Wispr Flow

Wispr Flow having a good old shout in📍Times Square today

Most people don’t struggle with ideas… they struggle to sit down and write. That’s why we’re launching Write with Flow, an accountability session to finally make progress on the writing you’ve been putting off. Maybe it’s a Substack draft, a LinkedIn post, or that blog idea still sitting in your notes. Heads down for an hour with no distractions—with others doing the same. Spots are limited. Apply here to join: https://lnkd.in/gqvRvWt4

Most people don’t struggle with ideas… they struggle to sit down and write. That’s why we’re launching Write with Flow, an accountability session to finally make progress on the writing you’ve been putting off. Maybe it’s a Substack draft, a LinkedIn post, or that blog idea still sitting in your notes. Heads down for an hour with no distractions—with others doing the same. Spots are limited. Apply here to join: https://lnkd.in/gqvRvWt4

Google sent me a cease and desist at 13 years old. I had 2.5M users for my previous app. And my parents had no idea. I built it during the Limewire shutdown. You could type "play me the latest Imagine Dragons song" and it would find and download it instantly. When it couldn't find a song online, it converted YouTube videos to MP3s. Turns out, Google didn't like that. One night at 3am, I got an email with words like "cease and desist," "juvenile," "illegal." I was terrified, couldn't sleep. But the worst part was still coming - telling my dad. See, he thought I used my daily hour of screen time for Power Rangers. He had no idea I'd been coding from 10:30pm to 5am every night after they went to bed. That Saturday morning, I handed my dad my laptop, with Google's legal threat on the screen, and watched his face as he discovered that his 13-year-old had built something used by millions. Google killed the app. But that moment with my dad changed everything. He didn't yell. Didn't punish me for keeping it secret. Instead, he asked: "How did you build this?" As I explained the late nights and workarounds, I realized something: those constraints had shaped everything. Limited screen time taught urgency. Secret sessions killed perfectionism. Fear of discovery meant ship now, iterate later. Those constraints still drive how I work at Wispr Flow today. They forced me to focus on what mattered. The world tells you to wait for better conditions. But sometimes the magic happens precisely because conditions aren't perfect.

We've raised over $56M for Wispr Flow without pitching investors. Every round has gone exactly the same way: We're heads down building. Not thinking about fundraising. Then a VC shows up at our office. "What do we need to do to lead your next round?” I'm like... we weren't even raising? Ali Partovi at Neo did this. Matt Kraning at Menlo Ventures did this. They all offered tomorrow's valuation for today's company. Before we hit our metrics. Before we made a deck. Before I even put on a nice shirt. Here's what I've learned about investors who pre-empt: They have this weird superpower - they see where you're going before you've figured out how to get there. Most investors need social proof. "Who else is in? What are other firms saying?" Pre-emptive investors are different. They show up early, pay premium prices, and bet on vision over metrics. At first I thought they were crazy. Who pays Series A prices for seed metrics? Then I realized - these are the investors you actually want. When shit hits the fan (and it always does), they don't panic. They have independent conviction. They believed when nobody else did. They’re not going anywhere. The best investors don't follow rounds. They create them. And somehow, we've been lucky enough to work with some of the best of them ❤️

The hardest part of branding a tech startup? Making it feel like >>you<<. At Wispr Flow, we threw out the tired SaaS aesthetic and rebuilt our brand identity for rhythm, not rigidity, with a team of 2-ish people over 6 weeks. One of those beautiful, chaotic sprints that comes together in the end, but the end also feels like the start. Huge kudos to the phenomenal Kimberly Fred for leading this project; taking some of the most abstract concepts and making them real! And some other special people I’ve dropped in the credits, link to a story about our journey below.

What do Canva, Google, and Wispr Flow have in common? ... We were all the Top 3 finalists in the "Best AI Design of 2025" by Fast Company! ❤️

I spent most of my early career with imposter syndrome, first sure that people at "real" startups must know what they were doing, then equally sure that everyone must be doing some version of "fake it 'till you make it". The last ~20 months at Wispr have shown me what it's actually like to work with some of the most talented people in the industry. There's still uncertainty and risk, but also genuine trust and an incredible sense of momentum. No matter where the company goes, I'll be incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to calibrate how it should feel for a company to be working well, firing on all cylinders. If you want to know what that feels like, come join us; we're hiring across the org: https://lnkd.in/gx3iYS2c

Tanay Kothari, my boss, demanded i start my day with a 4 hour doomscroll. not just on one platform. not two. eight. tiktok. instagram. linkedin. x. youtube shorts. reddit. facebook. even imessages. every trend, every sound, every viral format, every micro-shift in how gen-z talks online. it’s not busywork. it’s research. if we’re building the best ugc program in the world, we can’t afford to guess what might resonate - we have to see it, study it, and understand it before it even breaks mainstream. because ugc isn’t about polished creative. it’s about capturing what feels native to the moment: the way people text.
the jokes they repeat.
the sounds they instantly recognize. at Wispr Flow, trends are a dataset. doomscrolling becomes competitive intelligence. that’s how we ship campaigns that actually move, not just sit in a feed. so yeah - my mornings always looks like this.
but that’s what gives us clarity.

I’ve worked in big enterprise. I’ve worked in the leanest of startups. I’ve worked in agencies that crank at the speed of the most unreasonable client deadlines. I’ve seen what it looks like when you have unlimited resources, when you have distribution advantages, when you have infrastructure most teams can only dream of… But my frame of reference has shifted this past year, seeing what Eng team at Wispr Flow is all about. This is not just another high-performing “A Team”. This is the tightest, fastest, most inventive group of engineers operating. They don’t just ship fast. They solve for immediate impact with the most creative pathways to get there - so we can unlock whole new modes of interaction and precision. As a marketer, it’s such a buzz to collab on "what about..." ideas one day, and have them in the wild the next!