Relevant essay, Do things that don’t scale by Paul Graham. https://paulgraham.com/ds.html
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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
#32"Make it exist, first. You can make it good later"
Bias towards bullshit
Re: AI note-taking startup Fireflies was really two guys typing notes by hand
#33I think what PG meant by "do things that don't scale" is earnest effort in service of building a real product: talking to users, manually onboarding, hand-holding early customers so you can learn fast and iterate toward something that eventually does scale. What this startup did isn't that, AFAICT. It wasn't manual work in service of learning...it was just fraud as a business model, no? Like, they were pretending the…
Totally agree with this point. There are several advice that pg and similar roles give which are not universally true. I reiterate your point that "doing things that don't scale" is meant specifically for searching for 1-1 user experience advice.
A similar exmaple is "Make something people want". This is generally true advice in focusing your efforts on solving customer's problems. Yet, this is disastrous advice if taking literally to the fullest extent (you can only imagine).
Re: AI note-taking startup Fireflies was really two guys typing notes by hand
#34Re: AI note-taking startup Fireflies was really two guys typing notes by hand
#35> "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…
It's a lot worse than that. This is a breach, from the perspective of the customers. They now have to explain to whoever was there how they disclosed their confidential information. That's going to become a nice boomerang.
Re: AI note-taking startup Fireflies was really two guys typing notes by hand
#36If 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.
Confidentiality breach. You are supposed to have processes in place to guarantee that your customers data is safe from employees that are not explicitly disclosed to the customer from having access. Saying 'a program makes annotations' versus 'me and my buddy are sitting in undisclosed on your confidential meeting' are two entirely different things from a legal perspective.
Re: AI note-taking startup Fireflies was really two guys typing notes by hand
#37From LI
> this was for our first few beta customers from 2017 and we made it clear that there was a human in the loop of the service. LLMs didn't exist yet. It was like offering an EA for $100/mo - several other startups did that as well, but obviously it doesn't scale.
So not necessarily fraud unless they deceived investors. Or he’s covering up his mistake. Getting the popcorn!!
Re: AI note-taking startup Fireflies was really two guys typing notes by hand
#38It won't be a surprise if YC has invested in this company.
Re: AI note-taking startup Fireflies was really two guys typing notes by hand
#39How isn't this just fraud? Expectation is that sensitive meetings run through a pipeline without being exposed to actual people (and if it is for very specific reasons, there are audit trails). Here, they literally listen to sensitive information and can act on it. How do you trust they won't do it again to "enhance summaries" or something in the future?
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Re: AI note-taking startup Fireflies was really two guys typing notes by hand
#40[dead]