Recall is an AI-powered knowledge management tool designed to help users quickly organize, search, and retrieve information from various sources like notes, documents, and web content. It uses advanced AI to understand context, making it easy to find what and when you need it. Recall enhances productivity by reducing the hassle of manual organization and providing quick access to critical insights.
Arun: In today’s episode, we discuss with Sankari Nair, the co-founder of Recall, an innovative knowledge management tool designed to summarize online content and create personalized knowledge graphs.
During this engaging conversation, Sankari shares the inspiration behind starting Recall with her co-founder, Paul. We also dive into their marketing strategies and explore their exciting plans for the future.
Whether you’re an entrepreneur, a tech enthusiast, or someone looking for insights into knowledge management tools, this episode has something for you.
Let’s get detailed!
Arun: Can you tell me what Recall is about?
Sankari: Arun, let me start with the problem statement before diving into the details. We’re in an era of unprecedented content creation, where the high volume of information we consume far exceeds our ability to sift through it, find what’s relevant, and retain it. Recalling it later becomes a significant challenge even when we find relevant content.
That’s the core problem we’re addressing at Recall. Our focus is on building a personal, AI-powered encyclopedia. Recall is available as both a web app and a mobile app, with the ultimate goal of simplifying how we process content.
Here’s how it works:
In essence, Recall helps you capture, connect, and retain knowledge in a way that’s effortless and deeply impactful.
Arun: Could you share some details about the educational background and work experience of the founding team members?
Sankari: Let me start with Paul—he’s our founder and CEO. Paul and I go way back. We’re both South African and studied together at the University of Cape Town, where we were both in engineering. Paul studied electrical engineering but quickly transitioned into software development. He was an early team member at Maltego, a company that uses graph databases or knowledge graphs in the cybersecurity industry. His experience there actually inspired the idea for Recall, which I’ll explain more about shortly. In short, Paul is an engineer through and through.
Next is Igor, our incredible CTO. He’s based in Serbia and has a background in computer science. He’s not just an incredibly talented developer—he’s also absolutely hilarious. The three of us work well together and have a lot of fun as a team.
As for me, I studied mechatronic engineering, but I only worked as an engineer for a year before realizing it wasn’t the right fit for me. After that, I switched paths and joined Uber as an early hire in their South Africa office. I ended up spending seven years there, focusing on analytics, automation, operations, and strategy. My time at Uber also brought me to Amsterdam, where I’m now based. After Uber, I moved to Cloud Kitchen, where I worked more on strategy.
That’s a little bit about our backgrounds and how we came together to create Recall.
Arun: You mentioned that Paul got the idea for Recall while working at Maltego, right? Can you explain a bit more about how that happened?
Sankari: When we talk about the concept of a knowledge graph, think of a detective solving a crime. They often use a pinboard with strings connecting images, notes, and clues to visualize relationships. Maltego essentially built a digital version of that for threat intelligence.
While working with knowledge graphs, Paul had an idea: “Wouldn’t it be cool if I could connect all the information I consume the same way I connect threat intel?” He realized he was facing two major challenges.
First, organizing new content was chaotic. Whenever he came across something new, he’d wonder, “Where do I put this?” He’d create a new folder, then another, and soon end up with a clutter of ten or more folders.
Second, there was the issue of retrieval. He’d remember seeing something important before but couldn’t recall where he’d saved it. This constant struggle made him think, “What if the foundation of a knowledge graph could solve these problems?”
That led Paul to explore tools like Roam and Obsidian, which were becoming popular at the time. While he appreciated them as great products, they didn’t fully meet his needs—particularly when it came to managing online content ingestion.
So, as a side project while still at Maltego, Paul built Recall. It was initially just something he created for fun, for his use. But when he posted it on Hacker News, it gained significant traction, and that’s where things took off.
Arun: You mentioned making a post on Hacker News that helped you secure your first round of funding. Could you explain how that worked and share more details about the experience?
Sankari: Paul was at a point of frustration with Recall and had almost decided to give up. As a last resort, he decided to post about it on Hacker News, wondering if anyone out there cared about the project. His post had a blunt and attention-grabbing title: “A place to store all the shit you want to remember.”
The post went viral, gaining tons of comments and upvotes. Amid the buzz, we received an unexpected email. The sender asked, “Are you serious about making this a business?” They invited us to hop on a Zoom call, and to our surprise, it turned out to be someone from Slash Capital.
