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The Grid: Certainly Misguided, Probably a Scam

benhorrix.com

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Re: The Grid: Certainly Misguided, Probably a Scam

#41

Post by radicalbyte »

sago wrote: post #15
reustle wrote: post #2

Seeing so many ads for them was an immediate red flag for me. Clearly they were trying to milk more sign ups out of their promise before people started to realize it was a joke.

I don't think it is a joke. It is classic AI marketing. From what I can tell their 'AI' chooses colors, and fonts and does some basic layout. All three bits can be done very simply. So you choose a template, it stores a few basic qualities, then uses those qualities later to choose how to parameterise its tools for adding new content to your site. It's not strong AI, you might want to claim it isn't AI at all. But ev…

Which book is that? Couldn't see from your profile :)

Re: The Grid: Certainly Misguided, Probably a Scam

#45

Post by tariqali34 »

apalmer wrote: post #24

There seems to be some cognitive dissonance going on here. Almost all the posts here are saying, to paraphrase: 'It looks like the Grid team are using templates and some algorithms to to create websites while explicitly stating they are not using templates and using vague allusions to revolutionary AI for marketing purposes to attract investors and/or kickstarter funders. It is not a scam' Misleading potential invest…

I think there is a distinction between misleading marketing and scamming. If you promise "revolutionary AI" and only give the customer templates and algorithms, well, at least the customer have a program that can make websites. That's useful.

A scam, on the other hand, would not deliver anything at all...period. That is because, no matter how easy it is to produce the templates and algorithms, it's just cheaper to take the money and run.

Obviously, it's scummy to mislead your consumers to get them to buy a product. But I would say that misleading your consumers to buy a product that doesn't even exist is even scummier.

Re: The Grid: Certainly Misguided, Probably a Scam

#47

Post by dave_chenell »

This post makes me sad.

I almost worked with The Grid about a year ago, from my experience everyone there is nothing but kind and talented. From what I saw, the team really wants to build a great product and is extremely passionate about what they do.

Sure they have flashy marketing and throw the word AI around a lot. Clearly its working better than “Hey we use automated A/B testing, analytics, fluid auto-changing layouts, dynamic color schemes, and whole bunch of cool photo filters to tie together a unique website based on your content!”

Regarding the delays, I think the same would be true for any startup with really good pre order sales, who is feeling the mounting pressure to meet the bar they have set for themselves. This is called caring about your work.

I think the author is misguided here and took liberties on what The Grid is actually promising. I don’t understand why people feel the need to blog scathing reviews about startups they have researched for 20 minutes. Ignore the haters Grid team.

Re: The Grid: Certainly Misguided, Probably a Scam

#48

Post by azeirah »

ploxiln wrote: post #35
zapt02 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right on the money when it comes to how this works. They will deliver, but it will be this, not what the blog author claims they should deliver.

Did you watch the video? "a template isn't for you. A facebook page isn't for you." ... "you could build one yourself, but designing, developing, dragging and dropping, these are all full time jobs." ... "Wouldn't it be better if websites just made themselves?" "Now they do. It's called The Grid. No templates, no coding" ... and the kicker ... "Just tell The Grid what you want and it uses artificial intelligence to b…

"Just tell The Grid what you want and it uses artificial intelligence to build a tailor-made home for your content."

"And tell The Grid what you want to do. Looking for more customers, more followers, higher sales, just make your selection."

I suspect that is exactly what the grid will do. It will know a few heuristics, enough to make a site feel "personal" as in, it's not the exact template like 20000 other sites, but you can most of the time easily spot a "the grid" website.

Then again, if they can even pull that off, that's great, not at all stupid.

Re: The Grid: Certainly Misguided, Probably a Scam

#49

Post by ENGNR »

vini wrote: post #26
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #25

The Grid's community evangelist published a video to YouTube about ten days ago that purports to show a demo of The Grid in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vDJZ-QufBQ And here's the site whose content he's populating in the video: http://myothercamera.is My takeaway from this is that The Grid has a fantastic marketing team, and a product that may be a decent competitor to Squarespace. Maybe.

more than 3000 lines of inline css in the site source code, that's not a good sign

They're probably using their own system to design/maintain the CSS classes, and inline CSS is merely the output.

Re: The Grid: Certainly Misguided, Probably a Scam

#50

Post by icelancer »

asah wrote: post #37

I worked with founder Brian Axe at Google. Unless he got a head transplant, he's zero bullshit.

Lots of "zero bullshit" guys outsource their marketing to firms who add in a ton of bullshit, and they end up listening to them since they know best.
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