AI note-taking startup Fireflies was really two guys typing notes by hand
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Re: AI note-taking startup Fireflies was really two guys typing notes by hand
#2Isn't that something the startup people always advocate, to do things by hand till you proved there's a market? Sounds like they did
Re: AI note-taking startup Fireflies was really two guys typing notes by hand
#3> "Sitting in someone's meeting uninvited is violation of privacy. They wanted a bot in the meeting, not an uninvited person," said automation expert Umar Aftab. "This way you sabotage trust and could incur legal implications."
> "Good luck with all the lawsuits," added another. "This might read like a gritty founder hustle story," said software engineer Mauricio Idarraga. "But it's actually one of the most reckless and tone-deaf posts I've seen in a while."
> "We told our customers there's an 'AI that'll join a meeting'," said Udotong. "In reality it was just me and my co-founder calling in to the meeting sitting there silently and taking notes by hand."
They charged $100/month for this. If it were free then whatever, but lying to paying customers about the service is not okay.
Re: AI note-taking startup Fireflies was really two guys typing notes by hand
#4lots of people joke about how their jobs is "just attending a bunch of meetings", but can you imagine how horrific your job would be if you were this guy and your job actually was just "attend a bunch of meetings"?
AND you didn't have context or interest in the content?
AND you were required to write an essay at the end proving that you paid attention?!
Re: AI note-taking startup Fireflies was really two guys typing notes by hand
#5If this wasn’t related to software, it’d simply be called fraud. Selling an AI service that has no AI is lying.
But when it’s a SaSS product it becomes an inspirational hustle culture story.
Re: AI note-taking startup Fireflies was really two guys typing notes by hand
#6> "Sitting in someone's meeting uninvited is violation of privacy. They wanted a bot in the meeting, not an uninvited person," said automation expert Umar Aftab. "This way you sabotage trust and could incur legal implications." > "Good luck with all the lawsuits," added another. "This might read like a gritty founder hustle story," said software engineer Mauricio Idarraga. "But it's actually one of the most reckless…
Except they were pretty transparent about there being a human in the loop. They were essentially selling an MIT engineering grad as your note taker for $100/mo, which is a steal. Google hires associate product managers from MIT to be note takers for $20k/mo
Re: AI note-taking startup Fireflies was really two guys typing notes by hand
#7Isn't that something the startup people always advocate, to do things by hand till you proved there's a market? Sounds like they did
Yeah imo this is a success story.
Re: AI note-taking startup Fireflies was really two guys typing notes by hand
#8> "Sitting in someone's meeting uninvited is violation of privacy. They wanted a bot in the meeting, not an uninvited person," said automation expert Umar Aftab. "This way you sabotage trust and could incur legal implications." > "Good luck with all the lawsuits," added another. "This might read like a gritty founder hustle story," said software engineer Mauricio Idarraga. "But it's actually one of the most reckless…
Except they were pretty transparent about there being a human in the loop. They were essentially selling an MIT engineering grad as your note taker for $100/mo, which is a steal. Google hires associate product managers from MIT to be note takers for $20k/mo
The quote taken from the article is: "We told our customers there's an 'AI that'll join a meeting'," said Udotong.
How do you get from 'AI that'll join a meeting' to 'an MIT engineering grad as your note taker'?
The rest about note takers is irrelevant when the problem is lying about the "note taker" as that could be the deciding factor for choosing a service, not price
Re: AI note-taking startup Fireflies was really two guys typing notes by hand
#9If this wasn’t related to software, it’d simply be called fraud. Selling an AI service that has no AI is lying. But when it’s a SaSS product it becomes an inspirational hustle culture story.
A business charges for a service and the service was met. what’s the problem here?
I would bet the TOS mentioned manual reviews.
Re: AI note-taking startup Fireflies was really two guys typing notes by hand
#10Relevant essay, Do things that don’t scale by Paul Graham.