That very evening, the call ended with a commitment to invest in Recall. It was surreal—at the time, the company wasn’t even officially registered, and there wasn’t a bank account in place. We had to quickly incorporate everything.
This experience was a turning point for Recall. It was a mix of hard work and a little bit of luck that sparked the momentum we needed to move forward.
Arun: Before we proceed with other questions, could you please provide a demo of your product?
What you’re looking at is my personal Recall knowledge base. It’s where I organize a wide range of content across different categories. I use it for everything—from books and podcasts to articles and deep dives on health and longevity. I also store movie recommendations (I take those seriously!) and even recipes, including ones from friends.
Sankari: Recall Knowledge Base Overview
Arun: If you want to take a quiz based on a specific article, does the quiz focus solely on that article, or does it summarize content from all the articles in your knowledge graph?
Sankari: If I just want to focus on one topic, like understanding what mTOR is, I can simply select it and create a quiz specifically for mTOR. That’s an option available as well.
Additionally, anything you quiz yourself on gets automatically added to your schedule for review, but you also have the flexibility to review individual cards whenever you want.
You can even create your questions, add new ones, or edit existing questions. The quiz feature is quite customizable.
Arun: How does mTOR connect to the concept of longevity that you demonstrated earlier?
Sankari: Backlinks to mTOR
When you look at backlinks to mTOR, what it means is that various podcasts, YouTube videos, or other content have mentioned mTOR and linked to it. To explore this further, you can click on the Graph View, which provides a visual representation.
In the graph view, you’ll notice two types of links:
This setup allows you to dive deep into the topic. It’s especially useful if you’re actively reading, exploring, or expanding your understanding of a subject.
Personal Knowledge Graphs
This concept can be applied to more casual or fun activities too. For example, I created a knowledge graph for movies. One of my favorite movies, Burn After Reading, showed me something surprising: Tilda Swinton appears in a lot of my favorite films. I hadn’t consciously thought of her as a favorite actress, but seeing the connections made it clear!
Similarly, you can use this for something like recipes. I’ve linked all my chicken recipes together, so whenever I feel like cooking chicken, I just look at the “chicken” node and instantly access all my saved recipes.
Whether it’s for deep research or something lighthearted, building a knowledge graph is a fascinating way to visualize and explore connections across topics. It’s a tool that offers versatility, from tracking complex subjects to organizing personal interests like recipes or movies.
Arun: Recall is an excellent tool for diving deeper into a specific topic. It generates a comprehensive knowledge graph, allowing you to connect one article to another seamlessly. This feature makes it perfect for building a broader and interconnected understanding of any subject.
Sankari: Recall resonates strongly with people who are subject matter experts. These can range from someone deeply into academic research on a specific medical topic to someone simply obsessed with movies. It’s designed to cater to various levels of expertise.
What you’re seeing is the paid version of Recall, where I’ve ingested specific content. But there’s also a free version available. By simply hitting the plus button, you can search anything on Wikipedia and create unlimited free summaries.
This might not be for everyone, but it’s a great way to explore Recall’s capabilities. For example, if you typed in “cake,” you’d get a summary of what Wikipedia says about it. You could do this for any movie, concept, or topic.
Even with the free version, you can build a knowledge graph to get a feel for how the product works. It’s a powerful way to explore and organize information, whether you’re diving deep into a subject or just casually curious.
Arun: what marketing strategies did you follow in the initial days of Recall to get users?
Sankari: It is tough, and sometimes you just wonder—do you keep going? Do you keep pushing forward? But I think there are a few things that have worked for us. So, SEO has been really important for us. One early initiative we did from a marketing perspective was this page on our website—a summary library. Let me show you.
Basically, whenever there’s any trending content that resonates with our ideal customer profile (ICP), we create a summary of it. The summaries are automatically generated, categorized, and can be saved directly into Recall. This has been a solid growth engine for us.
Another key growth driver has been Product Hunt. That platform was where we first got our early users. The audience on Product Hunt is open to trying new things—they’re enthusiasts and innovators who get excited about emerging technology. It’s also a great place to launch a product that’s still in its early stages, even if it’s a little buggy or not perfectly polished.
It gave us a confidence boost and helped us test the waters to see if there was a market out there for our product.
Lastly, we’ve found newsletters to be another effective channel for growth. They help us reach a wider audience and stay connected with potential users.
