MCP, a browser MCP, goes on and starts connecting connecting with everyone on LinkedIn. Now, it is, I must admit, browser MCPs, so using a connector on a browser.

I mean, it was the moat. Tim Burton is leaving at this point. It was mad. He's not on

LinkedIn that told me. But basically, it then gives me status reports. It does say, can you just do this manually?

It'll only take 10 minutes. I did have to say, I don't have 10 minutes. Can you keep doing it?

But the problem is, is that the browser MCPs are still not brilliant. But after, can you you just keep going? Can you keep going?

It had connected with everyone via LinkedIn. But this is just a view of where things to come.

Like once the MCPs on browsers are better, oh my God, my whole world is going to change.

A Small Win: Recovering a Lost Item Automatically

The other thing, the random one I set up was I left a scarf at a restaurant. I'm really bad at forgetting things. I'll probably forget something here.

So I literally said, can you find out if I left that scarf at a restaurant? It went into my calendar, worked out the restaurant, used a browser MCP to go to the website, found the contact details of the restaurant, then drafted the email in my tone of voice saying, have you got my scarf?

They responded and said, yes. And the rest is history. I got my scarf back.

But boom, just talking to it like I would an EA. So now I've replaced an EA and I've replaced a account manager.

So this is what I'm doing I'm building humans I love humans by the way but I am now helping my humans which is my team also build humans and so this is kind of the mad thing that is starting to happen from there I've now got to the point where

Recurring Automations: Weekly Updates and Inbox Triage

I'm like I automate tools every week all the things I hate doing most so this is a weekly automation of things skills I've set up that now runs on a weekly basis. Again, it's all the stuff I hated doing.

One of those was just giving everyone on the team an update on how sales are doing. So now that runs that every week. It reads my pipeline doc.

It reads the email context. And then it sends me an email, which takes a while in the back end. So I just wanted to show you here. So it sends an email to my COO with a full status update

date of our priority deals what I'm doing next and I don't have to worry about this now and it just goes out every I have to approve it by the way it does every now and again it does go batshit crazy um but this is now a full full overview of all the deals that we have our top 20 deals in pipe.

So he knows exactly where we're at with everything, which is just magical. The other thing which was hilarious is it kept getting my email signature wrong.

So I asked it to improve my email signature. But these weekly updates happen. I mean, Mindstone has to be

open, your computer has to be open, but I could just be doing other things while it's doing the tasks that I hate doing. So my favorite one recently is every Monday, I'll have like 500

hundred emails in that will be maybe a hundred plus emails from clients I'm talking to it will now draft replies to all of those clients and I just literally review review send send send I would say a month ago 30 or 40 were batshit crazy I'd say now 20 and I'd say in a month maybe it's 10

and that's a mixture of me adding more memory so it's remembering and learning more about me and also a mixture of the teams improving the tech as it goes so yeah that's essentially the

Results and Constraints: Time Saved and Cost

main things I'm using it for at the moment but what would we say the outcome is so this week 12 hours alone I would say I'm saving one day a week at the moment using this and it's still really early days.

That is mental. Real transparency on cost.

I think my biggest limitation, I would love to roll this out to the whole team, but the biggest limitation is cost at the moment. It's costing me, it was three weeks ago, it was £100 a week.

Now it's down to £80. Obviously put that across my whole team, it's quite a significant investment, but it

is coming down, which is partly because it's becoming more efficient and partly because I'm just getting better at training it and asking it the things that it wants to do.

Conclusion and Next Steps

So back to now Granola. I'm going to stop this meeting now. Stop.

So what I'm going to do is say who wants the meeting transcripts and all the notes from this meeting? Okay, amazing.

I'm just going to say I've just given a presentation at the Mindstone event in Oxford. can you find the transcript from the presentation and can you send it to greg penny and drummond at mindstone please and i'm gonna let it go and see how we go um so that is me this is how

i am starting to build people within my organization thank you very much does anyone have questions