Building the World’s Most Wearable AI

Siroker says a hearing aid helped him recognize how much his hearing had declined, inspiring him to explore technology that augments human abilities. Limitless first built a meeting transcription bot called Scribe, then Rewind, a Mac app that captured activity locally. The company later launched its cloud service and Pendant, aiming to help people recall conversations and stay present instead of taking notes.

Siroker says phones and watches restrict always-on audio capture, so Limitless built a Pendant to record without requiring users to remember to switch it on. He describes Consent Mode, which withholds recording until a new speaker gives verbal consent, and Confidential Cloud, which the company says combines local-app privacy protections with cloud access. He frames meetings as a chance for connection when people are not distracted by note-taking and follow-up tasks.

Siroker recommends setting a launch date and prioritizing quality and time while cutting scope. He points to Optimizely, where a simple way to run A/B tests mattered more than advanced features such as multivariate testing. At Limitless, he says the team focused on the launch and accepted that other tasks, such as partnerships and email, would wait.

Siroker says founders should identify the two to four priorities that can determine a company’s success and keep the main one in focus. He advises hiring only when a role’s absence creates a clear problem, citing Optimizely’s experience raising and then spending large sums on roles the company may not have needed. He says Limitless’s 20-person team ships faster than Optimizely’s hundreds did, and describes an engineer who turned 185 roadmap votes into support for 33 languages within days.

Siroker aims to finish work by 5 p.m. on weekdays so he can have dinner with his three children and help with their bedtime routine. He says the approaching deadline makes his final 15 minutes unusually productive. His advice is to narrow personal commitments, state priorities clearly, and accept that some requests will wait.