David Shim
2 Jun 2026etn. Live at Panathenea | ETN Espresso
Read AI: 5M Users, Engagement Metadata & Placed Lessons
David Shim, co-founder and CEO of Read AI, describes the fastest-growing meeting note taker: 5M+ MAUs, 40–50K new users a day, and almost no marketing spend. The differentiator is a "narration layer" that captures engagement metadata — reactions, attention, speaking pace — for better LLM outcomes, and growth is viral because the agent announces itself on calls with a friendly opt-out. He also shares lessons from his earlier startup Placed: don't build toward an exit (the Snapchat/Imran Khan conversation), and when product-market fit hits, actually deploy capital — never spending Placed's $10M Series B was a mistake.
28 May 2026etn. Live at Panathenea
David Shim: Read AI's Hypergrowth and Digital Twins
Read AI co-founder and CEO David Shim explains the meeting note-taker's 5 million MAUs, 40-50k daily signups and near-zero marketing spend, powered by a 'narration layer' that captures how people react in meetings rather than just transcripts. He traces his analytics career — youngest US stockbroker at 17, Placed sold to Snapchat for ~$200M, Foursquare CEO — and the founding moment of spotting ESPN reflected in a Zoom participant's glasses. He details the sub-100-person org, the move from system of record to system of action via Cloud/OpenAI connectors, MCP and digital twins, and lessons like not planning for exits and under-spending his Series B at Placed.