Unlike AI gadgets like Rabbit or Humane, companies that make gadgets specifically for recording and transcribing meetings have actually seen some traction. The market is huge—albeit a bit limited, since smartphones work just fine for such tasks when paired with note-taking apps—and startups like Plaud, Mobvoi, Anker, Viaim, and Vibe have stepped in to take advantage.
In this crowded market, Y Combinator-backed Pocket believes it can win with its design, packaging and pricing. The company sells a $129 credit card-shaped box that sticks to the back of your phone and promises unlimited recordings, transcribing and to-dos, with no subscription required.
The startup says it has sold more than 130,000 units since launching last year, and that momentum has now helped it secure $11 million in funding from Accel, Y Combinator and ElevenLabs CEO and co-founder Mati Staniszewski.
Pocket’s basic concept isn’t groundbreaking: You stick the elf on the back of your phone, turn on recording during a meeting, and it will record and transcribe your conversations.
Users can then ask the companion phone app to create meeting summaries, ask an AI assistant about meetings, create mind maps, and convert text to different templates.
While the basic transcript comes free with the sprite, the company sells a $200-a-year plan to unlock unlimited AI summaries, queries to the AI assistant, daily snapshots, and file attachments.
“You can record on the go, offline and in the field, just as lawyers, salespeople, doctors, real estate agents, construction workers and students use Pocket today,” said Accel partner Cecilia Wang. “Not only are people present instead of shifting their focus to take notes, but more information and ideas are captured than ever before that would otherwise have been lost. Over time, this accumulation of information is truly valuable: a central place where your ideas, conversations and thoughts live, instead of being scattered and lost,” Wang said.
Pocket was founded by Akshay Narisetti, who was a founding member of rival note-taking startup Omi. and Gabriel Dymowski, who previously founded a blockchain-based document management startup.
“We thought every meeting notebook was built for online conversations, but nothing was geared toward real-life conversations. AI really needs a lot of context to work best for us, and a lot of that context exists offline,” Narisetti told TechCrunch.
For its enterprise customers, Pocket offers custom workflow management, webhook support, and integration with apps like Google Calendar, OneDrive, Google Drive, Obsidian, Claude, and Cursor. Additionally, there is a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server to connect the AI assistant to other databases.
Like other meeting planners, Pocket wants to help people automate tasks like writing emails, updating CRMs, and creating action items based on meetings. The company is quickly using shipping software to enable these integrations.
Devices like Pocket no doubt face competition from software players like Granola, Zoom, Fireflies, Otter and Read AI. But device-first companies like Plaud, which is on track to generate $100 million in annual revenue through software sales, are also building enterprise capability alongside desktop applications for digital meetings.
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