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EntrepreneurshipBlogsBuilding Earmark: How a Two-Person Team Turned Meetings Into Finished Work
Building Earmark: How a Two-Person Team Turned Meetings Into Finished Work
EntrepreneurshipSaaS

Building Earmark: How a Two-Person Team Turned Meetings Into Finished Work

•February 5, 2026
0
Product Talk
Product Talk•Feb 5, 2026

Why It Matters

By turning meetings into immediate output, Earmark cuts operational overhead and accelerates product cycles, while its low‑cost, privacy‑first model makes AI assistance viable for large organizations.

Key Takeaways

  • •Real‑time AI agents generate specs, tickets, slides during calls
  • •Ephemeral architecture satisfies enterprise data‑privacy requirements
  • •Prompt caching reduces meeting AI cost below $1
  • •Pivot from Vision Pro coaching to web meeting assistant broadened market
  • •Agentic search combines RAG, BM25, metadata for deeper insights

Pulse Analysis

The rise of AI‑driven meeting assistants promises to streamline collaboration, but most solutions stop at transcription or generic summaries that quickly gather dust. Earmark differentiates itself by delivering actionable artifacts in real time, a capability that directly addresses the hidden labor cost of turning discussions into implementation tasks. This approach resonates with product teams that juggle rapid iteration cycles and need immediate, reliable documentation without manual follow‑up.

Under the hood, Earmark orchestrates a fleet of purpose‑built agents that run concurrently during a call. One agent translates technical jargon, another drafts specification outlines, while a third spins up prototype code in tools like Cursor or V0. The company’s prompt‑caching layer stores reusable LLM prompts, driving per‑meeting AI expenses from a prohibitive $70 down to under a dollar. An "ephemeral" mode ensures no conversation data is persisted, turning a privacy concern into a marketable feature for enterprises bound by strict data‑governance policies.

For the broader market, Earmark’s model signals a shift toward AI as a true chief of staff rather than a passive recorder. By targeting product managers as extreme users, the platform validates a high‑value use case that can be extended to other functions such as legal review or security compliance via persona‑based agents. As organizations seek to embed AI deeper into workflow automation, solutions that combine cost efficiency, privacy, and tangible output—like Earmark—are poised to become indispensable components of the modern digital workplace.

Building Earmark: How a Two-Person Team Turned Meetings into Finished Work

Listen to this episode on: Spotify | Apple Podcasts

What if your meetings could actually produce the artifacts you need—specs, tickets, slides—before the call even ends?

In this episode of Just Now Possible, Teresa Torres talks with Mark Barbir (CEO) and Sanden Gocka (Co-Founder), the co-founders of Earmark, about building a productivity suite that turns unstructured conversations into finished work in real time. Unlike generic AI notetakers that produce summaries nobody reads, Earmark runs multiple agents in parallel during your meetings—translating engineering jargon, drafting product specs, even spinning up prototypes in Cursor or V0 while you're still talking.

You'll hear how they pivoted from an Apple Vision Pro presentation coaching tool to a web-based meeting assistant, why their ephemeral (no-storage) architecture became a feature for enterprise sales, and the technical challenges of making real-time AI affordable—from $70 per meeting down to under a dollar through prompt caching. They also dig into why vector search falls short for analysis questions and how they're building agentic search to find insights across months of meetings.

Whether you're a PM drowning in follow-up work or a builder curious about real-time AI architectures, this conversation offers a detailed look at what it takes to ship an AI product that people can't imagine working without.

Show Notes

Guests

  • Mark Barbir – CEO, Earmark

  • Sanden Gocka – Co-Founder, Earmark

What we cover in this episode:

  • How Earmark differs from generic AI notetakers by producing finished work, not just summaries

  • The pivot from Apple Vision Pro presentation coaching to a web-based meeting assistant

  • Running multiple agents in parallel during live meetings

  • Template-based agents: Engineering Translator, Make Me Look Smart, Acronym Explainer

  • Personas that simulate absent team members (security architect, legal, accessibility)

  • Why ephemeral mode (no data storage) became a selling point for enterprise

  • Reducing AI costs from $70/meeting to under $1 through prompt caching

  • Why GPT 4.1 still beats newer models for prose quality in their use case

  • The limits of vector search for analysis questions across meetings

  • Building agentic search with multiple retrieval tools (RAG, BM25, metadata queries, bespoke summaries)

  • Designing for product managers as the extreme user to solve for everyone

  • Their vision for an AI chief of staff that goes beyond automating deliverables

Resources & Links

  • Earmark — Productivity suite where the work completes itself

  • ProductPlan — Roadmapping tool where both founders previously worked

  • Granola — AI notetaker mentioned for comparison

  • Assembly AI — Speech-to-text service used by Earmark

  • OpenAI API — LLM provider with prompt caching support

  • Cursor — AI code editor with build integration in Earmark

  • V0 by Vercel — AI prototyping tool with build integration in Earmark

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Earmark Founders

00:28 Background and Experience

01:05 What Does Earmark Do?

01:23 AI and Productivity

03:09 Comparing Earmark to Competitors

03:41 Earmark's Unique Features

05:53 Templates and Personas

10:06 Technical Details and Development

17:12 Early Product Versions and Challenges

28:44 Understanding Prompt Caching

29:49 Managing Multiple Tools and Costs

30:59 Optimizing Transcript Summarization

35:11 Challenges with Context and Reasoning Models

38:10 Innovative Search and Retrieval Techniques

44:06 Creating Actionable Artifacts from Meetings

48:30 Ensuring Quality and Managing Hallucinations

58:20 Future Vision for AI Chief of Staff

Full Transcript

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