To be honest, we’re still figuring out what our future strategy will look like, but SEO, Product Hunt, and newsletters have been great starting points for us.
Arun: how long did it take to get the first paying user for Recall?
Sankari: We launched Recall as a free product initially. It wasn’t a paid service right away. At first, we focused on gaining free users or even just sign-ups. The first version of Recall was quite limited—it only worked with Wikipedia, and we couldn’t ingest other types of content.
Still, we kept it free, thinking, If people find Recall useful even when it’s restricted to just Wikipedia, then there’s a broader use case for it.
Then came our first Product Hunt launch. That was a big moment because, on the very same day, we got our first paying users. It all started from there.
Arun: how did Product Hunt help you in the marketing efforts?
Sankari: Launching on Product Hunt can give you an initial boost, but to achieve a successful launch, there’s a lot of groundwork involved. For instance, joining communities, following other launches, and engaging with the support system around Product Hunt can make a big difference.
We also built momentum before our launch by advertising on our website that we were coming to Product Hunt. As people started engaging with us, we took the opportunity to connect further—having calls with them, learning why they wanted to use Recall, and iterating based on their feedback. This created a bit of a snowball effect, which helped us.
I genuinely believe Product Hunt is a fantastic platform for anyone who has a product and wants to test it. Keep in mind, though, that your third or fourth launch is likely to be more successful. You need that initial momentum, so don’t be disheartened if your first launch isn’t a huge viral success. Instead, focus on resonating with your initial audience and finding customers who are genuinely interested in what you’re building.
Arun: You were the Product of the Month in July. What strategies did you use to achieve that?
Sankari: First, I want to emphasize that this didn’t happen magically. It came after several failed attempts on Product Hunt. I want people to understand that a successful launch involves a lot of behind-the-scenes effort and multiple iterations. For this particular launch, there were several things we did differently compared to our previous ones.
Arun: How do you gather customer feedback? Which platforms do you typically use for this purpose?
Sankari: Our main channel for communication is Discord, where we have an active community and talk to users regularly.
For paid subscribers, I share my personal Calendly link, allowing them to book 30-minute calls with me. Many users take advantage of this, and I enjoy it because I get to meet them, provide personalized demos, address bugs or issues, and tailor the product to their needs. A lot of my time is spent talking directly to customers on Zoom and Discord.
We also use in-product feedback surveys that appear at different points in the user journey to collect insights.
Another helpful tool is Canny.io. On our website, there’s a “Feature Requests” section that links to Canny. Users can submit and vote on feature requests, helping us identify what matters most to the community. This ensures we prioritize features that align with user needs while staying true to our product vision.
Arun: Based on customer feedback, have you added any features to Recall in the past? Could you share some of those features with us?
Sankari: Almost everything we do is influenced by user feedback. For example, the concise and detailed summary feature was a direct request from users. Small changes, like adding timestamps or a link to a video, also came from their suggestions.
We’re always iterating. We balance big milestones—major features we’re working towards—with smaller, consistent improvements. Sometimes it’s as simple as changing a heading title for the image upload section or making tiny tweaks that improve the experience.
I also use Recall regularly myself. If I feel frustrated or notice something that could be better, I prioritize those changes. It’s important to have a critical mindset with your own product. You can easily fall in love with it and develop blind spots. While I think Recall is amazing, I make it a point to evaluate it critically and keep improving.
Arun: What are your plans for marketing Recall to attract more users? Are you considering strategies like content marketing, social media ads, or collaborations?
Sankari: Recall has broad appeal, attracting users who care about recipes to those doing deep research. That makes marketing tricky because it requires consistently broad efforts.
I focus on analyzing our top users—those using Recall every day—and identifying what they have in common. I break them into specific, detailed profiles and target each group with tailored marketing.
Experimentation is key. By testing and refining, I can focus on particular customer cohorts instead of using a broad, uncertain approach.
Arun: What does your product roadmap look like shortly? What new features are you planning to add to Recall?
Sankari: Apart from continuous iteration on the current version, we’re planning to launch a chat feature soon. It’s become a standard expectation—chatting with your knowledge base is no longer a “wow” factor but more of a baseline requirement.
With AI today, user expectations are much higher, so our immediate focus is on refining the current app to ensure it meets those expectations. We want to enhance the app’s core functionality while keeping user needs front and center.
