Thunder Kitty for Founders
Fundraising conversations that stay off the cloud
Thunder Kitty gives founders a private record of the conversations that determine their company's future.
Fundraising is a game of information asymmetry. Investor calls surface your strategy, your numbers, your concerns, your burn rate — often before you have any relationship with the person on the other end. Customer discovery calls reveal your product thinking before you've validated it. Co-founder and board conversations involve decisions you're not ready to be public about. Most tools that promise to capture these conversations send the audio to cloud servers for processing. Your most sensitive discussions, on someone else's infrastructure. Thunder Kitty keeps everything on your Mac. Record every conversation that matters, knowing nothing leaves your device.
What most founders get wrong about meeting tools
A visible bot joining your investor call signals something before you say a word — that you're using a tool, that you're recording, that someone or something else is in the room. Sophisticated investors notice. Even bot-free cloud tools like Granola or Fathom route your audio through external servers for processing — audio that may include your valuation expectations, your burn rate conversation, your concerns about a co-founder. That data exists on someone else's infrastructure under their retention policy. Thunder Kitty captures audio directly from your Mac with no bot and no upload. The conversation stays between you and the person you're talking to.
What an investor call looks like with Thunder Kitty
Before the call
Create a note linked to the calendar event. Add agenda items — the narrative you want to tell, the questions you expect, the signals you're trying to read. Your prep is structured. You walk in knowing what you're trying to learn.
During the call
Hit record. Transcription runs on your Mac — no bot, no upload, nothing for the investor to notice. Real-time agenda tracking shows which topics you've covered. You stay present and in the conversation.
After the call
Each agenda item gets its own AI summary on your Mac — what you said, what they said, what signals you picked up. Notes save as plain Markdown files. Searchable across every investor conversation. Build a map of who said what, what objections keep coming up, what questions you're not answering well.
Why founders use Thunder Kitty
No bot. Nothing to explain.
Thunder Kitty captures audio directly from your Mac with nothing joining the meeting. No bot notification, no awkward disclosure, no changed dynamic. The call starts clean.
Nothing leaves your device
Audio is processed on your Mac using Apple's on-device speech engine. Your fundraising conversations — valuation discussions, strategic concerns, competitive positioning — never touch an external server. Turn on Airplane Mode and confirm it yourself.
A searchable archive of every important conversation
Your notes and transcripts save as plain Markdown files. Search across every investor call in Spotlight, query them with any AI, find the pattern in what questions keep coming up. Your learnings compound across every conversation instead of living in a vendor's database.
Real-time agenda tracking for high-stakes calls
Thunder Kitty tracks which agenda items have been covered as the conversation progresses. If you planned to test a specific narrative and haven't gotten to it with five minutes left, you'll know. Post-call, each item gets its own AI summary on your Mac.
The conversations that shaped your company, searchable forever
The customer discovery calls where you found product-market fit. The investor conversation where you first heard the objection you still haven't fully answered. The co-founder discussion where you decided to change direction. These conversations are the institutional memory of your company. Thunder Kitty saves them as plain Markdown files you own entirely — searchable, portable, queryable with any AI. The context that shaped every decision doesn't disappear into a vendor's database when you switch tools.
How founders use it
- Transcribing investor calls, partner meetings, and term sheet discussions
- Capturing customer discovery calls and user interviews
- Recording co-founder and board discussions on sensitive strategic matters
- Reviewing pitch sessions and refining your narrative over time
- Building a searchable archive of every conversation that shaped the company
Common questions
Does Thunder Kitty require a bot to join my calls?
No. Thunder Kitty captures audio directly from your Mac — your microphone and system audio — the same way QuickTime would. Nothing joins the meeting. The person on the other end gets no notification, no “Thunder Kitty has joined” prompt, nothing.
Does it work with Zoom, Teams, FaceTime, Meet, and other platforms?
Yes. Thunder Kitty isn’t platform-specific — it captures whatever audio is playing on your Mac, regardless of the app. Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Discord, FaceTime, phone calls via your iPhone’s Handoff, or no video app at all. If audio is happening on your Mac, Thunder Kitty can record it.
How accurate is the transcription?
Very. Thunder Kitty uses Apple’s SpeechAnalyzer — the same on-device engine powering Apple Intelligence — which delivers professional-grade accuracy for English, running entirely on your Mac. It handles natural speech, crosstalk, and varying audio quality well. Non-English language support depends on what Apple’s engine supports on your system.
What happens to my notes if I cancel my subscription?
Nothing changes. Your notes and transcripts are plain Markdown files sitting in a folder on your Mac. They were yours before you subscribed and they’re yours after you cancel. There’s nothing to export because there’s nothing locked in. You lose the recording and transcription functionality. You keep everything you’ve written and recorded.
Can I search across my entire meeting history?
Yes — in a few different ways. Your notes are plain Markdown files, so macOS Spotlight searches across all of them. You can also open the folder in Obsidian, iA Writer, or any notes app. For more powerful querying, Thunder Kitty runs as a local MCP server for Claude Desktop: ask questions across months of transcripts directly from Claude’s interface, with no data leaving your Mac.
Can investors tell that Thunder Kitty is recording the call?
No. There’s no bot joining the meeting, no notification sent to the other side, nothing visible in the call UI. Thunder Kitty captures your Mac’s audio the same way any system audio recorder would. The call proceeds normally.
Is it legal to record investor calls without telling the investor?
This depends on your jurisdiction and theirs. Single-party consent states (most of the US) allow one party to record without the other’s knowledge. Two-party or all-party consent states — California, Florida, and others — require all parties to consent. Thunder Kitty doesn’t advise on recording law. The question is the same regardless of what tool you use — it’s about jurisdiction, not the app.
Can I use Thunder Kitty for customer discovery interviews and user research?
Yes — and it’s a natural fit. Load a user research template, record the interview on your Mac, and get a per-item summary of what you heard across each question. Your notes save as searchable Markdown files. You can run every interview through the same template and then query across all of them: what did users say about pricing, what kept coming up in the pain points section. Your research compounds.
Can I search across multiple investor calls to find patterns — objections that keep coming up, questions I’m not answering well?
Yes. Your notes are plain Markdown files — searchable across all of them in Spotlight, or queryable in any notes app that reads Markdown. For more structured querying, Thunder Kitty runs as a local MCP server for Claude Desktop: ask questions across your entire investor conversation archive directly from Claude, with everything staying on your Mac.
Does Thunder Kitty work for co-founder discussions and board calls, not just investor meetings?
Yes. Thunder Kitty works for any meeting where you want a private, accurate record. Co-founder check-ins, board calls, hiring conversations, strategic offsites, partnership negotiations — if it’s happening on your Mac, Thunder Kitty captures it. The on-device architecture matters for any conversation where you’d rather not have the content on someone else’s server.
Try Thunder Kitty free for 7 days. No credit card. No account. Just a download.
Download for macOSTry it on your next investor call. No bot, no upload — just a clean transcript when you're done.