In addition, we’re also planning to expand into the B2B space. That’s an entirely new roadmap and workflow for us, but we’re approaching it thoughtfully. Over 60% of our paying users already use the Recall app for work, so we want to build alongside them. We’re asking questions like: How are they using the app at work? What features do they wish they had? Understanding their needs is a big priority as we move forward.
Arun: B2B must be a significant market for you, isn’t it?
Sankari: I’m excited about this! The whole goal behind Recall is to bring a lot of intentionality to the content people consume. Our one-liner sums it up: “Get smarter, faster, on the content you care about.”
At work, this is especially relevant because you’re under pressure—you’re ramping up, learning, building, and growing. That vision resonates, especially as we explore the B2B path.
But for now, we’re still heavily focused on B2C. There’s a huge market there, and we believe Recall can bring tremendous value to our customers.
Arun: what is the best piece of advice have you ever received?
Sankari: “Being present” has been incredibly relevant to me lately, not just in work but in life overall. It’s so easy to get caught up in the story of tomorrow—worrying about what’s next—or to dwell on the pain or even the magic of the past.
Right now, I’m trying as hard as I can to just focus on the present moment. It’s not easy, and I’m definitely still working on it, but I truly believe it’s something important for everyone to strive for.
Arun: what is your favorite non-fictional book that you wanted to share with our users?
Sankari: Eckhart Tolle is a spiritual leader, and he’s written some very popular books. The most famous one is probably The Power of Now. That one didn’t resonate with me, but A New Earth—I highly recommend it. It’s really about the ego—understanding it, becoming aware of it. Being present means you’re aware of your ego, and I think that’s such a powerful thing for everyone to experience. I think one of our main goals as humans is to build this awareness of the ego, to understand that you’re not your ego, and to recognize the difference. It’s such a transformative realization. For sure. If you decide to read it, I suggest skipping chapter one if it feels a bit too fluffy—it gets much better from chapter two onwards!
Arun: what is your most used productivity tool or productivity hack?
Sankari: Honestly, the main software I use is Recall. From a life perspective, though, the biggest game changer for me has been a sauna and cold water. I’m obsessed with going to the sauna. If I don’t have access to one, I’ll do an ice bath or a really cold shower. It gives you energy and can snap you out of a bad mood.
You never want to do it—it’s horrible having a cold shower—but just do it, and you’ll feel like a different person afterward. It’s my biggest productivity hack. A cold shower in the morning is a game-changer.
Arun: what advice would you be giving an entrepreneur who wants to start today?
Sankari: Start today. So many people, myself included, have had ideas we talk about endlessly. But talking isn’t enough—stop talking and just do it.
It takes an incredible amount of resilience and self-belief. When you do start, have conviction and give it time because nothing magical happens overnight. You hear these success stories that make it seem easy, but they can discourage you because you think, “I’ll never be like that.”
The truth is, it takes time. There are ups and downs. Just start today, keep going, and have the conviction to see it through. At the same time, know when it’s necessary to pivot or make changes.
Arun: what is your favorite hobby or leisure time activity?
Sankari: I spend a lot of time in the sauna, which I guess isn’t a hobby. I do love working out, though. When I had more time, I started dabbling in triathlons, which was great for me. Honestly, back in South Africa, I never rode a bike, didn’t swim, and never ran. After moving to the Netherlands, where people are really into fitness, I got into it. It became a big hobby for me.
I still have my race bike and need to get back to it. When I have time, I enjoy running and biking. It does take a lot of time, but I’d say those are my main hobbies. I work out every day, which I think is a great productivity hack. It gets me pumped and ready for the day.
I also love cooking. If you look at my Recall, you’ll see I have so many recipes. I used to go down rabbit holes of making elaborate dinners, but I’ve pulled back on that since being a founder takes so much out of you. It’s everything—you have to go all in. But yeah, those are some of my hobbies!
Arun: All right, Sankari, we’ve come to the end of the show. It was a pleasure talking to you. I’m sure our audience will be very interested in watching this video. For those who want to try Recall, I’ve included the link to the tool in the video description. Thanks for taking the time to talk to us, and we wish you all the success in your business
Sankari: Thank you! Just a quick note: there are many tools named Recall out there, so make sure to visit getrecall.ai. Also, please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions, ideas, or thoughts, or if you need motivation. I’d be happy to connect with your audience.
